Breaking: Venezuela attacked by U.S. Update: Maduro and wife captured.

wing2000 said:

I hear private security firms (Constellis/Blackwater) pay better. Their services may soon be needed to protect Venezuelan....err American crude oil.

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Aryeh Jay said:

My question is, if the mission was accomplished with the capture, why am I still here? Oh, and several thousand Marines.

I mean, I would like to spend some time with my family I haven't seen since May 2025 at my private golf course too.

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FAITH-IN-HIM said:

This information is helpful for someone like me—thank you. If I recall correctly from your previous posts, you were at the Pentagon during the W. Bush administration.

Was there any internal discussion within the Pentagon or the Bush administration at that time about regime change in Venezuela or other southern countries? If so, why were those ideas never carried out?

I ask because I’ve read that since Reagan, other presidents considered regime change in Latin America but hesitated, knowing it would require troops on the ground—and deploying them would risk a situation like Vietnam.

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durangodawood said:

There was hardly any reporting on how Cheney was going to CIA all the time to in person ensure the (sketchy) WMD supporting intel was advanced while the considerable countervailing intel was squashed.

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rjs330 said:

Yeah I wouldn’t trust them.not to leak it. Notify them maybe right after he's nabbed, but not before. There is too much leaking going on.

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RDKirk said:

I was in the Pentagon for the second Regan administration and the Bush administration.

But remember that the US did carry out "regime change" attacks on Grenada (Reagan) and Panama (Bush) during the 80s.

There had been the disastrous attempt to rescue American hostages held by Iran in 1979 which had revealed many issues remaining from Vietnam. The generals during that time had been to the Vietnam School of Warfare and were hesitant.

All of the US military casualties of the Iran assault and half of the US military casualties during the Grenada assault were caused by US accidents and friendly fire not even involving the enemy.

Those errors were primarily because the services simply did not work well together. They went into combat with each service knowing only its own piece of the battle and almost no method of communication and coordination between them. The 1980s was a severe decade of real intention by the Pentagon to get serious about joint warfare.

And let me tell you, I was there in the Pentagon and afterward in one of the new fully joint units (all services within a single unit, cheek and jowl), and the transition was not comfortable or pretty. We literally had shouting matches in the halls, and I was in a couple of them. We didn't have fistfights were I was, but we were intel nerds; there probably were actual fist fights in the joint combat units.

The successful regime change attack on Panama in 1989 began to show some fruit from the effort, but that was a relatively benign operation, in that the US already had a quite heavy military presence in the Canal Zone and the Panamanians were fairly receptive to American presence (they did and still do use the American dollar as their national currency).

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MarkSB said:

Thank you for your service. And I hope that you get time at home sometime soon.

If they don't intend to send troops in, they would keep forces in the area to maintain the threat/pressure, I would guess. To what end and how they would intend to use that pressure, I don't know.

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BCP1928 said:

The Venezualan military certainly knew what was coming, even if we didn't outright whisper it to them beforehand. I doubt that very many of them were willing to lay down their lives for Maduro. Unless you think they are so incompetent that that they were not just pretending to offer only token resistance. (Not to take anything away from a slick performance of our military)

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BCP1928 said:

The Venezualan military certainly knew what was coming, even if we didn't outright whisper it to them beforehand. I doubt that very many of them were willing to lay down their lives for Maduro. Unless you think they are so incompetent that that they were not just pretending to offer only token resistance. (Not to take anything away from a slick performance of our military)

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RDKirk said:

I was in the Pentagon for the second Regan administration and the Bush administration.

But remember that the US did carry out "regime change" attacks on Grenada (Reagan) and Panama (Bush) during the 80s.

There had been the disastrous attempt to rescue American hostages held by Iran in 1979 which had revealed many issues remaining from Vietnam. The generals during that time had been to the Vietnam School of Warfare and were hesitant.

All of the US military casualties of the Iran assault and half of the US military casualties during the Grenada assault were caused by US accidents and friendly fire not even involving the enemy.

Those errors were primarily because the services simply did not work well together. They went into combat with each service knowing only its own piece of the battle and almost no method of communication and coordination between them. The 1980s was a severe decade of real intention by the Pentagon to get serious about joint warfare.

And let me tell you, I was there in the Pentagon and afterward in one of the new fully joint units (all services within a single unit, cheek and jowl), and the transition was not comfortable or pretty. We literally had shouting matches in the halls, and I was in a couple of them. We didn't have fistfights were I was, but we were intel nerds; there probably were actual fist fights in the joint combat units.

The successful regime change attack on Panama in 1989 began to show some fruit from the effort, but that was a relatively benign operation, in that the US already had a quite heavy military presence in the Canal Zone and the Panamanians were fairly receptive to American presence (they did and still do use the American dollar as their national currency).

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RDKirk said:

The successful regime change attack on Panama in 1989 began to show some fruit from the effort, but that was a relatively benign operation, in that the US already had a quite heavy military presence in the Canal Zone and the Panamanians were fairly receptive to American presence (they did and still do use the American dollar as their national currency).

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RocksInMyHead said:

Can you name the last time an active or pending US military operation was leaked? Because I can, and it wasn't anyone in the Gang of Eight that did the leaking.

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NYT and WaPo Knew About Trump’s Venezuela Raid in Advance — Here’s Why They Didn’t Report It Right Away​

The decisions in the New York and Washington newsrooms to maintain official secrecy is in keeping with longstanding American journalistic traditions — even at a moment of unprecedented mutual hostility between the American president and a legacy media that continues to dominate national security reporting. And it offers a rare glimpse at a thread of contact and even cooperation over some of the highest-stakes American national security issues.

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wing2000 said:

....and Panama was only a tenth of the size of Venezuela.

In any case, I'm beginning to think Trump has no interest in removing the current government of Venezuela. If they give him access to the oil, he'll call it a win and move on to the next country with natural resources.

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FAITH-IN-HIM said:

I watched Richard Haass's explanation on this topic. According to him, there is no legal obligation for the administration to notify Congress before carrying out any military operation. Even deploying troops on the ground does not require notifying Congress under current laws.

however, every president has notified the Gang of Eight before taking military action. Secretary Rubio, a member of Gang of Eight during the operation against Bin Laden, was informed in advance and is familiar with this process.

However, the Trump administration has chosen not to follow precedents established by previous presidents. Their supporters appear to accept this approach. What is surprising is that these supporters do not seem concerned about the precedent such unconventional behavior may set. It is possible that future presidents may adopt similar practices when they come into office.

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rjs330 said:

I guess the rest of the world knew it as well?

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CRAZY_CAT_WOMAN said:

Why was his wife kidnapped.

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essentialsaltes said:

It certainly wasn't the Gang of Eight this time.

NYT and WaPo Knew About Trump’s Venezuela Raid in Advance — Here’s Why They Didn’t Report It Right Away​

Semafor’s Max Tani and Shelby Talcott reported that both papers declined to put out a story right away for the safety of American troops:

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Landon Caeli said:

Illegal weapons charges (machine gun possession) and cocaine importation.

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CRAZY_CAT_WOMAN said:

Do you have a link? BTW, that's not a reason to kidnap people. You put them in jail , not kidnap them .

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