Is the head Nazi running this country?

 

Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, has played a leading role in directing US strikes against suspected Venezuelan drug boats, according to three people familiar with the situation. At times, his role has superseded that of Marco Rubio, the secretary of state and national security adviser.

The strikes on the Venezuelan boats allegedly carrying narcotics, which the administration has claimed were necessary because interdiction did not work, have been orchestrated through the homeland security council (HSC), which Miller leads as the homeland security adviser.

Miller empowered the HSC earlier this year to become its own entity in Donald Trump’s second term, a notable departure from previous administrations where it was considered part of the national security council and ultimately reported to the national security adviser.

[...]

The administration claimed that Tren de Aragua had infiltrated the regime of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro – and so the presence of the cartel’s members in the US amounted to a “predatory incursion” by a foreign nation, allowing for the deportation of any Venezuelan national.

“It is a drug cartel that is running Venezuela,” Miller told reporters at the White House earlier this month as he characterized Maduro as the head of the cartel. “It is not a government, it is a drug cartel, a narco-trafficking organization that is running Venezuela.”

But the administration has yet to provide concrete evidence that Tren de Aragua has become an instrument of the Venezuelan government, and legal experts contacted for this story said the White House could only justify the strikes if it could make that showing.

  Guardian

Not to mention, we haven't seen any proof of who was in the four different boats the US bombed.

UPDATE 09/30/2025:  As I was saying...

I don't think they care.

The United States says it has blown up at least three drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean, including at least two from Venezuela, in a significant escalation of the kind of pressure that Mr. Trump has put on Mexico to crack down on fentanyl.

But while some drugs do come from Venezuela, fentanyl does not, and the cocaine that does is a very small percentage of the trade, far less than what comes from Colombia and exits from Colombia and Ecuador, according to the U.S. government’s accounting.

[...]

Mr. Trump and Mr. Rubio have argued that significant amounts of cocaine are trafficked through Venezuela and that they are seeking to stop U.S. overdoses. A 2020 report from the U.S. State Department said just 10 percent to 13 percent of the global cocaine supply goes through Venezuela.

Fentanyl, which causes far more overdoses than cocaine, is almost entirely produced in Mexico with chemicals imported from China, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

[...]

That has led many observers to say that the Trump administration’s real goal is to go after Mr. Maduro.

  NYT

I don't believe Trump knows much of anything about Maduro or Venezuela. I think he's being led by the nose by someone with an agenda ever since they failed to install Maduro's opponent in 2019, Juan Guaidó. And lately, attempting to install Edmundo Gonazlez.

The group supporting the use of force is led by Maria Corina Machado, an opposition leader. Her base says that by removing Mr. Maduro, the United States could defend the result of last year’s presidential vote, which Mr. Maduro is widely believed to have lost. Independent vote monitors and many countries, including the United States, recognized Mr. Maduro’s opponent, Edmundo González, a surrogate for Ms. Machado, as the legitimate victor.

One of Ms. Machado’s advisers, Pedro Urruchurtu, said she was coordinating with the Trump administration and had a plan for the first 100 hours after Mr. Maduro’s fall.

[...]

But in interviews, other Venezuelans were far less eager to see the United States get involved. Many, even those who said they wanted to see Mr. Maduro gone, arguing that he has held on only through repression, said that a violent U.S. move was not the solution.

[...]

Other Venezuelans warned that ousting Mr. Maduro would only invite the armed actors left behind — the military, Colombian guerrilla groups, paramilitary gangs — into a battle for the spoils.

And in Venezuela, with its oil, gold and other minerals, there are many spoils.

The boats that U.S. forces have bombed in the Caribbean have killed at least 17 people, according to the Trump administration.

Some legal experts have called it a crime to summarily kill civilians not directly taking part in hostilities, even if they are believed to be smuggling drugs.

"Some legal experts have called it a crime to summarily kill civilians..."

In the state of Sucre, on Venezuela’s Caribbean coast, the first boat to have been destroyed, on Sept. 2, is widely believed to have been carrying people from the towns of San Juan de Unare and Güiria, on a spit of land known as the Paria Peninsula.

For years the region has been dominated by cocaine trafficking, according to Ronna Rísquez, a Venezuelan journalist who has conducted field work in the area.

But migrants, trafficking victims and government-subsidized Venezuelan gasoline — which can be sold at a higher price in Trinidad and Tobago, just six miles away — also leave from this area, she said.

[...]

Some in Venezuela said they feared U.S. military action would mean more loss. And they said they didn’t believe that Ms. Machado, who says she is in hiding in Venezuela, and Mr. González, in exile in Spain, could guarantee their security.

“Name one successful case in the last few years of a successful U.S. military intervention,” said Henrique Capriles, an opposition politician who has clashed with Ms. Machado.

Few years? How about few decades?

UPDATE 10/19/2025:  There were survivors.