Leading the charge was the Miami Herald, which announced this Friday morning, Oct. 31, that “the Trump Administration has made the decision to attack military installations inside Venezuela and the strikes could come at any moment.” It cited “sources with knowledge of the situation” as the basis for its story that targets “could be struck by air in a matter of days or even hours.”
The Miami Herald’s story referenced an article published by the (Wall Street Journal} on Oct. 30, outlining similar targets and strategies. The Journal’s story, however, was that “potential” targets identified would be struck “if President Trump decides to move forward with airstrikes.”
The Miami Herald updated its story midday to include White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly’s statement that the Herald’s “unnamed sources don’t know what they’re talking about. Any announcements regarding Venezuela policy would come directly from the President.” A few hours later, Secretary of State Marco Rubio likewise commented on X vis-a-vis the same story that “Your ‘sources’ claiming to have ‘knowledge of the situation’ tricked you into writing a fake story.” President Donald Trump himself also told reporters, when asked about an imminent attack, “No, it’s not true,” ABC News reported.
Some observers think that the leaks, followed by denials, are part of Washington’s strategy to rattle the cage in Venezuela. ABC News reported that “the Trump administration has drawn up a secret list of targets in Venezuela the U.S. could strike upon orders of the president,” which classified target list had been “briefed to Senate Republicans earlier this week.” ABC’s assertion that the targets “were expected to include ports, airports and other sites run by Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro but also used by drug cartels to transit illegal narcotics,” mirrored the earlier reports in the Wall Street Journal and Miami Herald.
Each media story contains variations on scenarios for how the administration can accomplish its mission, provided by different “experts,” with no attempt to disguise the fact that the goal is regime-change, the ouster of President Maduro and team, with the story that Maduro is the head of a drug cartel concocted as window dressing.
Everyone cited agrees that it would be difficult to repeat George H.W. Bush’s 1990 all-out invasion of Panama to take down Manuel Noriega in the case of Venezuela; much less “a prolonged occupation.” The invasion of Panama, a country of some 3 million people at the time, required 30,000 American troops. Venezuela is a far greater territory, with a population of more than 28 million. Nonetheless, the consensus of the “experts” cited by U.S. war party-run media, is that the Venezuelan regime can and will be brought down by the combination of the U.S. show of military power built up off its coasts, combined with “targeted airstrikes,” and perhaps some deployments of U.S. special forces—just one more “piece of cake” war.
EIR News interviewed two leading international experts who warn that these plans are nuts: former President Donald Ramotar of Guyana, with his firsthand knowledge of the entire region, and Pino Arlacchi, who as former UN Under-Secretary General with responsibility for fighting drugs and terrorism, knows how the scourge of drugs can be defeated—without invasions.
