A MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicle prepares to land after a mission in support of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. (U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Brian Ferguson)
The United States military struck two boats allegedly carrying drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean on October 21 and 22, in a departure from previous strikes that targeted vessels in the Caribbean Sea.
Both strikes were announced by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who said in two separate posts on X that they were carried out “at the direction” of President Donlad Trump. According to Hegseth, the first strike killed two people, while the second killed three.
“These strikes will continue, day after day. These are not simply drug runners—these are narco-terrorists bringing death and destruction to our cities. These DTOs are the “Al Qaeda” of our hemisphere and will not escape justice. We will find them and kill them, until the threat to the American people is extinguished,” Hegseth said in the post announcing the second strike.
In August, the U.S. began a “counter narco-terror operation”. The military dispatched a large naval force with thousands of marines to the Caribbean Sea, close to Venezuela, right after the the Trump administration doubled the reward for the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to $50 million on drug trafficking charges.
The latest strikes were the eighth and ninth to be carried out by the U.S. military since the start of the operation. However, all previous seven strikes targeted vessels in the Caribbean Sea. The latest strikes brought the death toll from the operation to at least 37.
Asked about the legality of the counter narco-terror operation, Trump insisted that “we have legal authority. We’re allowed to do that.”
“We will hit them very hard when they come in by land,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on October 22. “We’re totally prepared to do that. And we’ll probably go back to Congress and explain exactly what we’re doing when we come to the land.”
Trump added that the strikes are meant to save Americans and “the only way you can’t feel bad about it … is that you realize that every time you see that happen, you’re saving 25,000 lives.”
The U.S. have been using the drug problem as a pretext to escalate against Venezuela, with reports from American media itself suggesting that a regime change in Caracas is the main goal.
In recent days, however, the Trump administration shifted focus to Colombia, which has a coastline on the eastern Pacific, cutting military aid to the country.
Trump threatened to take “very serious action” against Colombia, which he accused of manufacturing illegal drugs that are brought into the U.S. in the same Oval Office meeting with reporters.
“He better watch it, or we’ll take very serious action against him and his country,” he said, referring to Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who has been a vocal critic of Trump on several issues, including the previous strikes on boats in the Caribbean.
Trump also called Petro a “thug and bad guy” and accused the South American country of producing illegal drugs that are “coming into the United States…generally through Mexico.”
Petro pushed back against Trump later on the same day, saying that he will defend himself through legal channels in the U.S.
“From the slanders that have been cast against me in the territory of the United States by high-ranking officials, I will defend myself judicially with American lawyers in the American justice system,” Petro said on the US social media company X, without directly naming Trump.
From the Caribbean to the eastern Pacific, the Trump administration is clearly using the war on drugs as a tool to reinstate U.S. influence in Southern America. Despite the recent escalation against Colombia, Venezuela remains at a higher risk of a direct clash with the U.S. Trump stands to gain a lot from intervening in the country that has the world’s largest oil reserves.
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as a inferior species americunt i only able to tolerate my dystopia insane asylum,um nation when narcotized
the usa stole california and the russians sold alaska to them, and then the russians stole karelia from finland and the kurile islands from the japanese, and when putler arrived, the russians started stealing so much land that because of russia, nato had to increase spending from 2% to 5%. why do you donkeys think nato increased spending? because of russia! what will be the result? such as when one species overpopulates and then fall. and we humans have multiplied too much.
nazis(dominated all europe)+imperial japan attempted to annihilate russia and lost ww2 and territory. despite of promises not to expand a single inch eastward nato expanded so much it now encircles russia. us warhawks promoted plans to balkanize russia, sponsored maidan coup. since 2014 during 8 years kiev besieged and killed russian speaking ukrainians. zelensky betrayed his electoral promises to end this, the west betrayed all agreements to end this (minsk ~2 etc). finally russia intervened.
civilian: things you say are not wrong, but you sadly leave out the most important point. usa, nato&eu, ukraine as well as russia under putin, are all jooish controlled entities. and the joos want us (the none-jooz/gentiles) to fight each other. its like in the german tale called”the brave tailor”, where a moralless but clever guy, hides in a tree, throws stones at two giants – and the giants start fighting each other to the death both thinking the other one had attacked him.
what happened in ukraine in 2014?
god bless america!
there is no god, but if he exists, he is in hell and all three religions, islam, judaism and christianity worship him.
you forget the nazi salute for a entity, which answer to any problem are to kill other nations citizens. they want the same outcome as for the native americans. this is the result from entitys that start up the biblical concept of genocide, do not get wiped from the surface. russians even fucked some german women 😂 speak about counter productive 😂
seig heil!
if the world is at least a little fair and honest, russia will have to return all the stolen land to georgia, moldova and ukraine.
the world will become fairer and more honest when all those countries will become less hostile and get rid of the hypocrite proxies of the world main warmongering empire obsessed with world domination and hellbent on the total annihilation of russia and china and whatever country is not totally submitted to the most detrimental imperialist subjugation. then diplomatic channels will become more efficient than decades of useless bloodbath.
usa is just one weapons slave of the joos, russia nad china are the other two most powerful ones. eu and nato is the forth one. you could see that they are all under jooish control in the so called “pandemic-time” when they all followed the ordrs from the jooish-run who. they are one nwo/jwo gang. dont allow yourself to be fooled by these liars and deceivers, my friend.
as an american i sometimes like to play along with the media narrative, for example: we have fetanyl coming into america that we have to stop by killing people. the only way fetanyl can be produced is with precursor chemicals from china. the people we are killing aren’t chinese. therefore hegseth and trump are dickless cowards who aren’t stopping the chinese by attacking them.
the bully again is multiplicating provokations and murdering fishermen of several countries. the empire keeps doing very vile things then accusing others of what the empire just did in order to have a pretext to murder and plunder more people in so many countries, so from the empire of lies every accusation is a confession.
amongst the local assets of the empire’s cocaine importation agency are networks of narcos, supporters of former despots, cults, oligarcs compradors and all kinds of crooks and corrupt politicians. not haveing anymore their favorite despots as presidents in every country and losing a little grip over south america drug production the empire strikes back.
some americans are paying $$$ for cocaine, while other americans are killing anyone who supplies this. these americans are all crazy, so ignore them and don’t sell them anything, they will only put tariffs on it, grow coffee and bananas and so on for yourself and live a happy peaceful and well fed life in the sunshine would be my suggestion.
narco-terror operation ? crap propaganda ! venezuela needs to expel the israeli embassy to curtail cia current regime change operations
very true. its the joos behind usa,ru.cn & eu that cause all the wars of aggression and financial collapses of whole nations. and if you think that i am wrong or know nothing, or its all “nazi-conspiracy” or whatever – then maybe take the truth from this guy here. https://short-url.org/hagins1 it’s a black afro-american highly intelligent man (a pastor/reverand), telling in fact the exact same things i am telling for tens of years now.
not allowed to vote for comments?
’tis so. to much ganging up on god’s chosen inbred arsehole commentary is probably the main mitigating factor for it.
hey, don’t sleep guys.
usa want to intimidate the cartells, then want to buy itself in (trumps dealing method). then it will reform the cartells to antigovernement force from inside.
the so established terrorist will be financed by us to fight government from within. see mexico.
us israel are virulent cancer.
tattooed beach queer pete hegseth should jump on his pink and teal coloured sail board on burgerland’s popular poofo beach and chase some offshore boats carrying contraband bamboo butt plugs and skimpy tutus, a dangerous monetary threat to the local “products”. 💩
uncle sam waging gunboat diplomacy again, an antiquated tactic in this age of ship killing missiles.