This is another act of war committed by the US on a sovereign country. What tRump is doing attacking boats and seizing tankers now doing land attacks is no difference from what Putin / Russia is doing to Ukraine. Plus only congress can authorize a war, not tRump. tRump is very honest as to why he is committing war crimes, he wants the oil for US companies and to get it he needs Maduro to leave office. The oil belongs to Venezuela and its people / government. It is not US oil nor US land. tRump is being a total school yard bully in that he attacks a smaller country that can’t fight back well while completely giving in to Putin who he fears. Hugs
The administration provided no details of what the president said was an attack last week linked to U.S. efforts to disrupt drug trafficking from Latin America.
Such an attack would be the first on land since President Trump began his military campaign against Venezuela.Credit…Eric Lee for The New York Times
Tyler Pager and Julian E. Barnes
The reporters have been covering the Trump administration’s pressure campaign against Venezuela.
President Trump said in a radio interview that the United States had knocked out “a big facility” last week as part of his administration’s campaign against Venezuela, an apparent reference to an American attack on a drug trafficking site.
American officials said that Mr. Trump was referring to a drug facility in Venezuela and that it was eliminated, but provided no details. Military officials said they had no information to share, and the Central Intelligence Agency declined to comment. The White House declined to comment.
Mr. Trump made his statement on Friday during an interview with John Catsimatidis, the Republican billionaire and supporter of the president who owns the WABC radio station in New York. The two men were discussing the U.S. military campaign to disrupt drug trafficking from Latin America by striking boats suspected of carrying narcotics.
“They have a big plant or a big facility where the ships come from,” Mr. Trump said, without saying where it was or explicitly identifying Venezuela as the target. “Two nights ago we knocked that out.”
Asked about the incident on Monday, Mr. Trump declined to say how the attack had been carried out or by whom but said it was along a shoreline.
“There was a major explosion in the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs,” he told reporters at Mar-a-Lago, his club and residence in Florida. “They load the boats up with drugs. So we hit all the boats, and now we hit the area. It’s the implementation area, that’s where they implement, and that is no longer around.”
The attack appears to be the first known to have been carried out on land since he began his military campaign against Venezuela. U.S. officials declined to specify anything about the site the president said was hit, where it was located, how the attack was carried out or what role the facility played in drug trafficking. There has been no public report of an attack from the Venezuelan government or any other authorities in the region.
While some officials called the facility struck a drug production site, it is not clear what role in narcotics trafficking the facility would have played. Venezuela is well known for its role in trafficking drugs, especially cocaine produced in Colombia, but has not been a major producer of narcotics.
Mr. Trump has been promising strikes on land in Venezuela for weeks, part of an intensifying pressure campaign on Nicolás Maduro, the authoritarian leader of Venezuela, who is under indictment in the United States for his role in the drug trade.
Mr. Trump authorized the C.I.A. to begin planning covert operations inside Venezuela months ago.
The United States has been conducting military strikes on boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific since September. The administration maintains that the vessels are transporting cocaine. The operations have killed at least 105 people so far, and have been called extrajudicial killings by critics who say the U.S. military has no legal basis for lethal strikes against civilians. The administration has defended the attacks by asserting that the United States is in a conflict with what it calls narco-terrorists who can only be stopped with military force.
Those boat strikes were originally developed as part of a two-phase operation. The second phase, which has yet to be officially announced, was to include strikes on drug facilities in Venezuela, people familiar with the planning have said.
Since beginning the strikes, Mr. Trump has announced what he has called a blockade of Venezuela as the United States has begun trying to intercept oil tankers, cutting off a vital source of income for the Maduro government.
Mr. Trump has publicly acknowledged he has authorized the C.I.A. to plan for operations inside Venezuela.
Exactly what operations Mr. Trump had in mind for the C.I.A. were not clear, but they could include both sabotage operations and psychological operations meant to prod Mr. Maduro into making some mistake.
Eric Schmitt, Edward Wong and Maria Abi-Habib contributed reporting.
Tyler Pager is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.
Julian E. Barnes covers the U.S. intelligence agencies and international security matters for The Times. He has written about security issues for more than two decades.
Scottie's Playtime 
But there’s no way to know for sure if he’s lying, not lying, telling us what he wants to have happened so it did, or is simply a story from his demented brain. I’ve read that Venezuela has not reported such an attack; no one is confirming or denying. Doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, but there’s no way to know just know.
He’s doing plenty of bad enough things. Maybe this is something that is going to happen, though, and he’s telling us before it happens. Surprised he’s not saying that “the Democrats” are doing it, as he frequently does; that being the tell that his cabal is going to do it. We’ve seen that before. And even when he was much healthier in his first term, he couldn’t keep his mouth shut about national security issues.
As I said somewhere last week, now we know how the majority of Israelis feel: very bad things are happening to other people in all of our names, but which most of us do not support or condone. Most of us deplore it.
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Hi Ali. I like the comparison often asked about how the population could go along with the pogrom Hitler pushed. It is said the population was divided into thirds. One third supported the hateful attacks, one third was against them, and one third simply just did not care and went about their lives. I think that describes the US pretty well also.
Did the US attack a facility in Venezuela? If we did either through open attack or through covert means it is still a war crime and act of war. Just the fact that we are attempting to steal another countries resources is so 1960s / 1970s which is tRump’s most formative years. But did we or not, is our president demented or just unable to keep secrets? Anyway I look it there is nothing good about this entire situation.
BTW tomorrow I will be posting how the military under “Kegseth” is removing honors displayed about black military members from places overseas to see if they can get away with it here in the US. Such serious hateful racists that even military honorees are not safe from the attempt to whitewash history. Hugs
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