I mean.. Biden was trying to get Maduro's a$$ as well. We tried to get Maduro's pilot to divert a flight headed to Cuba and land Maduro in Key West or Puerto Rico. The reward being increased to 25 million by Biden was a direct message to that guy. Same thing was going on when Trump administration upped the reward to 50 million. Trump is just an impatient goober. We would have gotten him eventually. We are fighting a proxy war against Russia all over the globe. Overthrowing Syria, Wagner mercenaries suddenly being ambushed all over Africa, Iran, Venezuela, etc,etc.
Trump poorly advised? Hard to believe given Trump getting perfect scores on his IQ tests, truly unheard of.
New York Times: Mr. Trump, when asked by reporters on Sunday whether he had discussed with the Venezuelan government the release of political prisoners or the return of opposition politicians to the country, seemed to foreshadow his plans. “We haven’t gotten to that yet,” he said. “What we want to do now is fix up the oil.”
So, uh, what’s in that tanker? US forces dramatically seize Russian-flagged oil tanker in the Atlantic
This is an easy one, and what I suspected by the way Trump was talking about it. Occams Razor - Marco Rubio is still a war monger Bush/Cheney Repug. Rubio wants regime change in Cuba, and sees Venezuela as key to essentially surrounding and cutting off Cuba/Castro. He lied to Trump by dangling the "steal the oil" narrative in front of him for months because he knew Trump wouldn't care about Maduro otherwise. Trump is a sucker, and now he's in a quagmire. Same ole GOP. You know when Lindsay Graham, and John Bolton were all over the news giddy as school girls the day after that your alarm bells should have been ringing off the walls. .... Also funny enough - Yesterday I was talking to a client of mine who works with an energy company out of Houston that I will not name. They sort of brought it up, and I was like... I have to ask re: Venezuela. His response... I quote... "Yeah.... "take the oil" is the new "He has WMD's". So even people in the industry admit that its all BS, and there is no plan to extract oil in Venezuela at least anytime soon. He also talked about the type of oil there, and how Venezuela has been known to also lie about their geological surveys, and are notorious for not letting Chevron in the past have independent surveyors and mapping. There is oil there, but it is better suited for Diesel, and the "sour" oil you'd typically use for construction equipment. He said right now, everyone in the industry is mostly focused on the projects happening in Canada, and he was flummoxed why Trump would want to undercut many of the oil distribution projects with Canada that were started during his first administration.
Riddle me this MAGA, If it was about freeing the people from a dictator, why didn't Trump back the opposition leader? Why would you leave the VP from the same regime in charge...
If another country came here, bombed our cities and took our president...would you consider that war or no?
If I was starving to death and he wasn't the duly elected POTUS then no I wouldn't and neither do the people of Venezuela. Also I would hope our POTUS wasn't under an indictment in another country.
I'm not MAGA but I'll answer your question. If you topple the entire regime you end up with chaos like we saw in Iraq. The only people that knew how to run a government in Iraq were the Baath party and we kicked them all out. It turned into chaos. Instead we snatched Maduro, their leader, and are telling the VP she can work with us or she can have her own helicopter ride. In the meantime we are putting maximum pressure on them by squeezing their finances blowing up the drug boats and running an oil blockade. If you topple the entire regime you will need several hundred thousand troops on the ground. I don't agree with what we are doing but that seems to be the plan.
Yup We probably had solid information that she was more willing to work with us before we pulled the trigger.
