They didn't do it in hours. This took months of staging planning and expense.
this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2026
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The number of traitors in Venezuela that must exist for this to have been prepared is staggering.
I don't think you need that many traitors. It's military planning and set up. See Israel's build up to the attacks within Iran.
While we're on the subject, they probably swapped notes with Israel for this sort of thing
Not necessarily just notes; apparently Israel has been involved in South America for decades, sometimes outright supporting the dictatorships in power in the past (possibly even present).
The Israeli ambassador held a meeting sitting side-by-side with Bolsonaro months after his coup attempt. Then they denied having ever invited him.
Not suspicious in any way.
Yes, absolutely this. I’m sure the CIA has had operatives on the ground in Venezuela for months if not years at this point. Maduro probably couldn’t fart without the US intelligence apparatus hearing it.
:this:
They didn't "invade." They did an infiltration over time to to kidnap Maduro and then blew stuff up as cover for the extraction.
Foreign troops on the ground does not constitute a country being invaded? Absolutely ridiculous
This is not an invasion. An invasion implies occupation of territory by troops, and would be disastrous for the US.
Right, and the entire reason the US has done this is so they can install their puppet and occupy Venezuela as an oil colony. This was an invasion. A targeted one but absolutely is intended to directly lead to an occupation
If you want to be pedantic any infiltration could be considered an invasion. But invasion usually connotates an army taking territory.
An invasion is done en mass and in the open with the intention of holding territory. This was a raid or an incursion.
Between their military and police force, which are in many ways functionally interchangeable, the US accounts for over 60% of the world's military budget. This is the effect of bringing to bear a century of total global domination and the power and experience gained from that, particularly in special forces operations. The staging and planning of this attack probably ran into the billions of dollars, not even counting the actual purchase price of the weapons, ships and aircraft involved, or the training costs of personnel, or the cost of putting up the spy satellites they will have used, etc.
It's certainly surprising they could outright capture and extract him, rather than just bomb him or gun him down, but when you look at the total volume of military hardware used to pull it off, it's not that hard to believe.
Yeah, I have been thinking about it and, even if they do pull this whole thing off, the complete take over of Venezuela, is it actually going to be worth it? I mean, this economy runs on such short term gambles, but the oil industry, especially the Venezuelan oil industry, would require years to restablish and actually create profitability. I mean, the five finger discount doesn't really count if you spent 2 billion dollars on stealing it.
As 
said: (paraphrasing) They (private capital) is gladly willing to spend $2b of our money to make $1b in profit.
What a powerful photograph. It made me read it in his voice 🥰
Your sense of the numbers are way off. $2Bn is a small price to pay for the largest known oil reserves in the world. Very very very small price compared to what the profits will be within a year. Venezuela in 2025 was already at a million barrels per day which is at least 2 billion USD in revenue monthly.
US F-35s, F-22s and RQ-170s vs Venezuela's limited numbers of old Soviet/Russian ground based air defence and fighter aircraft, such as the S-125/SA-3 Goa, Buk M2E/SA-17 Grizzly, Su-30s and maybe an S-300V/SA-23 Gladiator/Giant. Hydrogen bomb vs coughing baby. Air superiority for the US is practically guaranteed within minutes. Then all the helicopters have to worry about is man portable air defence systems (MANPADS), very short range infrared guided shoulder fired missiles. Who spots who first, the attack helicopters or the MANPAD operators. The helicopters seem to have won most of these engagements.
There's a reason China is building new stealth fighters and advanced air defence, it's not to waste money. It's a matter of national security.
i wish to redact this comment i made
alt text: picture includes a tweet from the twitter user yugopnik, he writes:
3 options really:
- Incompetence
- Betrayal (50 mil bounty)
- Pre-negotiated extraction/capitulation
In any case - in America's world no country is sovereign without nukes. No country.
I should not fuel wild speculation when we do not know anything yet for a fact
There is the fourth option that america has really invested in SEAD/DEAD capabilities and Venezuelan air defenses were neutralized by large numbers of American stealth aircraft. Then as other uses have pointed out hitting a heli with a manpad isn't easy when the helis are taking precautions and actively looking for anti-air teams.
100% the only way to guarantee sovereignty is nukes. Just look at the DPRK, they've been on America's shitlist for decades & haven't been attacked to the same extent as others like Libya, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Venezuela, etc
100% the only way to guarantee sovereignty is nukes.
Mark Ames talked about this in the latest RWN. His main counterpoints:
- India and Pakistan fought a small war in 2025 - both have nukes
- Iran fired hundreds of ballistic missiles at Israel, a nuclear power
- Russia probably would have invaded Ukraine even if they had nukes, it was just that existential for them
- the nuke argument really only works for the DPRK, and maybe they're just not important enough for the empire to bother
Anyway if you want to listen for yourself, here is the episode:
The third and fourth points are just hand-wavey aren't they? 'Russia would have invaded Ukraine anyways' is rich coming from them - RWN also though Russia wasn't going to invade at all back in the day. Moreover, what sort of counter-factual is 'the empire just doesn't care all that much about North Korea'? Are we going to say that about every country between Cuba and Iran until the US actually goes ahead and escalates its wars against them?
If Ukraine losing a fourth of its territory isn't existential enough to raise the risk of nuclear war then, well, at that point you might as well argue that nukes are useless actually and nobody is ever gonna fire one. I for one thing it is much more convincing to argue that Israel - backed by the US - did not feel existentially threatened by Iran and that neither did India or Pakistan in their small war.
The horrifying reality is that nukes are just another tool in an arsenal of war and not a magic game over device that is too evil to use. It is not a magical deterrent and the empires are more than willing to shoulder a little nuclear hellfire to achieve their goals.
When empire is 4 businesses in a trench coat, and those businesses get to make the call, they can protect themselves from the fallout.
The vast majority of nations in the periphery cannot afford a nuclear weapons programme, it's just not an option for not countries economically unless you're prepared to spend 25%+ of GDP on the military, which can also lead to collapse. Advanced economies like Japan, South Korea, Germany can easily obtain nuclear weapons with minimal economic sacrifice. Nuclear proliferation does not benefit the periphery at all.
I see a lot of comparisons to Korea, but another major factor for their continued existence isnt the nukes, like Cuba they just arnt that important of a market or resource hub to pilfer. Both Iraq and Venezuela have a lot more people and a lot more resources to steal away. Iran -> Columbia -> Mexico are likely to be the next on the chopping block and all of which do not stand a chance without another major world power intervening in their stake. We're back in the multipolar world and as such the peripheral governments have to be more subservient than they ever were before when the US was really the only player. Of course, Russia is too busy in Ukraine and China will not invest in a foreign policy of opposing US hegemony.
There are very cheap nuke substitutes, they are called biological weapons, cleaner, cheaper, greener
Antivaxxers are the best anti-imperialists usa produced in 100 years, since lincoln brigades
I disagree
That's a nice disagreement you have there, do you have any nukes to back it up?
Having no nukes doesn't mean incompetence or bribery. It just means assymetrical power differences.
You have foiled my witty goof. Good day sir.
If anyone is watching the press briefing, 
just said Maduro was in the “ready position” and expected the raid.
My assumption is that this is very much like when Avon Barksdale was raided in the Wire, and was just sitting in an empty room waiting for the cops, worried more about the cops ruining his oversized safe that was too big to get out of the room than he was for himself
Given the lack of chaos following, I think they have anticipated this for awhile.
The key is to see what actually comes out of it. I will bet they were probably holding for more of a fiasco.
they probably identified his personal phone and struck when he was in a easy to hit spot