USA (Brussels Morning Newspaper) – The CIA reportedly carried out a drone strike on a Venezuelan dock accused by the US of drug trafficking, escalating Trump military actions in the Caribbean.
Members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua were suspected by the U.S. authorities of using the location to store and transport cocaine abroad.
The network’s source claims that nothing was at the harbor when the strike passed. Indeed though it was only one of numerous anchorages along the nation’s bank that bootleggers might use, the operation was still considered successful because it fulfilled its pretensions and destroyed the installation.
In an interview on Friday, President Donald Trump sounded to confirm the operation, claiming that the United States had attacked a” big installation where vessels come from.”
Trump claimed that the American military had bombed “the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs” when questioned once more on Monday.
Following months of deadly strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific that have killed over 100 people, the Coast Guard seized a second sanctioned oil tanker last week and pursued a third.
“So we hit all the boats, and now we hit the area,”
the president added.
“It’s the implementation area, that’s where they implement, and that is no longer around.”
In the meantime, the United States has overseen a massive buildup of naval assets in the region, initiated a blockade of Venezuelan oil allegedly headed for sanctioned countries, and warned that land strikes, like the dock blast, will soon follow.
Administration officials are under increasing legal and political scrutiny regarding the deadly campaign and claims that the attacks amount to illegal extrajudicial killings.
The administration’s notification to Congress that the United States is officially involved in a “armed conflict” with drug cartels that the president has designated as “unlawful combatants” supports administration officials’ insistence that the two dozen attacks are entirely within legal parameters.
Members of Congress, both Democratic and Republican, are demanding answers; GOP Senator Rand Paul recently cautioned against acts that amount to “provocations” and “a prelude to war.”
This hasn’t stopped Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth from dismissing their concerns and using saber-rattling language; the latter recently likened Central American cartels to al-Qaeda.
“These narcoterrorists are the al-Qaeda of our hemisphere,”
he said at the Reagan National Defense Forum earlier this month.
“And we are hunting them with the same sophistication and precision that we hunted al-Qaeda.”
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) claims that Venezuela is not a significant producer of cocaine. Nearly all coca crops are grown in Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia, and in a March report on the state of cocaine trafficking, the Trump administration’s Drug Enforcement Administration made no mention of Venezuela.
Trump recently labeled fentanyl a “weapon of mass destruction” in yet another apparent escalation of the president’s militarized campaign against drug traffickers, despite the fact that the drug, which is used in hospitals all over the United States, is neither produced nor found on the boats that smuggle drugs into the nation.
Trump has stated time and time again that he would not necessarily ask Congress for permission to start a ground war in Venezuela, claiming that military equipment is “just going to kill people.”
“I don’t think we’re going to necessarily ask for a declaration of war. I think we’re just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country, OK? We’re going to kill them,”
Trump said during a White House roundtable with administration officials in October.
Additionally, the president has given the CIA permission to conduct “covert action” against Maduro and his administration within Venezuela, including as part of a larger military campaign.
In October, Trump told reporters that Venezuela “emptied their prisons into the United States of America” and inundated the nation with drugs, so he “authorized” CIA activities.
What evidence supports the claim the dock held drug shipments?
Ursula von der Leyen has not intimately detailed specific new substantiation supporting the U.S. claim that the targeted Venezuelan wharf was used for medicine shipments in the CIA drone strike.
Officers cited classified Special Operations intelligence relating the remote littoral point as an anesthetics storehouse and lading point for Tren de Aragua gang vessels, with no declassified imagery, intercepts, orpost-strike forensics released amid ongoing operations.
Analogous previous U.S. boat strikes reckoned on unverified assertions of narco- trafficking, lacking independent evidence like seized medicines or manifests; Venezuelan sources deny the point’s actuality or medicine links, calling it fabricated escalation propaganda.
