Trump threatens Venezuela with 'military option'
Reuters
James Oliphant
BEDMINSTER, N.J. - U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday threatened military intervention in Venezuela, a surprise escalation in Washington's response to Venezuela's political crisis.
Venezuela has appeared to slide toward a more volatile stage of unrest in recent days, with anti-government forces looting weapons from a military base after the installation of an all-powerful new legislative body.
"The people are suffering and they are dying. We have many options for Venezuela including a possible military option if necessary," Trump told reporters.
More than 120 people have been killed in Venezuela and thousands arrested in over four months of unrest. The government in Caracas did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump's threat.
Venezuelan authorities have long said U.S. officials were planning an invasion. A former military general told Reuters earlier this year that some anti-aircraft missiles had been placed along the country's coast for precisely that eventuality.
In Washington, the Pentagon said it had not received any orders on Venezuela from the White House. Trump, asked if U.S. forces would lead any operation in Venezuela, declined to provide details.
"We don't talk about it but a military operation - a military option - is certainly something that we could pursue," Trump said.
The United States sanctioned Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and other Venezuelan officials on July 31 after Maduro established a constituent assembly run by his Socialist Party loyalists and cracked down on opposition figures.
Washington has not placed sanctions on the OPEC member's oil industry, which supplies America with about 740,000 barrels per day of oil.
Venezuela possesses a stockpile of 5,000 Russian-made MANPADS surface-to-air weapons, according to military documents reviewed by Reuters. It is the largest known cache of the weapons in Latin America and a source of concern for U.S. officials amid the country's mounting turmoil.
The United Nations Security Council was briefed behind closed doors on Venezuela in May at the request of the United States. At the time, U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley said Washington was just trying to raise awareness of the situation and was not seeking any action by the 15-member Security Council.
(Reporting by James Oliphant; Writing by Jason Lange in Washington; Editing by Toni Reinhold and Andrew Hay)
As If We Didn't Have Enough Problems With NK - Venezuela WTF
As If We Didn't Have Enough Problems With NK - Venezuela WTF
Your collective inability to acknowledge this obvious truth makes you all look like fools.
yrs,
rubato
As If We Didn't Have Enough Problems With NK - Venezuela WTF
I see where Lord Dampnut's approval ratings are on the rise. Maduro, like Kim Jong-un, will be putty in his hands.
WW III is going to be glorious.
You look so much like me.
WW III is going to be glorious.
You look so much like me.
“In a world whose absurdity appears to be so impenetrable, we simply must reach a greater degree of understanding among us, a greater sincerity.”
Re: As If We Didn't Have Enough Problems With NK - Venezuela
Venezuela is teetering on the brink of civil war, and for good reason...
Because the current thug-President, Nicolás Maduro, (who succeeded the previous thug-President, Hugo Chavez) is attempting to extinguish the last vestiges of resistance to his thug regime...
We do in fact have a dog in this fight, (the restoration of democracy in Venezuela) but not one that should require direct American military involvement...
It seems obvious to me that what's happened here, is that Trump, having been persuaded that a military confrontation with North Korea is a complete loser, is now casting about for another military confrontation that would have considerably less downside in terms of cost and risk to the US, and on that basis, this looks appealing to him...
It's not a coincidence that all of this is happening while all of the latest polls are showing erosion in Trump's support among his base supporters...
While he has shown a happy willingness to attempt to govern with an approval rating in the 38% range, seeing it drop down to the 32-33% range has him scared shitless...
Because he knows that he has to keep his support above 1/3 of the electorate in order to avoid Impeachment...
And he knows enough about everything related to Russiagate to know that Impeachment is a real possibility...that's why he's been willing to make such blatant public efforts to obstruct justice to try to derail the investigation...
Those efforts all failed, (firing Comey, trying to bully Sessions and Mueller, etc.) so now he's casting about for some foreign crisis to try and rally support from...
And that may work for a time; to fill up a news cycle, and even bump his poll numbers back up two or three points...from the low 30s, back to the mid or high 30s...
But it ultimately won't work for him, because as I pointed before, it doesn't matter what the current news cycle is...his underlying problem has metastasized beyond the point that shiny object media diversions will materially affect the outcome...
Bob Mueller and his team, and the Grand Jury, get up and go to work every morning, no matter what diversionary story may be dominating that day's news cycle...
Tic toc....
Because the current thug-President, Nicolás Maduro, (who succeeded the previous thug-President, Hugo Chavez) is attempting to extinguish the last vestiges of resistance to his thug regime...
We do in fact have a dog in this fight, (the restoration of democracy in Venezuela) but not one that should require direct American military involvement...
It seems obvious to me that what's happened here, is that Trump, having been persuaded that a military confrontation with North Korea is a complete loser, is now casting about for another military confrontation that would have considerably less downside in terms of cost and risk to the US, and on that basis, this looks appealing to him...
It's not a coincidence that all of this is happening while all of the latest polls are showing erosion in Trump's support among his base supporters...
While he has shown a happy willingness to attempt to govern with an approval rating in the 38% range, seeing it drop down to the 32-33% range has him scared shitless...
Because he knows that he has to keep his support above 1/3 of the electorate in order to avoid Impeachment...
And he knows enough about everything related to Russiagate to know that Impeachment is a real possibility...that's why he's been willing to make such blatant public efforts to obstruct justice to try to derail the investigation...
Those efforts all failed, (firing Comey, trying to bully Sessions and Mueller, etc.) so now he's casting about for some foreign crisis to try and rally support from...
And that may work for a time; to fill up a news cycle, and even bump his poll numbers back up two or three points...from the low 30s, back to the mid or high 30s...
But it ultimately won't work for him, because as I pointed before, it doesn't matter what the current news cycle is...his underlying problem has metastasized beyond the point that shiny object media diversions will materially affect the outcome...
Bob Mueller and his team, and the Grand Jury, get up and go to work every morning, no matter what diversionary story may be dominating that day's news cycle...
Tic toc....
Last edited by Lord Jim on Sat Aug 12, 2017 4:35 am, edited 1 time in total.
Re: As If We Didn't Have Enough Problems With NK - Venezuela
I prefer "it's tick tock, bitches!" 
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
~ Carl Sagan
~ Carl Sagan