A fully armed MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicle taxis down the runway at an air base in Afghanistan on its way to another wartime mission. (U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Brian Ferguson).
President Donald Trump announced on September 15 that the United States military struck another boat that he claimed was carrying illegal drugs from Venezuela. The announcement came just a day after the president refused to rule out the possibility of changing the regime in Caracas.
“This morning, on my Orders, US Military Forces conducted a SECOND Kinetic Strike against positively identified, extraordinarily violent drug trafficking cartels and narcoterrorists in the SOUTHCOM (Southern Command) area of responsibility,” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social network.
“These extremely violent drug trafficking cartels POSE A THREAT to US National Security, Foreign Policy and vital US Interests,” he continued.
“The Strike resulted in 3 male terrorists killed in action,” he added, noting that “No U.S. Forces were harmed in this Strike.”
Trump concluded his post with: “BE WARNED – IF YOU ARE TRANSPORTING DRUGS THAT CAN KILL AMERICANS, WE ARE HUNTING YOU!”
Tensions have been mounting between Venezuela and the U.S. since last month, when the Trump administration doubled the reward for the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to $50 million on drug trafficking charges then deployed a large naval force with more than 4,000 troops close to the country’s shores on a so-called “counter narco-terror operation”.
The first U.S strike in the framework of the operation hit a boat in the Caribbean on September 2. At the time, Trump said that the boat belonged to Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang designated by the U.S. as a terrorist organization. The president linked the gang to Maduro and said that 11 people were killed in the strike.
Caracas labelled the strike an “extrajudicial killing” of civilians, with Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello later revealing none of the people killed in the strike were members of Tren de Aragua.
Speaking to reports on September 15, just before the second strike was announced by Trump, Maduro said that the first strike violated U.S. and international laws.
If the U.S. truly believed that the boat’s passengers were drug traffickers, they should have been captured, the president argued.
Maduro called the strike “a military attack on civilians who were not at war and were not militarily threatening any country” and said the U.S. was trying to goad Venezuela into a “major war.” The American goal, the president said, was “regime change for oil,” not drug interdiction.
On September 14, Trump appeared open to the idea of launching strikes against drug traffickers operating in Venezuelan territories.
“We’ll see what happens,” Trump told reporters when asked if such strikes were possible. “Venezuela is sending us their gang members, their drug dealers and drugs. It’s not acceptable.”
Trump took things further during the same press conferring, hinting that a regime change in Caracas was not completely out of question.
“It’s not an option or not option. We’ll see. He had an election that was wrong. It was almost as corrupt as our election of 2020,” he said.
Venezuela has been taking the threat posed by the U.S. very seriously. Last week, Maduro ordered the activation of 284 “fronts of battle” across the country with a force made up from the military, police and civilian volunteers. He said that the mobilization would keep Venezuela’s coastline free of “imperialists, invaders and violent groups.”
Trump’s recent remarks leave no doubt about what the U.S. is trying to achieve in Venezuela. Washington is clearly trying to use the drug issue as a pretext to push for a regime change in Caracas in the hope of scoring the country’s major oil reserves, which are the largest in the world.
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no drugs on the 1st boat none found on the boat that was boarded for 8hrs and i’m pretty sure this one had no drugs also. the drone operator is a coward.
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my last paycheck was $2500 for working 12 hours a week online. my sisters friend has been averaging 8k for months now and she works about 30 hours a week.i can’t believe how easy it was kas once i tried it out. the potential with this is endless.this is what i do…
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when you have oil, the global gangsters are going to steal it from you. that’s what thieves and liars do. maybe they will create another patsy like in dallas and utah. murderering liars.
my last goats kunnt was worth $2.50 for working 12 hours a week in gayza. my sisters friend has been averaging 8.00 usd for months now and she works about 30 hours a week.
i don’t call it work though bc she is lying down all the time.
i can’t believe how easy it was once i tried it out myself.
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i believe you!
name hacked again
spoof post above ! i must have upset the hasbara troll
stop lying!
jooz prefer little kiddies, so long as they’re under 4. pimping, paedo, sex trafficking merchants of the planet. since forever.
theater for the masses to gain consent. all that oil and gold is
communist terrorist maduro will be eliminated…heheheh
retarded bozo the clown tries to be nostradamus again.
remember when it prophesized a nuclear strike on moscow in the summer of 2025 ?
diagnostic : retarded.
chumpo is going down. he won’t last more than a few months.
bbc is my channel
i sell bbc now
what is aleppo?
may be trump should start using attak drones on car, vans, trucks and any other vehicles suspected of carrying illegal drugs inside us soil since those pose a more imminent threat as they are going to their points of distribution in american cities and suburbia. it would also be more legal than killing innocents without any proof whatsoever in international waters. at least killing the bad guys here can be supported by forensic evidence.
israel and the usa are completely rogue states now, and their use of violence is only excused by a thin veneer of flimsy b*llshit.
they won’t convince anybody. only threaten.
they think they will be able to keep above water only due to sheer stupidity and corruption.
pigs bay 2.0
i wonder why icc did not issue a warrant of arrest for trump. it is clearly murder, while former president of the philippine rodrigo duderter jailed in icc detention cell waiting for trial?
you know when justice is enforced at the whim of the powerful (not equaly) it is not justice at all ? same thing here.
but now the mask has fallen and the hypocrisy is evident for everyone who cares to look.
i keep saying hypocrisy is the worst of all sins. it makes all the other sins ok for those who wrote the so called rules and arbitrarily apply it to others but themselves.
i’d take the law of the jungle happily every day instead. just say it: might makes right, size matters and don’t bullshit trying to pretend to be nice. it’s disingenuous and pathetic kabuki theater.
“grab them by their little pussy” felon tramp is living proof.
yes, preferably before the working slave cast had voted for the murderer, he was a murderer already then. very strange customs the earthlings have.
about this, and charlie kirk. anything the “us” does, are used as the reichtag fire. it does not matter if the nazis did it, or the mentally disturbed lubbe, its how its used. i agree with ggaarr on sonar21, even the shooting, and larry c johnson’s explanations do not add up.
30-06 are a common moose hunting caliber…the writings about a shock wave around the bullet are clearly missleading. with a hit in a moose, you can see some wobbling in the hair on a small area…but charlie’s shirt does strange things…
in the military, we regularly stand beneath the bullets hitting the cardboard, wellpapp, plywood whatever, head maybe 2-3 meters below. but behind a betong wall…no dramatically “shock wave” at all. its only a snap sound when the bullet went through. and in the sand wall behind, it splashes from the bullet, but no wirwelstorm…
if charlie was hit by a 30-06 in his neck, why is his head still attached to his body ? well, it was probably a full metal jacket, but as a minimum, his spine and parts of the neck vertebrae should have stain the chair. the first video i see, was more trustworthy, in its thought about splashing blood from tubes. it more look like my bird rifle shoots, 22 long rifle and 22 hornet. but not the blood splashing.
another commentator are convinced a bullet deflected onto charlie’s body armor, upwards, into the artery. why do then the armor lift upwards, and the shirt blow all the way up to his ear ? another attack on newton ? if the armor was thicker than a thin metal plate, he can have be “shot” by something inside the armor, perfectly located under the artery. explain the prosit shirt. or everything are the same tsunami of trick movies as after 911.
us always want war. that is in thier blood to make sure war keep going on so thier weopeon pharma industry doenst die and steal the resource of the country to pay for this ammunition. but world leaders instead of uniting many of them are slve of american busness