U.S. mercenaries try and fail to invade Venezuela
The Venezuela military killed eight and arrested 13 mercenaries trying to infiltrate the country.
I've seen people calling this a "mini Bay of Pigs".
Maduro, in a live address on state television late Monday, brandished what he claimed were the US passports and driver's licenses of the two men, along with what he said were their ID cards for Silvercorp, a Florida-based security services company.
OK. Sure he has documents, but what proof does he have?
Footage posted on Maduro's official Twitter account shows several unidentifiable men in a boat with their hands in the air and a helicopter overhead. The men in the boat were not identifiable in one video, but a separate photo more clearly depicted two men who Maduro claimed were American.
CAPTURED: U.S. mercenaries Luke Alexander Denman and Aaron Barry are in custody of the Venezuelan government. The two Silvercorp terrorists claim work security for President Trump. pic.twitter.com/jc7vwmjuTB
— Camila (@camilateleSUR) May 5, 2020
Fair 'nuff. But what proof does Maduro have that these are American mercs?
The CEO of Silvercorp, Jordan Goudreau, told the Washington Post that two Americans acting within a larger force were captured Monday, along with six Venezuelans, after launching an operation to infiltrate Venezuela. Goudreau said other members of what he called "Operation Gideon" were captured or killed on Sunday.
Goudreau identified the Americans as Airan Berry and Luke Denman, whose names match those on the Silvercorp IDs displayed by Maduro. Goudreau, a former US Army Green Beret, said the two men were fellow former Special Forces members like himself.
Okay. But that doesn't mean Trump or Juan Guaidó have anything to do with this.
Attorney General Tarek William Saab earlier told reporters that "hired mercenaries" had signed a $212 million dollar contract with Guaido using funds "stolen" from state oil company PDVSA.
The United States - one of more than 50 countries backing Guaido as Venezuela's acting president as he challenges Maduro for power - has slapped sanctions on PDVSA and allowed Guaido to use funds from frozen accounts belonging to the firm's Houston-based subsidiary Citgo.Saab said Guaido had signed a contract with former U.S. special forces soldier Jordan Goudreau, linked in several press reports last week to an allegedly bungled attempt to topple Maduro.
That's a bold claim. Can you prove any of it?
Connecting Vets was provided a copy of the contract ostensibly signed between Silvercorp and Venezuelan officials. The contract promises $50 million to Silvercorps for vague services such as strategic planning, procuring equipment, and "project execution advisement." When the contractual obligations were met, Silvercorps expected to be paid a total of $212 million, "backed/secured by Venezuelan barrels of oil."The contract is signed by Goudreau as CEO of Silvercorp, along with what appears to be the signature of acting president of Venezuela, Juan Guaidó. Whether or not that signature is authentic or a ruse used to recruit people for the coup based on false pretenses is unknown. However, a source confirmed to Connecting Vets that this contract was being shown to people at the camp in Jamaica run by Gourdreau.
Under any other circumstances, Juan Guaidó would be hung for treason.
Comments
It keeps getting worse
Amateur hour
If they knew better,
they'd join their fellow armed thugs helping to spread Covid at our state capitols, then take it back home to their communities. Either takes about the same mentality, but law enforcement seems not to want to touch them here. Venezuela isn't so soft on crime.
We're better off without them here, so let's just send Jordan Goudreau down to join them.
"If I sit silently, I have sinned." - Mossadegh
What a lovely activity to pursue
in the year of the Coronavirus.
"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama
Best coverage
of this fiasco anywhere, gjohnsit. Hilarious, right on target.
Elliot Abrams
I got two words ... Elliot Abrams. What a surprise that something like this would happen when he is 'special envoy to Venezuela'. I am shocked. It took so long to try again. Thanks for the coverage gj.
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein
No he wouldn't
He would be hanged.
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
It depends on what punishment gjohnsit had in mind.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpoiVKKAS9c]
i can't agree with linda wood:
'best coverage anywhere'. on one hand you seem to be snarking, on the other hand you've used at least 3 dubious western MSM sources: cbs, fox, and CNN for crissake.
at least one admitted the the US state dept has put $15 million dollar price on his head:
how about the orinoco tribune or more from telesur english? hell, how about RT.com?
venezuelanalysis.com is chock full of related news.
pardon my pissiness, but the Western Hegemon has been after maduro for a hella long time, and remember: Colombia is 'under NATOs umbrella (for quick access into VZ).
maduro's being censured for not being leftist enough, and i understand that, but then he's no hugo chavez, and has been under the gun and making deals with big bidness. less charisma, smaller heuvos. i can wish it weren't so...but it's not easy being in his spot.
biggest trouble is, of course, is that Rexxon's oil is in VZ and offshore.
pardon my rant. i just hate seeing the pink tide being reversed so mightily.
on evening edit: yeah, i get it. sorta.
If those two fat americans
are the best this Florida merc outfit can send down
to take out a latino country, maybe the empire should stick to
WTO and World Bank board room sanctions?
my apologies, again, gjohnsit.
i should have simply asked linda wood to explain why she thought this was the best coverage she'd seen, and noted that i must have been missing something.
every.single.day i wake up and wonder if this will be the day that an announcement will come that either nicolas maduro, evo morales, or julian assange had been assassinated. i suppose you were attempting to satirize the situation much like jimmy dore tries to do.
to me, it seriously isn't funny, as the history of the many attempts to putsch maduro, assassinate him by drone bombs, kill the electricity grid, and so forth. and recently for the amerikan state department to declare maduro a 'narco-terrorist' (many colombians under narco-fascist ivan duque indeed are), and sanction him and others in 'his regime' further.
and of course barack obomba was the first to declare VZ 'a direct threat to amerikan national security' and yes, socialist nations are, but not in the way trump and obomba meant.
but i'm always mindful of the march 7, 2019 letter silicon valley ro khanna and house 'progressives' had sent to SoS mafia boss pompeo:
how very progressive of them. they criminalize the regime even more brutally in the long version, and fuck them all.
now the same thing is going on with pompeo and the JCPOA (not that anyone here seemed to have cared), and it's ilhan omar siding with trump/pompeo, and biden claiming he'll lift the sancttions against iran, if__so and so.
I share your anger,
,
and I appreciate your posting the Ro Khanna letter, so I think we're on the same page about Maduro, including on the pandering you point out in the letter. But I have to say there is no coverage of the invasion attempt that even comes close to gjohnsit's incisive wit and skill. And the fact that he made me laugh out loud really helps because right now I'm so angry and miserable about the pathetic nature of our government I start to lose hope. His handling of this clusterfuck was cathartic.
i appreciate your comment,
and the fact that you believe the subject required his 'incisive wit and skill'.
for me, that wasn't what was required, but my take was the minority one, quite obviously. i can live with that. but the fact that no one gave a fart about pompeo's claim of JCPOA 'snapback protocols' either was a Minority Report. it's only nuclear war... and there's an April state dept. addition of limited nuclear warheads afoot (not the feb. one you knew about keenly) threats toward russia and china i decided it wasn't worth digging into.
best to you.
Not so
The US has been mucking around in VZ since who knows when. There's a notation that in 1944 the US military established a mission in VZ, but the only easily available information on this concerned two kidnappings Colonel James K Chenault, deputy chief of the U.S. military mission in Caracas in 1963 and [Lt] Colonel Michael Smalen [Smolen?], deputy chief of the U.S. Air Force mission in Venezuela in 1964. (Both subsequently and quickly released and unharmed.)
More recently, there was the 2002 attempted to coup (Bush administration quickly recognized the coup as the legitimate new government of VZ. Being no dummy, Chavez hardened the VZ military as protectors of the Bolivarian revolution and against US coup attempts. So, Chavez was restored to office within 47 hours. The USG coup plotters continue looking for weak spots in that that they can exploit. Probably analyzing this ridiculous, extremely low rent effort for any clues to help them in a larger and more organized attempt.
Related
(and very interesting to me because I didn't know this) - From Viet Nam News, October 16, 2014 - Venezuela marks effort to save Nguyen Van Troi
interesting and related, but
neither are dispositive of the claim i'd noted above, marie. you are an epic researcher, though.
Are you sure that it doesn't dovetail
with the current bipartisan demonization of the VZ government. Merely adds that it's roots are old. Agree on this:
As for research skills -- I'm much too lazy to spend hours in libraries (and it is tedious) doing any quality research. I find that when I recall something that plinking around in google often gets me somewhere. I know so little about Venezuela and most of South America that it's almost embarrassing to admit. In this instance, I did recall a classmate and her family joining her US Air Force officer father in Venezuela in either '64 or '65; so, I knew that some military operation was there at that time. (By design, most Americans are rather clueless as to the extent of US military installations around the world.)
they may indeed dovetail,
but long ago, but yes, there was a coup attempt against chavez as you say, and his miltary stood strong, as evo morales's hadn't (likely aided by CIA and US special ops). but as i'd said: (hand-picked by chavez before his death by toe cancer?) maduro is no chavez, no charisma, smaller huevos (so to speak) and has neoliberalized VZ's resources (esp. oil) as dilma rouseff had (before she was toppled).
but then, rafael correa was putsched by his own own VP, lenin moreno. egads, was he pissed when moreno sold out assange from the ecuadorian embassy. 'a day that will live in infamy', as far as i'm concerned.
as to good researcher,, i'd been meaning all the digging you'd done to try and dicover where tara reade may have filed her harassment claims.
anyway, thanks; i gotta scoot: dinner chores are callin' my name.
Oh, puzzles or roadblocks tend to intrigue me.
Once had a situation where a Canadian client needed X from my employer (X was routinely done for US companies), but the company manual said we can't do X for Canadian companies, and nobody could tell me why. So, I checked out US and Canadian law and there was no prohibition from either nor was the any tax code considerations. Next step was to find out why the prohibition was in the company manual which was outside the purview of my office; so, I had to enlist the help of an AVP to make that inquiry. Turns out nobody in that department knew either, but they had no authority to change the manual that Hummie Baer had written before he'd retired ten years earlier. At least I had the satisfaction of being amused for my efforts.
Apparently the billionaire Tom Kraft
bankrolled this thing.
It's odd actually. If someone were to commit a crime like this in my neighborhood, they'd face the death penalty. Say an elderly couple is rumored to have cash and valuables in their home. A rich asshole then pays a couple of thugs to go break in, kill them and steal their stuff. In return for backing the operation and paying for the weapons, the rich asshole gets a large cut of the loot.
In no jurisdiction would the above be legal. The rich asshole is every bit as guilty as the thugs he hired. My question is, why hasn't Tom Kraft been arrested? He is clearly a criminal, and should face the death penalty.
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."