Lies and Force; Trump’s Weapons Versus Maduro

By Carlos Fazio on January 13, 2019

Donald Trump’s regime lies and lies. It lies and deceives about Iran and Venezuela, as it did before the civil-politico-military-media coup d’état that overthrew constitutional president Evo Morales and imposed the “self-proclaimed” Jeanine Áñez in Bolivia.

Along with Trump, two of the empire’s biggest liars are Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who lied about the assassination of General Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad, and they continue to lie around the other “self-proclaimed” puppet Juan Guidó in Venezuela. And what is worse, their sloppy botched work is aided and abetted by their political media operators in the Western hegemonic press, who falsify the information that consumes their audiences.

Without showing any evidence, Trump invoked “secret information” to justify Soleimani’s assassination, claiming that the Iranian general was planning attacks against U.S. military and diplomats. But according to retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell from 2002-2005, Trump, Pence and Pompeo are now lying as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney did in 2003 to justify invading Iraq.

“We’re going to lie, cheat and defraud, like Pompeo is doing now, like Trump is doing,” said Wilkerson, who accused other members of his Republican party, including current Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Senators Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton, of cheating. “We’re going to trick people into doing what it takes to continue the military-industrial war complex. Wilkerson, who called the 2002 coup against Hugo Chavez “a slow-burning coup d’etat” and called Elliott Abrams’ policy of regime change against Nicolas Maduro “a covert operation … with ups and downs,” told The Real News Network that “no action in our hemisphere that I can recall has ever been about democracy and freedom, although we easily use those words to describe our motivations, because they make the American people feel good when they go to sleep.

At this juncture, the Trump administration’s roadmap for Venezuela is to impose a “transitional government” controlled from the Oval Office. And to do so, along with the intensification of unilateral punitive measures, it seeks to use the National Assembly (in contempt) and its imperial buffoon, Congressman Guaidó.

On January 9, in Caracas, Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza read to the press excerpts from a “diplomatic note” that the U.S. embassy reportedly sent to the Caribbean countries on December 17, which was leaked to the Venezuelan government. It was entitled “The U.S. Government Requests Support for an Electoral Communiqué on Free and Fair Elections to the Venezuelan National Assembly in 2020,” the State Department document, which deviates from the United Nations Charter, follows a similar scheme to the one used in Bolivia to impose Jeanine Áñez, and it required the countries that received it to cosign it, expressing their support by January 2, and then it was to be officially published on January 5. This has not happened so far.

With successive failed attempts of soft coup centered on the imposition of presidential elections, the renewed US strategy seeks international support for intervention in the Venezuelan parliamentary elections of 2020. From there, the hoax mounted on the pathetic second coming of the self-proclaimed puppet Guaidó before a group of acolyte deputies… in the offices of the opposition newspaper El Nacional! after refusing to enter the Legislative Palace and install the session on January 5 – as was his obligation, since there was a quorum and presence of assemblymen from all political forces. Guaido’s transparent stunt to stay outside the parliament and then pretend to enter the chamber by jumping over a fence, an image that went viral, was the cover of an alleged boycott of his reelection to the seat for the international press.

That day, after Guaidó was irreparably discredited in the opposition ranks,  the alleged “president in charge” was singled out for corruption by his “imaginary” former ambassador to Colombia, Humberto Calderón Berti, who accused him of stealing some of the money that the White House sent to finance the bogus operation Humanitarian Aid + Concert in Cúcuta on February 23, 2019. Meanwhile Luis Parra, of the ultra-right-wing Justice First party, was elected president of the National Assembly by obtaining 81 votes out of the 140 deputies present (out of 167).

The US interventionist agenda in this stage has been made clear with the declarations of Secretary of State Pompeo, who promotes a “rapid negotiated transition to democracy” as “the most effective and sustainable path towards peace and prosperity” (sic) in Venezuela, and those of Special Envoy Elliott Abrams, convicted of war crimes, who on Friday reiterated that “all options are on the table”. He said: “As we have seen in the Middle East, any US president if he wants to use force to defend our national interests, will use force. Frankly, it’s not up to Guaidó, it’s up to President Trump.”

Source: La Jornada, translation, Resumen Latinoamericano, North America bureau