Re: Venezuela is about oil

I don't think you know the difference between rhetoric and ulterior motive. I'm sure Trump has convinced himself that oil would be swell reason to have toppled Maduro, but absent that he would have found any other excuse convenient enough. And even now he's openly threatening Cuba and Colombia. Is that supposed to be about oil too? "he said that he consulted the US oil companies ahead of the Venezuela operation and that they were very eager to get hold of the oil." It should be obvious that Trump was soliciting them and not the other way around. Oil companies are averse to such instability. But if they're resigned to the fact that it will happen anyway, of course they would queue up for their handouts just like a Brit on the dole. If Trump really cared about US oil companies getting back into Venezuela, the least he could have done is remove the US sanctions. But he wouldn't even do that because then the Maduro regime would benefit. Hurting Maduro was always the real goal, not handing the oil companies an operation that could cost them as much as $100 billion to restore. "the operation serves to topple an ally of China in the region" I don't think anything has changed regarding China, especially with Maduro's vice-president being sworn in. "an act of blatant gansterism [sic]" Yes, it is. No need to attribute it to some kind of conniving power play for oil when simple chest thumping would explain it more than sufficiently.