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The US military operation to track down, capture and fly Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro back to the United States for prosecution on drug trafficking charges went flawlessly. It was well-coordinated, meticulously planned and executed to a tee. Nearly two days after Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were taken into U.S. custody, details of the snatch-and-grab mission are beginning to percolate into the US media. It involved a cyberattack against Caracas’s electricity system, precision bombing against several Venezuelan airfields and ports, a low-flying helicopter assault on Maduro’s hideout and a CIA deployment that was operating in the country since August....

"Lindsey Graham: You just wait for Cuba. Their days are numbered." ...

Venezuela’s ousted dictator, Nicolás Maduro, was being held in a New York detention center Sunday as he awaited court proceedings on U.S. drug charges, a day after President Donald Trump ordered a raid to capture him and said the United States would take control of the oil-producing nation. Images of the 63-year-old Maduro blindfolded and handcuffed during his transfer to the United States stunned many Venezuelans and drew international criticism. The operation was Washington’s most contentious intervention in Latin America since the U.S. invasion of Panama 37 years ago. Maduro was scheduled to appear in federal court in Manhattan on...

Sorry about the source, Facebook, but it is the California Patriots Network. This gentleman makes an impassioned case about Venezuela and what is really happening and it isn’t about oil, as the mainstream press insists. https://www.facebook.com/reel/2003749590406462

Hundreds of revelers chanted and celebrated outside a Brooklyn lockup as Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were hauled inside to face federal narco-terrorism charges. The couple were greeted at the Brooklyn Detention Center with the boisterous crowd triumphantly applauding and chanting “down with the dictator,” “shame on you,” and “dirty scumbag!” Venezuelan national Ronny Chirinos was one of more than 200 opponents who eagerly waited outside the prison for more than an hour in the bitter cold for the ousted dictator to arrive in cuffs. “It’s such a joy to see the dictator fall, but the...

From a Venezuelan journalist: Stop using these 3 phrases when you talk about Venezuela. https://twitter.com/DahliaKurtz/status/2007649585888673975?s=20 1 m 41 s !!!

We’ve learned nothing from Afghanistan and Iraq.On Oct 7, 2001, the United States began an ill-fated campaign to ‘nation build’ Afghanistan.Now 24 years after that anniversary and 2 years after the Oct 7 attacks by Hamas, we may be on the cusp of an even worse nation-building program in Gaza that seems to have learned absolutely nothing from the disastrous nation-building operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.Right down to resurrecting former UK PM Tony Blair to head ‘nation building’ in Gaza.Nation building in Afghanistan and Iraq failed for three reasons.The Bush administration believed that the problem in Afghanistan, Iraq and other...

Escalating our war with Iran by pursuing regime change and nation-building would be a colossal mistake.Now that President Donald Trump has decided to bring the United State into the Iran-Israel war by striking Tehran’s major nuclear facilities, our goal should be to ensure Iran remains a non-nuclear power that’s unable to threaten the United States or its allies anywhere in the world.What that goal doesn’t require, however, is a regime-change war with the aim of toppling the ayatollahs and imposing democracy in Iran. The American interest is not served by toppling regimes and nation-building — especially not in the Middle...

FACT: Trump has been the MOST vocal enemy of the Neocon policy of "forever wars." He's the one who first dared to say this on the debate stage in 2016, shocking everyone. Remember? But we cannot let the specter of "forever wars" stop us from EVER taking military action, if necessary. And sometimes in history such things are necessary. A brilliantly executed strike on the nuclear facilities of blood-thirsty Islamic lunatics is not the same thing as the utopian idiocy of trying to turn Afghanistan and Iraq into Ohio and Iowa. Trump's track record should give us confidence that he...

President Donald Trump sensationally called for a regime change in Iran as he held crisis talks with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Sunday. The US president took to his Truth Social page to share updates about the country's military attacks on Iran, when he suggested that the current regime 'is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN.' 'Why wouldn't there be a regime change,' Trump asked, rhetorically - even as he and Starmer urged Ayatollah Khameini to 'return to the negotiating table as soon as possible.' They made the urgent request after the US sent a fleet of B-2 bombers...

A number of Republican senators and conservative pundits want regime change in Iran. “I think it is very much in the interest of America to see regime change,” Sen. Ted Cruz told Fox News on Sunday. “I don't think there's any redeeming the ayatollah.” Most pushing for regime change know they can’t go full neocon to sell the idea. The public is repelled by anything resembling the warmongering against Saddam Hussein, particularly talk about nation building. So advocates for regime change in Iran have settled on a new formula: regime change, but without the nation building. Supposedly, this is completely...

You may ask yourself, is it worth one of the best American non-fiction writers producing a book of just under 600 pages on an arrogant and abrasive egotist whose highest sustained rank in the State Department was that of a lowly assistant secretary? The answer is unabashedly yes. This is a remarkable work about a remarkable, if deeply flawed, statesman whose career was intimately intertwined with the 50 years of American decline from Vietnam to Afghanistan. Nearly all biographies have long, boring stretches you want to skip. This one has none. The access to Richard Holbrooke’s papers and to the...

Rafah isn’t just the last stand for Hamas, but for an entire foreign policy establishment. The desperate effort to keep Israeli soldiers from going into the last Gaza stronghold of the Islamic terrorist organization is about more than the sum of the geopolitical parts. After nation building failed in Afghanistan and Iraq, and everywhere else it’s been tried, the radioactive ‘Palestinian’ nation building experiment from over 30 years ago is its last hope.

Rafah isn’t just the last stand for Hamas, but for an entire foreign policy establishment. The desperate effort to keep Israeli soldiers from going into the last Gaza stronghold of the Islamic terrorist organization is about more than the sum of the geopolitical parts. After nation building failed in Afghanistan and Iraq, and everywhere else it’s been tried, the radioactive ‘Palestinian’ nation building experiment from over 30 years ago is its last hope. Long before George W. Bush tackled nation building after 9/11, his father began the era of turning Muslim terrorist groups into countries with the project to give...

Can Brussels raid the tens of billions of euros in Russian assets frozen by the European Union to pay for Ukraine’s recovery? This thorny legal question is currently under examination by the EU Commission as the cash-strapped bloc looks for potentially €18 billion ($18 billion) next year to keep Ukraine afloat as it fends off Moscow’s invasion. Ursula von der Leyen, the EU Commission's president, told reporters on Tuesday in Berlin that she had set up a task force to both map what assets exist as well as the preconditions that must be met to seize them. “The will is...

"Not so long ago, Republicans said they had sworn off nation-building. Following the failure of the neoconservative project in Iraq and Afghanistan, GOP leaders seemed to have learned their lesson. But apparently not. Now nation-building is back with force, with a massive aid package to Ukraine that makes that country a US client state. Up next: a debate over expanding NATO. Many Republicans in Congress have already lined up to support both, almost reflexively. Why?"

While the Biden administration has already attempted to shift blame to Donald Trump for the scenes coming out of Afghanistan, Biden owns both the decision to leave and the catastrophic withdrawal he oversaw as commander-in-chief.“When I came to office, I inherited a deal cut by my predecessor—which he invited the Taliban to discuss at Camp David on the eve of 9/11 of 2019—that left the Taliban in the strongest position militarily since 2001 and imposed a May 1, 2021 deadline on U.S. forces,” Biden said in a statement released Saturday.“Therefore, when I became President, I faced a choice — follow...

In the aftermath of Vice President Kamala Harris’s embarrassing trip to Guatemala and Mexico, we need to be clear about what triggered the crisis at the border.Vice President Kamala Harris didn’t need to visit Guatemala and Mexico this week to discover the “root causes” of illegal immigration, or, as she put it, “understand that there’s a reason people are arriving at our border, and ask what is that reason and then identify the problem so we can fix it.” The reason migrants are arriving at our southwest border in near-record numbers — the “root cause,” if you will — is...

The best way to neutralize Iran is to have them overstretch. An older, forgotten grand strategy where adversaries bleed each other is in the Western interest. Here’s all one needs to know about what is happening in Iraq: As France 24 reported, “Iraqi security forces made no effort to stop the protesters as they marched to the heavily-fortified Green Zone after a funeral held for those killed in the US air strikes, letting them pass through a security checkpoint leading to the area.” Consider that for a moment, and let the anger surge through your veins.These are the same people...

I stopped at a gas station yesterday. An older lady was pumping gas and we got into a conversation about what is going on in this country. On Trump, she remarked sadly that he is under relentless, constant attack. I mentioned something about consequences to all of that and the nation would fall if the other side got their way and we parted ways. After thinking about that talk, it occurred to me that Democrats (including McCain) could not come up with meaningful ideas to move this nation foward. All they talk about doing is letting more immigrants in (for...