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Administration officials have yet to provide any details about the supposed strike, which would mark a massive escalation in the president’s lawless military campaign.

By Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams

President Donald Trump claimed during a recent discussion about his high-seas boat bombing blitz that US forces took out “a big facility” as part of the Venezuela-centered campaign—but no one seems to know what he’s talking about.

Trump said Friday during an apparently impromptu phone call to billionaire supporter John Catsimatidis—who owns and hosts programming on WABC radio in New York—that South American narcotraffickers “have a big plant or a big facility where the ships come from,” and that “two nights ago, we knocked that out.”

Hands off Venezuela
Credit: Fibonacci Blue https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Protest_against_US_military_intervention_in_Venezuela_(46778131574).jpg

“We hit them very hard,” the president added.

On Monday, Trump was asked during a meeting with fugitive Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to clarify Friday’s claim.

“There was a major explosion in the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs,” the president said, “so we hit all the boats and now we hit the area. It’s the implementation area. That’s where they implement, and that is no longer around.”

Neither Trump nor anyone in his administration offered any evidence to support the claim. There have also been no public statements from any Venezuelan government official regarding any US attack.

Trump did say during a Christmas Eve call to troops taking part in escalating hostilities against Venezuela—whose socialist leader, President Nicolás Maduro, has long been in Trump’s regime-change crosshairs—that, after more than two dozen boat strikes, “now we’re going after the land.”

Threats by Trump to bomb targets inside Venezuela—or even invade the oil-rich South American nation in order to oust Maduro—are nothing new. The president has deployed an armada of warships and thousands of US troops to the region and has also authorized covert Central Intelligence Agency action against Maduro. Earlier this month, Trump vowed that the US would attack Venezuela “on land,” and “very soon, too.”

However, Trump’s remarks on Friday left observers scratching their heads and scouring news reports in a fruitless effort to make sense of the president’s claim.

One US official interviewed by the Intercept on condition of anonymity said the US targeted a “facility”—but declined to disclose its location, or whether it was attacked by US forces.

“That announcement was misleading,” the official said of Trump’s claim last week.

There is some speculation that a Christmas Eve explosion and fire at a warehouse on the grounds of a Primazol chemical plant in Zulia state may have been caused by a US strike. However, the site—which reportedly makes products including chicken feed—is not located directly on any coast, and Primazol issued a statement “categorically” rejecting claims that the facility was bombed.

If Trump did order any bombing of targets in Venezuela, it would be a major escalation and clear act of war by a man who, while billing himself as “the most anti-war president in history,” has now, with last week’s attack on Nigeria, bombed more countries than any president in history.

Militarism and Foreign Policy