WMD Redux

[Magical Realist]

Hmmm...using the excuse of WMD's just so we can go in and invade a country to take over its vast oil reserves? Where have we heard this before?

"The administration, meanwhile, has accused cartels operating in Venezuela of trafficking fentanyl into the United States as a justification for the use of lethal force against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean Sea. Venezuela, while seen as a hub for cocaine trafficking, is not viewed as a major contributor to global fentanyl trafficking.

The timing of the designation is striking, as speculation mounts that the U.S. will carry out land strikes against alleged drug trafficking targets on Venezuelan soil as part of its pressure campaign against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Declaring fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction would give the U.S. additional legal justification to use military force against Venezuela.

Claims that Iraq still possessed WMDs were used as a legal justification for the invasion of the Middle Eastern country and the overthrow of its then-leader Saddam Hussein under the George W. Bush administration.

The U.S. has also previously floated military strikes against Colombian and Mexican drug cartels, and it has been expected that the U.S. will eventually turn its focus away from Venezuela toward threats from groups in those countries..."

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/15...6o8MxhiAmA

[confused2]

On the Internet I'm seeing jibes about Trump's very own Special Military Operation.

[C C]

The Biden administration had previously faced pressure from a bipartisan contingent of attorneys general to classify fentanyl as a WMD. And fentanyl, even in tiny quantities, is potent enough to kill large numbers of people very quickly through overdoses. [...] The synthetic drug, which has some limited legal pharmacological uses, mostly comes to the United States via Mexico [...] while seen as a hub for cocaine trafficking, is not viewed as a major contributor to global fentanyl trafficking.

Venezuela being the wrong country for that, despite fentanyl being a satisfactory mass slayer. OTOH, after Venezuela as a training exercise, who knows what might await Mexico.

https://drugabusestatistics.org/fentanyl...tatistics/

Nearly 73,000 overdose deaths (OD) involved fentanyl in 2023.

Fentanyl OD rates are 1,750% higher than heroin ODs.

1 kilogram of fentanyl contains nearly 500,000 lethal doses.

In 2024, DEA agents confiscated 60 million fentanyl laced pills and almost 8,000 pounds of fentanyl powder, enough to produce more than 380 million deadly doses.

[Syne]

Plenty of people also claimed the strike on Iran would lead to a war. Didn't happen.

[C C]

By and large, it looks like Maduro's hold on the country would have to be very severely crippled by Trump's efforts before an invasion would elevate from often entertained personal fantasy mode to actual material realization.

First Trump presidency: John Bolton, National Security advisor at the time, published in a 2020 book, The Room Where It Happened, that Trump said that invading Venezuela would be "cool" because it is "really part of the United States". In his 2019 memoir, The Threat, former Deputy Director of the FBI, Andrew McCabe, quotes Trump as saying of Venezuela "That’s the country we should be going to war with, they have all that oil and they’re right on our back door.”

In June 2023, Trump said at a press conference in North Carolina, "When I left, Venezuela was about to collapse. We would have taken over it, we would have kept all that oil."

[...] Trump said on Fox News in May 2020 that "If we ever did anything with Venezuela", in that case, "it would be called 'invasion'", explaining: "if I wanted to go into Venezuela I wouldn't make a secret about it", and "I wouldn't send a small, little group, no, no, no. It would be called an army".

#Analysis: The Wall Street Journal reported that there were too few U.S. naval and air assets in the Caribbean as of October 2025 to carry out an invasion, and a military expert from Center for Strategic and International Studies said there were too few troops deployed by a factor of between 5 and 20.

International relations professor Stephen Kinzer compared the idea of invading Venezuela to arrest Nicolás Maduro on US drug trafficking charges to the actual 1989 United States invasion of Panama, in which it arrested Manuel Noriega on US drug trafficking charges. In September 2025, Kinzer warned against thinking such an operation would be as easy, given the US had many troops based in the Panama Canal Zone, and that Panama was a much smaller country with a smaller military. Both Maduro and Noriega attracted ire for anti-American stances, though Noriega had previously collaborated with the US Central Intelligence Agency and had been offered the option to quietly leave power.

Shannon K. O'Neil from the Council on Foreign Relations opined in 2018 that an American military intervention in Venezuela would "be a disaster". She assessed that the United States would need over 100,000 troops to invade the country and that American troops would have to deal with Venezuela's destroyed infrastructure, armed militias, local drug cartels, and the blame from international observers if they were unable to rebuild the nation.

Al Jazeera stated on 5 December 2025 that "what nearly all experts have ruled out is a ground invasion".