"Just after midnight on January 3rd, as American commandos surged into Caracas to seize President Nicolás Maduro, large sections of the city went dark. Blackouts are common in Venezuela, but the blasts that followed confirmed the arrival of the United States military, which for weeks had kept thousands of troops poised offshore. The sky filled with helicopters-some skimming the rooftops-along with fighter jets and B-1 bombers."
"They had been dispatched to protect a Delta Force team heading to the Fuerte Tiuna military complex, where Maduro and his wife were hunkered down. There, the commandos undertook an operation that they had spent months practicing at Fort Campbell, in Kentucky: they shot their way past the defenses and, as the Maduros struggled to shut a heavy metal door, took them into custody. More than fifty of Maduro's guards were killed, but the Americans left nearly untouched."
"But his account of the motivation for the attack shifted. For years, he and his supporters have maintained, with little public evidence, that Maduro was a narco-trafficker on a global scale, bringing vast amounts of cocaine into the U.S. From the podium, Trump insisted that Maduro had "waged a ceaseless campaign of violence, terror, and subversion against the United States," adding that he was responsible for hundreds of thousands of American deaths."
A former onetime foe now serves as Secretary of State, offering lavish public praise and committing to execute the President's agenda in Venezuela and worldwide. Just after midnight on January 3rd, American commandos entered Caracas to seize President Nicolás Maduro, triggering citywide blackouts and intensive U.S. military air and helicopter activity. A Delta Force team breached the Fuerte Tiuna complex, captured Maduro and his wife, and left over fifty of Maduro's guards dead while American forces suffered minimal casualties. President Donald Trump celebrated the assault and framed Maduro as a global narco-trafficker responsible for American deaths.
Read at The New Yorker
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