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Did The CIA Really Strike A Dock In Venezuela?
CNN claims that the CIA bombed Venezuela.
Exclusive: CIA carried out drone strike on port facility on Venezuelan coast
The CIA carried out a drone strike earlier this month on a port facility on the coast of Venezuela, sources familiar with the matter told CNN, marking the first known US attack on a target inside that country.
The drone strike, the details of which have not been previously reported, targeted a remote dock on the Venezuelan coast that the US government believed was being used by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua to store drugs and move them onto boats for shipping, the sources said. No one was present at the facility at the time it was struck, so there were no casualties, according to the sources.
Two sources said US Special Operations Forces provided intelligence support to the operation, underscoring their continued involvement in the region. But Col. Allie Weiskopf, a spokesperson for US Special Operations Command, denied that, saying, “Special Operations did not support this operation to include intel support.”
President Donald Trump appeared to first acknowledge the attack in an interview last week that initially attracted little notice, though he offered few specifics, including when reporters asked directly about it on Monday.
The NY Times has a similar report (archived) which additionally claims that the strike has happened last Wednesday.
There is however zero evidence that any strike took place. Venezuela Analysis has found no mention of it or of any damage in Venezuelan media, open source data or Venezuelan government statements. Neither have I.
Did this strike even happen? Or is it part of a miscalculated psychological operation to convince the Venezuelan government that it is under immediate threat and needs to get out?
Posted by: William Gruff | Dec 31 2025 15:00 utc | 225 As a left sympathizer, I find this commenter not just embarrassing, but offensive in the occasional left-wing rhetoric occasionally decorating the indirect apologies for Trump and all things Trumpery. When scum like this pretend to be leftist it discredits all leftists, sympathizers and even the wanna-be. Explaining his deceits are what you might call teachable moments. They’re aimed passing on at a sound view of the world. (In my opinion the soundest view is Marxist, but no one is born a Marxist.) Demonstrating BS really is BS can be a step toward sanity. Therefore instead of just snarking, which I admit is more entertaining and less taxing, herewith one of those dreaded slabs of text.
What we have seen is the CIA News Network (CNN) claim that the CIA attacked some facility, and we have seen Trump go along with it because it would be politically stupid for him not to. As far as I know there is no other confirmation of this attack launched by the CIA. It may not have even happened at all and is just narrative control by the CIA to muddy the waters regarding their ownership of the Latin American drug trade.
It is not a fact that Trump would be stupid, not even politically, to deny the CNN report. It’s not like Trump couldn’t think of some other inflammatory statements that distracted attention from silence on the issue. The conclusion that the CIA lied doesn’t follow. Trump is already claiming that Venezuela owns the drug trade and the bulk of the MSM doesn’t contest this. There is a little carefully limited opposition allowed a little space in regards to the boat murders, but no, there is no endless hysteria comparable to, say, email servers or Biden’s magically disappearing coma. But if Trump did lie, did deny a real CIA strike, who would care? Trump lies all the time. There’s no political penalty. And there’s no political penalty for outing a fake CIA story either, precisely because Trump lies all the time. People just ignore it, they’re not going to suddenly turn on Trump for dissing the CIA. Implying they would is just BS excuse for Trump.
Further, the idea that the drug trade is owned by the CIA is nuts. When there’s that much relatively easy money, and there’s no legal backing, there’s no monopoly either. I will note that the profits from the CIA owning all the drugs would be so vast, they would have two problems. First, there would be laundering the money. (Humorous aside: Maybe Epstein was being blackmailed over his sexual proclivities to force him to launder CIA money? Maybe Gruff could explain how that sweetheart plea bargain was really an attack on the CIA?) Second, there would be the problem that however it was laundered, only certain people would have access to all that loot and the power it could buy. The inevitable conclusion, still avoided by fools like this, is that the CIA is no longer about the political agenda set by mysterious figures who are much poorer than the Company insiders who own stock in Drugs Inc., and don’t have any legal powers either. The CIA would pursue a criminal agenda, one about its drug profits. They would be no more political than any Colombian or Mexican cartel boss. Drug lords, or putative drug lords like the CIA, have no interest in promoting transgender to destroy western civilization, or cultural Marxism to destroy Christianity, or eradicating humanity with green this and that and degrowth. They don’t even have any interest in the Great Replacement!
Last and least, if the CIA controls all the media, it is not by virtue of owning CNN. Trump is right about its relative ratings. Also, the CIA likes to launder much of its propaganda. One of its high-placed, tony friends in media calls one of their foreign high-placed, tony friends in foreign media, or has a pricey lunch on a properly up-scale venue. And lo, a foreign newspaper or TV channel publishes a story picked up by the US domestic press. If they really feel a need to control the narrative their upper-class members talk to upper-class publishers and editors. This is supplemented with the skilled use of leaks to selected reporters. They’re contacts in editorial tells which ones to cultivate, both because they are amenable and because they will be published by their editors. Nobody cultivates a reporter who gets their stories spiked. Judicious leaking not only provides the story, shaping it to the desired end, but the leaks build up the reputation of the journalist. Influence in background narrative is also provided by the influence of money in academia, in the policy institutes. You will find that the CIA has overwhelming competition from rich people in that area. Personally I think it makes more sense to think the ruling class exercises control over the CIA via many of the methods they use to control academia. Lurking in the background in this weird paragraph is a notion that the CIA owns all narratives. The ruling class is never totally united, any more than the working classes, even if they are more class conscious than the petty bourgeoisie.
First and foremost is that Trump doesn’t control the mass media narrative. That control is held by the CIA and its remote-controlled meat robot army of TDS-victim dembots, of which the poster quoted at the top of this post is one. Trump must work within the narratives his enemies create, and one of those narratives is that Venezuela and Maduro are evil. Trump is only taking the existing narrative and running with it.
Nobody has exclusive control of the mass media narrative. A situation like that after Biden withdrew from Afghanistan and both factions of the MSM turned decisively against him is pretty uncommon as applied to tested bourgeois politicians. Even the unanimity of silence, as in suppressing as much publicity for Sanders’ campaign for nomination, has its limits. Simple rivalries alone, much less substantive disagreements over effective ruling class strategy, prevent. The particular dishonesty is highlighted by the nonsense that dembots are controlling the Republican-aligned MSM! Anyone who denies there is such a thing is lying, shamelessly. As for the claim that it was Trump’s enemies that created the narrative Venezuela and Maduro are evil, this is another lie. Republicans are Trump’s friends, Liz Cheney is not a typical Republican. (Also, remember the point about rivals, who are not genuinely opposed on any principles.) Even more to the point, Trump is responsible for part of the vilification. He didn’t have to run with the narrative back in his first term. I will note that if the CIA is calling the shots, and the CIA really is the drug monopoly at work, then the only reason drug lords hate socialists and communists is because they aren’t for sale the way conservatives and bourgeois politicians are. And the attacks on Venezuela are CIA policy. And Trump is carrying out CIA policy.
Remember, silly, Trump doesn’t control the public narrative. He has to work with what the CIA and it’s meat robot dembots provide in the mass media, and they want to keep attention away from Colombia. If the Mockingbird mass media is ordered by their CIA handlers to start demonizing Colombia’s leftish president, then Trump will happily go along with it and expand his performance to include Colombia too. As things stand, Trump’s use of the mass media’s artificial Venezuela demon as the stalking horse for attacking the CIA’s illegal operations puts the mass media’s TDS dembots in the highly conflicted position of either accepting Trump’s attacks or countering their own demonization of Venezuela. Or championing obvious criminals. Pretty clever, actually.
Repeating the drivel about Democratic operatives and computer programs controlling the Republican aligned MSM doesn’t make it any smarter nor more honest. I will note in one sentence the CIA is said to want to keep attention away from Colombia. Then the next sentence speaks of the CIA starting to demonize Colombia’s president, which is not avoiding attention. Notice that using the random insult Mockingbird seems to serve as a kind of signal, meant as a stimulus to well-trained, highly indoctrinated MAGA/Trump cult types, who automatically rage. It’s like Pavlov ringing the bell, the dogs salivate. I will note that by definition bots don’t have inner conflicts, as they don’t do any inner. The pretense that the boat murders are actually attacks on the CIA is still preposterous. Quite aside from the near certainty that the CIA and other security services like DEA are providing the so-called intelligence, if the CIA was the drug monopoly they are arranging for the hits to be on any wanna-be competitors. There is no end to the combined stupidity and dishonesty of this fraud’s excuse for Trump, no matter if there is an occasional sentence talking about a socialist revolution at some unspecified date that just sort of happens after Trump accelerates the chaos…or something equally irrelevant, so those phrases are merely camouflage for the right-wing views.
Yes, all in all, a terrible slab of text. But it’s not enough to just cringe at the blatant stupidity. Dead horses must be beat if you are to have any glue at all.
Posted by: steven t johnson | Dec 31 2025 18:50 utc | 237
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