Trump’s case for war with Venezuela has been staggeringly incoherent, and gets more so with each new ad hoc justification. From Kelly Beaucar Vlahos at responsiblestatecraft.org:
It appears more important to the White House that the party of convicted Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández wins Sunday’s volatile election.
The Trump administration has literally killed more than 80 suspected drug smugglers by blowing their small boats out of the water since September, but this week the president has reportedly decided to pardon one of the biggest cocaine traffickers of them all.
If that doesn’t make any sense to you, then join the club.
The news that Trump is going to pardon Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras who was sentenced to 45 years in U.S. prison just last year came as a shocker. The White House has said repeatedly that drug traffickers are narcoterrorists who are waging war on America, justifying their killing the boats every time. Yet Hernandez was convicted of conspiring to import 500,000 kilos of cocaine into the United States and stuff it “right up the noses of the gringos” and Trump says “CONGRATULATIONS TO JUAN ORLANDO HERNANDEZ ON YOUR UPCOMING PARDON.”
While president, Hernández received millions of dollars from trafficking organizations in Honduras, Mexico, and from notorious drug lords like Joaquín Guzmán Loera, a.k.a. El Chapo, who was the former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel and is responsible for the murder of some 34,000 people. In return, according to prosecutors, President Hernández allowed vast amounts of cocaine to pass through Honduras on its way to the United States.
Prosecutor Jacob H. Gutwillig told jurors during the trial that Hernández had accepted “cocaine-fueled bribes” from cartels and “protected their drugs with the full power and strength of the state — military, police and justice system.” Hernández ran the country from 2014-2022; his National Party had been in power since 2009.
Sounds like the very type of menace — or terrorist — that the Trump administration is trying to use as a justification for military action in Latin America today.
I’d go with the Dominion line for a Falkland Islands style WAR.
RF is an ally of Venezuela?
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