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US forces are building up off Venezuela. Why does it feel like deja vu?
* The Archive link below uses another title - Who is Maduro and why might Trump want him out? it's the same story, title changed.
They build them in boatyards deep in the jungles and mangroves of South America: narco submarines. Artisanal creations of wood and fibreglass, most are only big enough to cram in a small crew, cans of food and several tonnes of drugs. Some can cruise beneath the waves but most are level with the surface of the sea, “low-profile vessels”.
For all their ingenuity, the subs get pinged from time to time. The Colombian navy seized one packed to the gills with cocaine last year. Destination: Australia. In the game of law enforcement cat and mouse, some chases are particularly dramatic. Footage from the eastern Pacific a few years back shows a US coast guard leaping onto a fleeing sub and surfing it as he pounds on the hatch, from which a man emerges with his hands up.
But the vision from one recent encounter, on October 16, was extraordinary. A vessel dips and rises in waters off Venezuela then – boom! – an explosion and – boom! – another one obscures everything from view. US President Donald Trump posted the strike on social media: “It was my great honor to destroy a very large DRUG-CARRYING SUBMARINE that was navigating towards the United States on a well known narcotrafficking transit route.”
Since September, the US military has blown up more than a dozen vessels it claims were crewed by “narco-terrorists” smuggling drugs for cartels in Latin America. More than 60 people have died in the strikes, their identities presumably now difficult to verify, and the evidence for the strikes not made public.
...much more. Long article.
https://www.theage.com.au/world/south-america/who-is-maduro-and-why-might-trump-want-him-out-20251103-p5n791.html
Or
https://archive.md/kfEN1
For all their ingenuity, the subs get pinged from time to time. The Colombian navy seized one packed to the gills with cocaine last year. Destination: Australia. In the game of law enforcement cat and mouse, some chases are particularly dramatic. Footage from the eastern Pacific a few years back shows a US coast guard leaping onto a fleeing sub and surfing it as he pounds on the hatch, from which a man emerges with his hands up.
But the vision from one recent encounter, on October 16, was extraordinary. A vessel dips and rises in waters off Venezuela then – boom! – an explosion and – boom! – another one obscures everything from view. US President Donald Trump posted the strike on social media: “It was my great honor to destroy a very large DRUG-CARRYING SUBMARINE that was navigating towards the United States on a well known narcotrafficking transit route.”
Since September, the US military has blown up more than a dozen vessels it claims were crewed by “narco-terrorists” smuggling drugs for cartels in Latin America. More than 60 people have died in the strikes, their identities presumably now difficult to verify, and the evidence for the strikes not made public.
...much more. Long article.
https://www.theage.com.au/world/south-america/who-is-maduro-and-why-might-trump-want-him-out-20251103-p5n791.html
Or
https://archive.md/kfEN1
1 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
