The New York Times is reporting the pilot of a Chinook helicopter carrying the Army Delta Force commandos that captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores took three bullets in one of his legs as he landed the damaged heavy lift helicopter in Maduro’s compound. After the soldiers were out the pilot, who was leading the operation and helped plan it, nursed the Chinook back to the USS Iwo Jima off the Venezuelan coast. The Times used unnamed sources for its story and described them as “current and former U.S. officials.” The pilot is among seven U.S. military personnel who were hurt in the operation. He and another soldier are in a Texas hospital, but the five others were treated and released. About 70 members of Maduro’s security force, 32 of them Cubans and the rest Venezuelans, were killed.
The Times says the Chinooks, which were carrying a total of 80 commandos, flew down a corridor of Caracas that had been blacked out with a cyberattack and were undetected until they got close to the compound, where they took heavy fire. It’s not clear if any of the other insertion aircraft were damaged. After the commandos were out, those helicopters took off for the ship and a second wave went in to recover the Delta Force and their prisoners. It all occurred between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. A total of about 150 aircraft operating from 20 ships and land bases took part in the operation.
150 aircraft from all branches of service, 15% of the US Navy including the America’s larger nuke carrier on station since November 25, foreign and domestic combine intelligence force, to plan, train, coordinate, and implement, the kidnapping… oops cannot use that word…remove the President of Venezuela and his 70 year old wife from their home in the middle of the night. By every definition, an act of war.
Casualties? Initially, Peace President Donald J. Trump initially said no US casualties. Now, we know minimally seven US servicemen, and the abuse to the 70 year old wife of President Maduro’s wife resulting in broken ribs, with multiple blows to her head and face, 34 Cubans, and 36 Venezuelans. How many damaged aircraft, who really knows. How many civilians killed during “shock and awe”? Who knows.
Peace through strength. Not much peace from use of all that strength.
ARRESTED…there, I corrected your wrong terminology…and seem to recall Obama/Biden putting a $15 million reward on the capture of Maduro for narco terrorism…but go ahead and support a murderous, drug trafficking dictator who caused 8 million Venezuelan’s to flee their country, and are now celebrating his removal…
Must say I concur. We met folks in a country south of the U.S. and they were folks who had fled Venezuela for those same reasons and were happy to be able to walk down streets with only the casual glance over their shoulder. It will take sometime to drain this swamp.
John Fiandola… the bounty on Maduro was upped to $50 million by direction of Peace President Trump 2.0.
The U.S. State Department and other organizations estimate between 8.7 million and 10 million U.S. citizens currently reside overseas…up from 4 million in 1999.
8 million Venuzualans fled under Chavez as the result of the massive US sanctions initiated when the US puppet Carlos Perez lost his re-election bid to Chavez. The cause of the exodus was the US government sanctions putting virtually an entire nation into poverty. Put the Venuzualan population into abject poverty using that imposed poverty to create civil unrest to fester and boil into full blown revolution resulting in, hopefully, regime change with a US groomed, financed, loyal US puppet already in place as the replacement. I headed up a mission aviation organization doing our best to meet the incredible needs of Guyana from 2004- 2011. We got cooperation from the Venezuelan government under Chavez including access to 100LL, often at substantial discounts, as they recognized our much needed services we provided in Guyana. Avgas then was $16-$32 per gallon if available at all. Think about that at TO power of a Continental 520-550 at 26 gph. The first questions by the very well educated, articulate, skeptical, and wary local population consisting of mixtures of Venuzualan/Guyanese/Columbion indigenous and refugees was why were we there? Before we could answer, they said “for the drugs “. It took over a year to build trust we were not there for the drugs, we were there to help them in any way we could. We were one of the first mission aviation organizations to negotiate with local, regional, state governments to register and fly with US “N” numbers. We stuck out like sore thumbs being clearly identified as American and US based. I know very well who is producing drugs, the routes, and their intended destinations.
“but go ahead and support a murderous, drug trafficking dictator who caused 8 million Venezuelan’s to flee their country, and are now celebrating his removal…”
Peace President Donald J. Trump, without consulting the US citizens, bypassing Congress, ordered 15% of our entire US Navy fleet including our largest nuke carrier to the Caribbean Sea being on station starting in August 2025, 150 US military aircraft and their crews plus support logistics, British/Israel/US intelligence all of which are heavily involved with the drug traffic that helps finance all this in addition to our hard earned tax dollars… and all parties obeyed. By your statement above, you have no problem having a foreign government placing a substantial military armada of the east coast 40-50 miles of DC, forming a corridor by cyber attack, with covert foreign agents in place with air defense neutralization, fly in between 2am and 4am landing on the White House lawn, ” arresting” our Peace President in his PJ’s, Melania( after abusing her by beating her enough to break ribs and bruise most of her head and face), killing 70+ people protecting them, and fly away to their particular country, to try them in their court, by their rules, executing judgement from their jury because “but go ahead and support a murderous, drug trafficking dictator who caused 5 million US citizens to flee their country, and are now celebrating his removal…”
Be careful what you wish for. Before anyone flees, all of the population feels the pain of this kind of foreign policy first. Then the flight begins. You have been propagandized by the US narrative, you copied and pasted old info to justify your complaint about my post. I am frustrated, angry, sickened, and deeply concerned that our invasion of another country without debate or consent of the governed led by one man bombastic enough to proudly announce his intentions and why, well in advance is anything other than a dictatorship… with the end justifying the means. There is NO justification for any country to invade another and arrest, remove, or kidnap that country’s respective leadership without a declaration of war, after much debate, Congrrssional approval, and critical thinking applied. Anything less than that is invasion and kidnapping by dictatorship by the most basic definition.
Wrong on every count
If you feel the need to peck out politically motivated TDS statements, please take them to Facebook. This kind of comment doesn’t belong on AvBrief and isn’t why I come here.