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..."
C CDec 21, 2025 11:03 PM (This post was last modified: Dec 21, 2025 11:03 PM by C C.)
Quote: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.
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.
C CDec 21, 2025 11:37 PM (This post was last modified: Dec 22, 2025 12:10 AM by 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".
YazataJan 3, 2026 08:49 PM (This post was last modified: Jan 3, 2026 09:13 PM by Yazata.)
(Dec 21, 2025 11:37 PM)C C Wrote: 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....
#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...
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".
Well, last night the United States launched a surgical operation involving lots of cruise missiles and radar jamming, followed up by some 150 aircraft that hit all the military facilities in the Caracas area, followed by a helicopter borne assault by US special forces on Nicholas Maduro's compound. He was captured and taken out of the country to a waiting US Navy assault ship off shore. Early reports say several American soldiers were wounded, but none of their injuries are life threatening.
Some of the commentary above makes a good point. Snatching Maduro is one thing, securing the country is another.
But the United States seems to have had plans for that too. The Venezuelan constitution says that the vice president takes over if the president is unable to serve. And the Venezuelan vice president has announced her willingness to work with the United States. The CIA clearly has operatives in Venezuela that were tracking Maduro's movements so that we knew precisely where he was. And that suggests support inside the Venezuelan security services. The United States probably was sounding out some of the Venezuelan military leaders with 'If we do something against Maduro, will you support us?' and got lots of 'Yes'. I would guess that the Venezuelan military near the capital were considered the most loyal pro-Maduro troops, with those considered less loyal stationed further away to reduce the possibility of a military coup.
There are no reports (yet) of any Venezuelan military opposition in other parts of the country that weren't struck. (They saw what happened to the cream of their military last night, and don't want to face the Americans.) Crowds of Venezuelans are in the streets of Caracas honking car horns and waving Venezuelan and US flags. The gangs of left-wing thugs on motorcycles that have terrorized normal Venezuelans for years seemingly have disappeared. (They are regime loyalists and are probably lying low. They will probably reemerge.) Same with the cartels.
C CJan 3, 2026 09:20 PM (This post was last modified: Jan 3, 2026 09:28 PM by C C.)
(Jan 3, 2026 08:49 PM)Yazata Wrote: Well, last night the United States launched a surgical operation involving lots of cruise missiles and radar jamming, followed up by some 150 aircraft that hit all the military facilities in the Caracas area, followed by a helicopter borne assault by US special forces on Nicholas Maduro's compound. He was captured and taken out of the country to a waiting US Navy assault ship off shore. Early reports say several American soldiers were wounded, but none of their injuries are life threatening.
Some of the commentary above makes a good point. Snatching Maduro is one thing, securing the country is another.
But the United States seems to have had plans for that too. The Venezuelan constitution says that the vice president takes over if the president is unable to serve. And the Venezuelan vice president has announced her willingness to work with the United States. The CIA clearly has operatives in Venezuela that were tracking Maduro's movements so that we knew precisely where he was. And that suggests support inside the Venezuelan security services. The United States probably was sounding out some of the Venezuelan military leaders with 'If we do something against Maduro, will you support us?' and got lots of 'Yes'. I would guess that the Venezuelan military near the capital were considered the most loyal pro-Maduro troops, with those considered less loyal stationed further away to reduce the possibility of a military coup.
There are no reports (yet) of any Venezuelan military opposition in other parts of the country that weren't struck. (They saw what happened to the cream of their military last night, and don't want to face the Americans.) Crowds of Venezuelans are in the streets of Caracas honking car horns and waving Venezuelan and US flags. The gangs of left-wing thugs on motorcycles that have terrorized normal Venezuelans for years seemingly have disappeared. (They are regime loyalists and are probably lying low. They will probably reemerge.) Same with the cartels.
No doubt other members of Mamdani's DSA club are bemoaning the loss of such a distinguished Marxist chieftan.
And it's nice of later Latin American leaders to do a poorer job of hiding themselves than bygone characters like Castro, Hussein, bin Laden, etc. Or if not that, then thanks to Trump not caring about years of having to negotiate through the bureaucratic maze of international niceties, he has the luxury of straight off doing things that past POTUS office-holders could otherwise have directly done.
Maybe this feat will make Greenland and Denmark more amenable, or even Putin and Zelenskyy with respect to a peace deal. Highly unlikely, though, when it comes to veteran hard-headedness. "And after the plague promised by Moses, the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart further..."
- - - - - - - - - -
Trump said that the U.S. will temporarily run Venezuela until a transfer of power can happen.
“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition. So we don’t want to be involved with having somebody else get in, and we have the same situation that we had for the last long period of years,” Trump said.
[...] He noted that there are people in Venezuela who will be able to live in peace, and there are Venezuelans in the U.S. that may want to return to their home country now that it’s safer.
YazataJan 3, 2026 09:23 PM (This post was last modified: Jan 3, 2026 09:42 PM by Yazata.)
Now the Venezuelan vice president is talking tough. In an address to the Venezuelan people, she says that the country will never be a colony of any nation, adding that Venezuela will only ever have one President, Nicolás Maduro.
As for Maduro, he was transferred to Guantanamo, where he was placed on a jet airliner believed associated with the FBI, and he is on his way to the United States as I write this.
C CJan 3, 2026 09:33 PM (This post was last modified: Jan 3, 2026 09:36 PM by C C.)
(Jan 3, 2026 09:23 PM)Yazata Wrote: Now the Venezuelan vice president is talking tough. In an address to the Venezuelan people, she says that the country will never be a colony of any nation, adding that Venezuela will only ever have one President, Nicolás Maduro.
As for Maduro, he was transferred to Guantanamo, where he was placed on a jet believed tied to the FBI, and he is on his way to the United States as I write this.
That's what I was wondering, since Maduro himself was the back-up to Chávez. Gotta' decapitate all the heads of the socialist serpent, or it just lives on. Democrats in the US wringing their hands over this blatant return to the historic oppression of the world by the West.
Dec 21, 2025 08:09 PM
(This post was last modified: Dec 21, 2025 08:12 PM by Magical Realist.)
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