Trump Orders CIA War On Venezuela.

Trump Has Just Ordered A Covert CIA War On Venezuela.

The New York Times reported today that Donald Trump has authorized a covert CIA war to overthrow the Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and install a puppet government.

The New York Times writes, “The Trump administration has secretly authorized the C.I.A. to conduct covert action in Venezuela, according to U.S. officials, stepping up a campaign against Nicolás Maduro”.

The New York Times reported that the Trump administration’s bombing of supposed drug boats off the coast of Venezuela has actually been a cover to launch a regime change war with Venezuela, writing:

The authorization is the latest step in the Trump administration’s intensifying pressure campaign against Venezuela. For weeks, the U.S. military has been targeting boats off the Venezuelan coast it says are transporting drugs, killing 27 people. American officials have been clear, privately, that the end goal is to drive Mr. Maduro from power.

(Emphasis: Mine).

The paper reported that Trump authorized the CIA to conduct a regime change operation against Maduro, possibly in conjunction with a military invasion, writing, “The new authority would allow the C.I.A. to carry out lethal operations in Venezuela and conduct a range of operations in the Caribbean. The agency would be able to take covert action against Mr. Maduro or his government, either unilaterally or in conjunction with a larger military operation”, adding that “the scale of the military buildup in the region is substantial: There are currently 10,000 U.S. troops there, most of them at bases in Puerto Rico, but also a contingent of Marines on amphibious assault ships. In all, the Navy has eight surface warships and a submarine in the Caribbean”.

The U.S. has been trying to overthrow Venezuela’s government since Hugo Chavez was elected president in 1999.

Leaked documents show that after his election, the U.S. embassy in Venezuela gave $15 million to the CIA cutout USAID, to undermine Chavez, instructing it to “Penetrate Chavez’ Political Base” and “Divide Chavismo”, by funding NGOs “to interact with hard-core Chavistas, with the desired effect of pulling them slowly away from Chavismo”, as well as “Isolating Chavez” internationally by funding NGOs to isolate Venezuela from, “Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Costa Rica, and Washington DC”.

In 2002, the Bush administration gave $300,000 to the International Republican Institute (IRI) , a subsidiary of the CIA cutout NED, to back a military coup against Hugo Chavez.

Mother Jones reported at the time that, “In April 2002, a group of military officers launched a coup against Chavez, and leaders of several parties trained by IRI joined the junta” adding that “On April 12, the institute’s Venezuela office released a statement praising the ‘bravery’ of the junta and ‘commending the patriotism of the Venezuelan military.’”.

The Guardian reported at the time that then Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director on the National Security Council, Elliot Abrams, “gave a nod to the attempted Venezuelan coup”.

The coup was later reversed when Chavez’s supporters took to the streets and demanded that the coup be reversed.

In 2004, the U.S. pushed for a referendum to remove Chavez from power. Venezuelaanalysis reported that Sumate, an NGO run by U.S. puppet and this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, Maria Corina Machado, and funded by the NED, USAID, and Development Alternatives, Inc was “the driving force behind the failed recall referendum against the Venezuelan President”.

Venezuelanalysis noted that the three CIA cutouts funding the NGO, “are known across Latin America for their attempts to destabilize progressive governments under the guise of ‘democracy promotion’”.

The NGO also committed fraud in an attempt to dispute the referendum after Chavez won by 60 percent.

Venezuelaanalysis reported that the NGO, Sumate, played a “role in conducting flawed exit polls during the referendum”.

According to a report from the Carter Centre- the NGO run by former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, which monitored the referendum- “the opposition cited the exit poll contradicting the official results and expressed their deep skepticism” and ““the opposition rejected the results, primarily because opposition’s exit polls carried out throughout voting day suggested the Yes vote (to remove Chavez) would prevail” but in reality, “the machines were extremely accurate. Only one-tenth of 1 percent variation between the paper receipts and the electronic results was found, and this could be explained by voters taking the paper receipts or putting them in the wrong ballot box,” adding that, “the Carter Center has found no evidence of fraud”.

After Chavez’s death in 2013, his successor, Nicolas Maduro, was elected president.

That same year, leaked documents show that the Obama administration gave $300,000 to the National Democratic Institute (NDI), another subsidiary of the NED, to “mobilize a voter database that identified and targeted swing voters through social media” in order to swing the Venezuelan National Assembly elections of 2015 to the U.S.-backed opposition.

Jacobin Magazine reported that, “indeed, in December 2015, the opposition won a majority in the Venezuelan National Assembly for the first time since Chávez came to power in 1999” and that in leaked documents, “the NDI claims credit for the opposition’s success, writing that this strategy ‘ultimately played an important role in their resounding victory in the 2015 election’ and that a ‘determining factor in the success of the coalition in the parliamentary elections of 2015 was a two-year effort prior to the elections”.

The U.S. also funded NGOs that stirred up violent riots in Venezuela. Michelle Ellner, the Latin America coordinator for the anti-war group Code Pink, noted that U.S.-funded puppet, Maria Corina Machado, “was also one of the political architects of La Salida, the 2014 opposition campaign that called for escalated protests, including guarimba tactics” adding that, “Those weren’t ‘peaceful protests’ as the foreign press claimed; they were organized barricades meant to paralyze the country and force the government’s fall. Streets were blocked with burning trash and barbed wire, buses carrying workers were torched, and people suspected of being Chavista were beaten or killed. Even ambulances and doctors were attacked. Some Cuban medical brigades were nearly burned alive. Public buildings, food trucks, and schools were destroyed. Entire neighborhoods were held hostage by fear while opposition leaders like Machado cheered from the sidelines and called it ‘resistance.’”

In 2015, the Obama administration imposed sanctions on Venezuela, designed to crush the economy, which escalated under the Trump administration.

Writing about the sanctions, economist Mark Weisbrot noted in the LA Times:

In Venezuela, the first year of sanctions under the first Trump administration took tens of thousands of lives. Then things got even worse, as the U.S. cut off the country from the international financial system and oil exports, froze billions of dollars of assets and imposed “secondary sanctions” on countries that tried to do business with Venezuela.

Venezuela experienced the worst depression, without a war, in world history. This was from 2012 to 2020, with the economy contracting by 71% — more than three times the severity of the Great Depression in the U.S. in the 1930s. Most of this was found to be the result of the sanctions.

Trump, in his first term, ramped up the regime change war, recognizing Juan Guaidó, another puppet of the United States, as the official president of Venezuela, despite him not being elected, and gave $1 billion to his fake “interim government” in an attempt to overthrow the real Venezuelan government.

Trump also trained Venezuelan troops in Colombia for a failed coup attempt against Maduro, and attempted to send weapons to the opposition disguised as humanitarian aid for a coup attempt.

Describing U.S. policy on Venezuela during the Trump administration’s first term, U.S. Senator Chris Murphy admitted, “First, we thought that getting Guaidó to declare himself president would be enough to topple the regime. Then we thought putting aid on the border would be enough. Then we tried to sort of construct a kind of coup in April of last year, and it blew up in our face when all the generals that were supposed to break with Maduro decided to stick with him in the end.”

Trump, on the campaign trail in 2024, lifted the mask on propaganda around “democracy promotion” in Venezuela and admitted the regime change operations were about access to the country’s oil, saying, “When I left (office), Venezuela was ready to collapse, we would have taken it over, we would have gotten all that oil, it would have been right next door”.

Now in office, Trump is getting to work on getting “all that oil” in Venezuela, approving a covert CIA regime change war, and getting ready for a military invasion of the country.

The U.S.-backed far-right in Venezuela has already apparently attempted to plant a false flag in order to justify the regime change operation, with Venezuela announcing that it uncovered a “false flag operation to plant explosives at the United States Embassy in the capital Caracas” by “extremist sectors of the local Venezuelan right” designed to “lay blame for the attack on Venezuela’s government, which would then begin an escalation of conflict with the US”.

This year’s Nobel Peace Prize was used as war propaganda by giving the award to the aforementioned U.S. puppet Maria Corina Machado, who has cheered on an American military invasion and starvation sanctions on her own country.

Machado has positioned herself as the U.S. puppet to replace Maduro after the regime change operation, signaling that she will sell the country out to the Israel lobby and American corporate interests.

On the podcast of Donald Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., Machado said, “Forget about Saudi Arabia, we have more oil … we’re going to open markets .. we are going to privatize all our industries … Venezuela has huge resources, oil, gas, minerals, land, technology …American companies are in, you know, a super strategic position to invest … This country Venezuela is going to be the brightest opportunity for investment of American companies of good people that are going to make a lot of money.”

As Michelle Ellner noted, Machado, “vows to reopen Venezuela’s embassy in Jerusalem, aligning herself openly with the same apartheid state that bombs hospitals and calls it self-defense,” and signaling to the Israel lobby that she will be a loyal puppet.

On an Israeli news show, Machado said, “I promise one day we’ll have a close relationship between Venezuela and Israel. I believe that our government will move our Israeli embassy to Jerusalem. That will be part of our support to the state of Israel”.

In 2019, Middle East Eye noted that “Israel wants to see Maduro overthrown in Venezuela,” adding that, “Solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for self-determination was at its height during the Chavez years up until today, with the leadership making outspoken criticism of Israel’s flagrant violations of international law. Venezuela severed diplomatic ties with Israel in 2009 over its military campaign in Gaza”.

Yet again, the so-called “America First” President is launching another regime change war to install a puppet who openly brags will sell out Venezuela’s resources to American corporations and turn her country into an outpost for Israeli geo-political interests.

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