Less blowback than attacking Mexican cartels, but will it spill into regime change for Maduro. New US strikes will offset the September boat killing snafus, because the Trump administration is all about incompetent misdirection.
Unfortunately, actual drug cartel activity comes from other nations, including Honduras. Still, murder will happen, merely muddier because it will be on the ground. Trump needs more terrorism to allow his cronies to score more wealth from other scams, including a Ukraine peace. His hope in both terms for a war with MS13 has fizzled and freeing the Honduran ex-President make the contradictions greater.
The reality is that trying to make a racist immigration policy maximize GOP repression is a tough sell unless the terrorism in ‘narco-terrorism’ can happen sooner than later, because those pathetic ICE raids won’t help at the ballot box.
Donald Trump warns US will attack Venezuela 'very soon' as war on cartels could move to land American troops have conducted at least 21 deadly strikes on boats it alleges were trafficking drugs to the US - but now it could strike on land.
www.lbc.co.uk/…
What would strikes on Venezuela look like? US target list expected to include ports, airports used by drug smugglers
The Trump administration has drawn up a secret list of targets in Venezuela the U.S. could strike upon orders of the president, according to several officials familiar with the effort, which experts said was 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.
The classified target list, briefed to Senate Republicans earlier this week, along with a massive buildup of military assets in the region that includes some 10,000 troops, has fueled speculation that President Donald Trump could order strikes at any moment.
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The last time Trump ordered a large-scale military attack in June -- a surprise B-2 stealth bomber strike on Iranian nuclear sites -- White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told the public two days prior that Trump would make a decision on military action "within two weeks." According to The New York Times, planning for the operation was already underway and her comments were part of a misdirection campaign.
"No, it’s not true," Trump told reporters Friday when asked about reporting an attack was imminent.
abcnews.go.com/...
Trump still stealing valor using the White House
The United States recently fused the “war on drugs” with the “war on terror” by killing “narco terrorists” aboard vessels in the Caribbean Sea. The killings violate the human right to life and reflect an alarming new phase of U.S. lawlessness abroad.
On Sept. 2, 2025, President Donald Trump announced a “kinetic strike against positively identified Tren de Aragua Narco terrorists” aboard a vessel in international waters, allegedly transporting illegal narcotics to the United States, killing 11 people. The President posted a video of the strike and noted that Tren de Aragua had previously been designated as a foreign terrorist organization. The U.S. Secretary of State indicated the U.S. could have intercepted the vessel but chose to destroy it in order to send a deterrent message to traffickers saying, “Instead of interdicting it, on the president’s orders, we blew it up.” He threatened to conduct similar operations in the future, also stating: “What will stop them is when we blow up and get rid of them.”
The U.S. armed forces struck a second vessel on Sept. 15, 2025, killing another three people, and a third vessel on Sept. 19, 2025, killing another three people.
The strikes follow an unpublished order reportedly signed by the U.S. President in August 2025 authorizing the Pentagon to use military force, in foreign territory or international waters, against Latin American drug cartels that the U.S. government had earlier designated a foreign terrorist organization.
The United States has reportedly deployed considerable naval, air and land forces in the region for the stated purpose of deterring illicit narcotics trafficking and “narco-terrorism.”
The Terrorist Designations
The U.S. Department of State designated eight organized criminal groups (gangs and drug cartels) as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) and Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGTs) on 28 February 2025. The U.S. listings asserted that six of the groups are based primarily in Mexico, one originated in Venezuela, and one began in the United States but has expanded to Central America. The United States alleges some of these groups are present in Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela, which indicates the potentially broad application of any U.S. authorization to use force.
www.justsecurity.org/...
Hitting Venezuelan airports might coincidentally hit military air defenses because Trump has declared a de facto ‘no-fly zone’ where a parallel attack on Maduro coordinated with a mutiny could take place despite its failure in the first Trump term. More Iran-Contra logic recycled, much like corruption is OK as long as it doesn’t reveal actual crony capitalism and even retains some weird anti-communist tropes recycled from the Joe McCarthy/Roy Cohn era. It’s still about oil.
