Anyone with more than a cursory knowledge of Cold War history and American foreign policy, in general, should know to take announcements from the U.S. government with a heaping spoon full of salt, especially when it comes to South American countries where we are actively pursuing regime change.
The Trump administration found itself in a very uncomfortable position on Sunday when the New York Times reported that the highly publicized burning of a humanitarian aid convoy in Venezuela was not perpetrated by the government of Nicolas Maduro but was in fact committed by the US-backed opposition.
Newly released footage shows that the burning of the aid trucks on February 23rd occurred because an anti-government protester, in the words of the Times, “accidentally” threw a lit Molotov cocktail on to the truck.
When the story first broke, Vice President Mike Pence gleefully accused the “tyrant of Caracas” of committing heinous acts in a series of tweets and public statements in a shameless attempt to gin up outrage against one of the few nations that refuses to bow to American hegemony.
The tyrant in Caracas danced as his henchmen murdered civilians & burned food & medicine heading to Venezuelans. Saturday was tragic for the families of those killed & suffering Venezuelans. But it was just 1 more day in Venezuela’s journey from tyranny to freedom. Maduro must go pic.twitter.com/E1GQyvIbs8
— Vice President Mike Pence (@VP) February 25, 2019
He was joined by National Security adviser John Bolton, a host of State Department spokespeople, and mewling lickspittle Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) as they eagerly tried to spin the incident to justify the United States’ immoral and illegal efforts to replace the elected President of Venezuela with an illegitimate puppet leader.
There has been no word on whether the Trump administration will retract any of its false accusations against the Venezuelan government or roll back the fresh round of sanctions that they are planning to level against a nation already crippled by the punishing effects of America’s deliberate efforts to exacerbate the economic crisis — the oil sanctions could shrink the economy by 26% by the end of the year — and weaponize public suffering for their own selfish agenda.
It is extremely on-brand for the Trump administration to use a flagrant lie in order to heap pain and suffering on people of color, but this one is particularly egregious and is yet another example of how we can’t trust the word of this administration on anything, especially when it comes to their ham-fisted attempt to create another major international crisis in our own back yard.
Original reporting by Nicholas Casey, Christoph Koettl and Deborah Acosta at the New York Times.
