Trump Just Gave Himself the Perfect Excuse to Invade Venezuela

It sounds like President Donald Trump’s administration is looking for a repeat of America’s disastrous invasion of Iraq—no, seriously.

Trump announced Monday that he planned to sign an order classifying fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction, practically paving the way for an invasion of Venezuela.

This announcement comes amid mounting tensions with Caracas, following multiple U.S. strikes on boats the Trump administration claims—but won’t prove—are smuggling drugs and the recent seizure of an Venezuelan oil tanker by the U.S. military. Trump himself has repeatedly threatened to take his strikes on alleged drug boats to dry land.

One might hear the echoes of the U.S. government’s lie that Sadam Hussein had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction as justification for its invasion of Iraq. It seems that history is repeating itself, as there is reason to believe that America’s growing interest in Venezuela is not about drugs at all: It’s actually about oil.

It’s worth noting that the Associated Press reported in November that the boats targeted by U.S. strikes appeared to be carrying cocaine—not the synthetic opioids responsible for thousands of deaths each year.

But just last week, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth described so-called narco-terrorists as the “Al Qaeda of our hemisphere,” responsible for spreading “narcotics so lethal they’re tantamount to chemical weapons.”

In November, The Wall Street Journal reported that a classified legal brief justified the Trump administration’s extrajudicial execution of alleged drug smugglers by referring to fentanyl as a potential chemical weapon.