General Dan Caine Image: White House
Gen. Dan Kane, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Saturday described the operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro as a massive, meticulously planned operation that took months to prepare and hours to execute on the ground.
Speaking at a press conference in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, Kane described the mission as a collaboration between all branches of the military and intelligence agencies, requiring months of preparation.
‘How did he move around, what did he eat?’
Kane said this included tracking Maduro to understand “how he moved, where he lived, where he traveled, what he ate, what he wore.”
Kane further said that late Friday night, more than 150 aircraft were launched from 20 different bases on land and sea in the Western Hemisphere. These included helicopters carrying an extraction force, which began their flight to Venezuela just 100 feet above the water.
bullets were fired on the army
Kane said the helicopters, protected by several strikes in the area, arrived at Maduro’s compound at about 1 a.m. ET. Several self-defense skirmishes took place as forces opened fire in an attempt to capture Maduro and his wife, after which they exited Venezuela around 3:29 a.m. ET.
After this, Maduro and his wife were transferred to USS Iwo Jima, from where they are now going to New York for trial.
“Failure of even a single part of this well-functioning machine would have jeopardized the entire mission, and failure is never an option for America’s joint forces,” Kane said.
What did Trump say?
President Donald Trump said the US will now run Venezuela immediately after the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
US President Donald Trump said in a press conference, “We will run the country until we make a safe, right and sensible transition. We do not want anyone else to get involved, and we have the same situation that we have had for the last many years. So we will run the country.” Trump did not say how long this change of power would take.
The US President said that if necessary, US forces could have killed Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro during their overnight operation. “He was trying to get to a safe place. You know, that safe place was all steel, and he couldn’t get to the door because our guys were so fast,” he said.
Also read: ‘We’re going to run this country’, Trump takes on Venezuela after attack? Know what was said in the press conference