cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/16324
The US Central Intelligence Agency reportedly carried out a drone strike earlier this month on a port facility inside Venezuela, marking the first time the Trump administration launched an attack within the South American country amid a broader military campaign that observers fear could lead to war.
CNN on Monday was first to report the details of the CIA drone strike, days after President Donald Trump suggested in a radio interview that the US recently took out a “big facility” in Venezuela, prompting confusion and alarm. Trump authorized covert CIA action against Venezuela in October.
According to CNN, which cited unnamed sources, the drone strike “targeted a remote dock on the Venezuelan coast that the US government believed was being used by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua to store drugs and move them onto boats for onward shipping.”
To date, the Trump administration has not provided any evidence to support its claim that boats it has illegally bombed in international waters were involved in drug trafficking. No casualties were reported from the drone strike, and the Venezuelan government has not publicly commented on the attack.
“This is an act of war and illegal under both US and international law, let’s just be clear about that,” journalist Mehdi Hasan wrote in response to news of the drone strike.
Brian Finucane, senior adviser with the US Program at the International Crisis Group, called the reported drone attack a “violation of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter and the Take Care Clause of the Constitution.”
“Seemingly conducted as covert action and then casually disclosed by POTUS while calling into a radio show,” he added.
CNN’s reporting, later corroborated by the New York Times, came after the Trump administration launched its 30th strike on a vessel in international waters, bringing the death toll from the lawless military campaign to at least 107.
The Times reported late Monday that “it is not clear” if the drone used in last week’s mission “was owned by the CIA or borrowed from the US military.”
“The Pentagon has stationed several MQ-9 Reaper drones, which carry Hellfire missiles, at bases in Puerto Rico as part of the pressure campaign,” the Times added.
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Death to America
No mention that Venezuela denies that this happened, unless this is a different “strike” claim
That’s the part I’m hung up on. Did this even actually happen? There was apparently an industrial accident at a chemical plant that people think this is referring to, so was there even an actual drone strike or did some lackey just hear about the explosion and try to score special good boy points by telling Trump about it only for him to start crowing about it in public? Or did Trump hear about the explosion in Venezuela and conflate this with the drone strikes he ordered on Nigeria on the same day?
It’s really hard to say, I think. Trump and his people are all perfectly comfortable with lying, but I can also understand from the Venezuelan perspective the benefit in outright denying piddly little attempts at generating a reaction. If I were Maduro, I would deny such a stupid little “strike” if it were real because its only real purpose is to foment ire and retaliation.
Haven’t seen a drone to human size comparison before. Huh.
Yeah they’re just slightly smaller planes, and so are still absolutely huge (military jets are a lot larger than you’d expect, too). They get some space saving out of not needing to accommodate 1-2 human pilots, but otherwise they still need to be large enough to carry enough fuel and whatever munitions they want to drop on their legitimate targets (random civilians selected for extrajudicial murder based on vibes).
