Trump Launches New Threat against Venezuela
HAVANA TIMES – As if the threat of a war with North Korea isn’t enough, US President Trump, said on Friday that he is not discarding the “military option” against the regime of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, reported dpa news.
“I will not rule out the military option,” he told reporters in New Jersey, where he is spending his long summer vacation.
“We have many options for Venezuela. It’s our neighbor. We have troops all over the world, in places that are very far away. Venezuela is not far away and people are suffering and dying.
We have many options, including a possible military option if necessary,” he insisted. However, he did not mention other options.
In his remarks to the press Trump was accompanied by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, with whom he held a meeting.
Trump’s words come amid his rhetorical tit-for-tat with North Korea, which has taken on the threat of armed conflict, and a few hours after his Vice President, Mike Pence, begins his first tour of Latin America, which will take him to Colombia, Argentina, Chile and Panama.
Venezuela was already emerging as the great regional theme of the vice president on his trip and now he will see how the leaders of those four countries react to Trump’s declarations, 28 years after the last US military invasion of Latin America. It was the so-called Operation Just Cause, in 1989, with which the Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega was expelled.
Initial reaction from Chile and Colombia and numerous other countries has been negative on the threat of a US attack on Caracas.
The US administration has been increasing pressure on Maduro in recent weeks, but especially since the election of the Constituent Assembly, imposing more individual sanctions on government officials, who have included the Venezuelan president himself.
However the effect of those sanctions, including the freezing of bank accounts in the US, may have no effect if the officials do not have properties and funds in the US.
But to this day no representative of the administration had publicly spoken of a military option; the threats had always been confined to political and economic options.
The red line for the United States has been the election of the Constituent Assembly, last July 30.
The installation of this plenipotentiary body also generated the reaction of 17 countries of the Americas, which on Tuesday issued a strong condemnation in Lima of the crisis in Venezuela and said they will ignore the actions emanating from the Constituent Assembly.
According to the White House, Trump today rejected a phone call from Maduro. “President Trump will speak with pleasure to the Venezuelan leader as soon as democracy is restored in that country,” a statement said.
In addition, the statement stressed that since assuming his mandate, Trump has asked his Venezuelan counterpart to respect the Constitution, hold free and fair elections, release “political prisoners” and stop committing human rights violations.
“The Maduro regime refused to comply with this request, which resonated in the region and the world. Instead, Maduro chose the path of dictatorship,” Trump added.
Following the imposition of Treasury Department sanctions this week on eight people related to the Constituent Assembly, including the eldest brother of the late President Hugo Chavez, the big question remained whether the United States was going to impose an oil embargo on Venezuela or any other types of sanctions related to crude oil.
“All options are on the table today,” Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin said last week, referring to those options for economic sanctions. However some analysts believe that the government is hesitant to impose an oil embargo because it would cause harm to several US refineries that depend on the Venezuelan crude.
Wonderful how you wiggle in your endeavors to avoid a question Unwelcome_Truth.
So lets try another!
Do you accept democratic majorities?
The news fakery I exposed in the article merited a serious, detailed reply. Your comments, and those to which you allude, do not.
A poor amateur endeavor to besmirch the editor of Havana Times. Is that the best response that you can muster Unwelcome_Truth to the question asked by both Moses and Eden? “Do you support the Maduro regime?”
A lie. If the non-signatories supported the declaration they would have signed it. It’s that simple. It’s not as if they went to the summit unprepared and were surprised to find that some kind of declaration might be signed there.
Your false claim that the non-signatories “were together” with the declaration they refused to sign is just disinformation from the Peru regime amateurishly retailed as fake news. Promoting Luna’s manipulative lie as a fact is lazy, discreditable journalism. Basic journalistic research, if you had done any, would have exposed the lie.
For example, Jamaica has explicitly said it could not agree to sign the declaration. St Lucia and Grenada, also Lima attendees who refused to sign, are members of Alba and did sign up to the recent Alba declaration staunchly defending Venezuela.
It’s time you made the correction and retracted the lie you published.
This is the article that describes what happened. The 17 countries were together but 12 signed, probably because it was only the Foreign Ministers signing and not the lower representatives. http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=126608
I note that Havana Times has still not corrected the false statement in the article. Why not?
Do you support Maduro?
A typical communist view. A two thirds majority doesn’t count! The intended implication that that two thirds majority of Latin American countries condemning the Maduro regime counts for naught reflects true adherence to that dominating thrust for total power and control by dictatorship of the extreme left, The vote and democracy have no place.
Ask not ‘Unwelcome-Truth’ for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee and your kith and kin. For you have no recognition of the needs of humanity.
Don’t think that curt9954 is a reliable source of information upon which to base your own opinons Nick.
curt9954 ought as an American know that a typical Trump(f) off the cuff statement is not grounds for impeachment.
Repetition of the 26% of the electorate commentdoesn’t nullify the result of the Presidential election. curt9954 as an Amercan would make better use of his time by pesuading his fellow Americans to vote.
Trump says all sorts of things, carelessly. His stray words here lack a strategic context and run counter to his non interventionist bent. Trump is an expert at baiting the press into spilling words by the truck load. He has no intention of getting involved in the disaster that Maduro and his enablers have created. The solution to Maduro is local.
Do you support the Maduro regime?
What is going on in the USA?
This obviously unstable President is threatening nuclear war, threatening to invade Venezuela and refuses to blame the far right for the violence in Charlottesville.
I guess he knows that the far right were amongst the 26% of the electorate who voted him in and he doesn’t want to upset his supporters.
Surely there must be a way to rid The White House of this scourge?
Correction: while 17 countries attended the Peru meeting, only 12 signed the statement attacking Venezuela. Please don’t retail this disinformative exaggeration. It is fake news which is being promoted by the imperialist media apparatus as part of the current intensification of information warfare against Venezuela.
Even those 12 right-wing governments must now be kicking themselves for their display of servility, because immediately after they played their appointed role in the imperial campaign against Venezuela the imbecilic US presidential buffoon D Trump came out with his criminal threat of armed aggression against Venezuela … and in response the anti-patriotic US-puppet opposition in Venezuela conspicuously failed to stand up for peace, international law and their own country’s independence and sovereignty.
The failing empire has made fools of all its Latin American stooges and an even bigger fool of itself. Sad!
The fact that Trump would mention military action against a sovereign country that is no military threat to the U.S shows what a demented idiot running our country. This crazy statement alone should be grounds for impeachment.