Venezuelan Minister of Defense Gen. Vladimir Padrino López issued a statement Sept. 9 alerting the international community, and the American and Venezuelan people, to the danger that the U.S. military is preparing a “false flag” incident like that infamously used against Vietnam in 1964 in the Gulf of Tonkin, as a pretext for an invasion of Venezuela.
The statement points to a “malicious” social media campaign being promoted by “extreme right” networks playing up the alleged presence of a U.S. helicopter in the vicinity of one of Venezuela’s island territories. “This raises the possibility that the US military itself could inflict damage on the aforementioned aircraft to provoke and fabricate an incident, or a false flag operation … as a precondition for armed intervention.” The actual aim is not “the fight against drug-trafficking,” but to bring about “regime change in Venezuela, which in turn would drag the region into a conflict with unpredictable consequences.”
This latest statement again singles out U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Trump’s Special Envoy for Latin America Mauricio Claver-Carone, as the officials within the administration leading the charge for such “warmongering and cognitive warfare actions” against Venezuela.
