In a Nov. 24 interview with Fox Business host David Asman, posted that Republican Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL) manically announced that the U.S. is about to invade Venezuela to “take out” President Nicolás Maduro, just as was done in 1989 when the U.S. invaded Panama to seize Gen. Manuel Noriega. No worries about anything. “It will be a field day” for the Trump administration, she promised, because “Venezuela for the American oil companies will be a field day because there will be more than a trillion dollars in economic activity. American companies can go in and fix all the oil pipes, the whole oil rigs and everything that has to do with the Venezuelan petroleum companies or everything that has to do with oil and the derivatives.” This, she said, will be “a favor to us, to our economy, our children.”
Salazar’s attitude is typical of those members of the stable of “Cuban exile” legislators who reflect U.S. Secretary of State “Narco” Rubio’s venomous disregard for Venezuela as a sovereign nation of 27 million people—on a par with his hatred for Cuba. David Asman suggested that a U.S. invasion could be like the 1989 invasion of Panama—the misnamed Operation Just Cause—and capture of Gen. Manuel Noriega, as if it had been a cakewalk, instead of a bloody invasion and demonstration of brute imperial force in which 3,000 or more Panamanians died.
The excited Salazar replied that an invasion of Venezuela would not only be like grabbing Noriega, but as good as getting Osama bin Laden. “We can go in, we can take him out,” extradite him, etc. Asman felt compelled to mention that “many Americans” don’t want to see the U.S. participate in a regime-change operation in Venezuela, asking whether Maduro might leave on his own, given the pressure on him. Maduro isn’t “a brave boy, he’s no Fidel Castro,” she said, and he understands that “we’re about to go in.” Maybe Americans just don’t understand that the U.S. has to go in now because, she lied, Maduro has been an enemy of the U.S. for 25 years and has done untold harm to Americans and Venezuelans during that time.
