As with the run up to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, the "liberal" media is running stories of atrocities in Venezuela that of course will eventually require American regime change through military means in order to stop.
President Nicolás Maduro is facing the biggest challenge to his authoritarian rule yet. Protesters are in the streets, an opposition lawmaker has declared himself the rightful president, a growing number of foreign governments have backed that claim and the Trump administration has intensified the pressure, cutting off Mr. Maduro’s access to oil sales in the United States — a principal source of his government’s cash.
In the face of the crisis, Mr. Maduro has hit back hard, sending out security forces to crush dissent in deadly operations that have alarmed even some of the president’s traditional supporters.
But while Venezuela’s armed forces have publicly declared their allegiance to Mr. Maduro, they have not taken the muscular role they have in the past. When months of chaotic demonstrations arose against Mr. Maduro two years ago, it was largely the National Guard that squelched dissent with batons and bullets, with protesters prosecuted in military courts.
But this time, in a potential sign of the strained loyalties inside the military, much of the crackdown has been entrusted to a relatively new national police unit that Mr. Maduro created to conduct raids on gang groups in Venezuela’s slums.
Now the unit appears to have his political opponents in its sights. Known as the Special Actions Force, or FAES, it is being sent to work as Mr. Maduro’s enforcer in the poor neighborhoods that once supported him but have turned against him, according to human rights groups, former government officials and current lawmakers.
At least 40 people have been killed in the latest round of protests against Mr. Maduro, largely in nightly raids in poor neighborhoods involving the special police unit, human rights groups say.
“FAES has become deeply involved in acts of repression,” said Delsa Solórzano, a lawmaker in the opposition-led National Assembly who met with recent victims of the raids.
The involvement of the special police unit is especially worrisome, human rights advocates say, because the unit was created to put down armed gangs or rescue hostages, not to control crowds of protesters in a peaceful manner.
“The consequence when they go in is massacres,” said Keymer Ávila, an investigator with Provea, a Venezuelan human rights organization. “They weren’t made to handle demonstrations.”
And so, in a few months or even weeks, we will be told by Donald Trump that American troops will have to be deployed into Venezuela to stop the attacks, and that we must rally around Dear Leader. We've seen the horrors that Trump has unleashed on America with a robust economy and relative peace. With a recession looming and war in Venezuela coming in 2019, things will get much worse, and very quickly.
Count on it.
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