SPECIAL DANIEL DAVIS DEEP DIVE - Venezuela

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
So No. Five, I fifty about ker Cede Talk Station.
So excited when I came in this morning to see
on the rundown a special edition of a segment we
do every Tuesday at eight thirty, the Daniel Davis Deep Dive,
retired Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis, offering his beautiful, insight and
thoughtful analysis of matters involving war and of course matters
involving grabbing Maduro and taking him to be tried in

(00:26):
federal court in New York City. Welcome back, Daniel Davis
Deep Dive time. It's good to see my friend. Happy
New Year.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Let's start with that well and thanks, thanks. I mean,
we took a couple of weeks off in the Holy Cow,
a country was invaded in a president's rike. We better
not take off anymore. Too many things are happening. I know,
I couldn't agree with you more, sir. And you know,
part of me was really really happy that all this
hit the fan over the weekend, because after ten days off,
my brain ate really fired on all cylinders coming back

(00:53):
from vacation, sir. So this really kind of took the
weight off, at least in terms of coming up with
a well very interesting topic and this was beyond interesting.
Let me first remark as I opened the show up
this morning, putting aside all of the you know, political implications,
the legal implications, and what this might mean for us
and how long we're going to be involved in other
things we can talk about. You got to give the

(01:15):
American military huge props for what I mean, that was
an unbelievable mission. I mean boom boom in out, obviously
well oiled, well planned, and clearly we had some inside
help within the Maduro regime. Yeah, that's exactly what it's
going to say this. There's really two separate tracks to

(01:36):
examine here, and both deserve their own focus. And the
first one is on the military execution of this, and
it was about his flawless of a large scale operation
as I have literally ever seen in my lifetime. I mean,
there's I think that there was when the leader of
Italy was captured by the Nazis, actually Steve was captured

(02:00):
in World War Two and they got him out of there,
you know, an amazing snatch and grab back in World
War Two. That's about the only thing I can think
of that reaches this level of precision. And you're right,
there's by all accounts, there was a double agent that
we had, involved probably multiple, probably not just one, but
definitely around the inner circle of the president. We had that.

(02:21):
But even without that, the operation to go in with
F thirty fives to take out a lot of their
command of control systems and communications systems, definitely the air
defense systems. They didn't have great stuff, but they had
usable stuff, and the F thirty fives were apparently very
significant in taking those down. And then of course there's
just all of the rehearsals that went in. But I

(02:43):
mean you're talking everything from the strategic, operational, and tactical level,
all the rehearsals that were done. There was apparently a
complete compound built from scratch at a rehearsal site at
some unknown location to where these snatching grabs were rehearsal.
It was like they had been doing it a one
hundred time. So the opportunity to execute this with literally

(03:04):
no friendly loss of life and no loss of aircraft
and a complete total success of the mission by itself
is just amazing.

Speaker 1 (03:13):
Now it's the going forward component, which is the most
complicating element about all this. Donald Trump said, we basically
are going to run the country for some period of
time until I guess an election can take place till
there's some stability there. Devil's always in the details. But
as you and I have talked about before, and I
hate to pivot over to Russia and Ukraine, you know
what happens after Russia takes over whatever chunk they take over,

(03:36):
there are still loyal sympathizers to the Ukraine government, the
idea of sovereignty and the idea that Russia is evil
for having invaded it. Those people represent a legitimate threat
in terms of you know, I think about Castro waging
a gorilla war from the mountains. Maduro did have an army.
I'm not quite sure where they were. I understand he
was being protected by Cuban forces, which I thought was

(03:57):
rather interesting. But they haven't disappeared as an entity. Are
they still loyal to his regime? Are they willing to
be talked out of that loyalty? I know most of
them are corrupt. I mean, aren't these military people and
their hardware. Do they not represent a going forward threat
to the United States regarding whatever involvement we're going to

(04:17):
have there, because it seems pretty likely we're gonna have
some boots on the ground there to maintain stability.

Speaker 2 (04:22):
Well, let's hope not, because that could go south in
a big rodiat, a big fast and all this great
stuff that we just talked about could be completely lost
if we go down the path of putting troops there
and trying to compel and force our way into this,
because that's where things start getting much more complicated. And yes,
that's what I've been telling everybody. This operation to snatch

(04:43):
and Grab was profoundly successful, but it didn't take out
the regime. And all these people who've been celebrating Yay,
Maduro's gone and we're free and all this, I keep
saying that's premature. Nothing has changed. The system itself is
fully in place. And we're talking about the system that
was under shoved and then translated into transitioned into Maduro.
All those people that have many of them, like the

(05:05):
Vice President, has spent literally decades of support to the
to the top level. Now she's in charge. By now,
I guess acting President Rodriguez, the question is going to be,
what are you going to do if they don't just
say yes, we'll do what you say. Because apparently Marco
Rubio talked to Rodriguez. Trump claims that she says she's
gonna work with this, but when she made a public statement,

(05:27):
wasn't quite that cooperative. And how could she be if
she's cooperating, I mean, her own life could be at
risk inside of her country. So there are some big
time difficulties remaining in front of.

Speaker 1 (05:37):
Us, and no question about it. And you know, that's
that's the part that's got me mostly worried. Now. The
lynchpin for all this. Some people are saying, no, Donald
Trump just won a regime change. Donald Trump just won
to Venezuela and oil. Those really were secondary the the
the lynch pin upon which whatever Donald Trump really really
wanted out of this, whatever you know, our you know,
State Department, or whoever CIA wants out of this, can

(06:00):
be accomplished. But the lynchpin was that he had committed crimes.
He was a drug dealer, He had committed these illegal
acts as a head of a state. And that goes
back to what we went through with Manuel Noriega, very
comparable operation. He went through the entire legal process, made
all the legality arguments. President can't do this, he doesn't
have the constitutional authority, It violates international law, and the

(06:24):
courts shot down all of that. So if you didn't
have this criminal indictment hanging over his head, then you
wouldn't have been able to go in and grab him
and bring him to New York City, right because he's
the president of a sovereign nation.

Speaker 2 (06:38):
Look, I mean, we got to be honest. You know
that the law doesn't even matter in this point. We'll
say whatever we want, But there's I mean, you can't
say because our country had an indictment on it, that
we are justified to go get him, because then you
literally open that Pandora's box. In every country on the
planet that has power can do the same thing to
their adversaries. Here, we have set that precedent. So to me,

(07:03):
this is black and white. We wanted a regime change.
We wanted political control of the country and physical control
of the oil. And that's what's being set up right now,
at least that's what's being set up as an exception
or a desire. But as President Trump said, I think
it was an air force one last night. He said, yeah,
if they don't cooperate, if they don't do what we
tell them to do, then we may go in there more.

(07:24):
But I'm just telling you, Brian, if we want to
brag on how good this snatch and grab was, if
we have to go in there and force anything on
the ground, it's going to get bloody big fast. And
I'm just telling you, we don't have the force structure
anywhere near sufficient to actually compel the country to do
anything that we want. This is a really bad situation
quite frankly.

Speaker 1 (07:44):
Well, And insofar as the Senator is discussing a war
powers vote on this, they tried this last November to
got shot down, and that was at forty nine to
fifty one vote. If they can't pass a war powers
resolution to say limit the authority or other wise control
what we can and cannot do in Venezuela, where does
that leave us? I mean, the president's basically free to

(08:08):
do whatever he wants. I mean, I've been struggling with
this sort of ever since I read about this. What
comes next? And what if Congress doesn't do anything?

Speaker 2 (08:18):
Yeah, You've had several and Lindsey Graham is the biggest
cheerleader of this. He's been saying and I actually found
something from twenty twenty last night where he just holds
that the nineteen seventy three War Powers Act is not
constitutional in his personal right opinion. That doesn't matter what
his opinion is. It matters what the rule of law is,
and the nineteen seventy three War Powers is an actual law.

(08:39):
The problem is, and he is right in this regard,
Presidents across the board have been ignoring this for many, many,
many years and many administrations. Problem is with that is
that you set a standard that the law doesn't count.
And so to answer your direct question, yes, we are
in a place where the law doesn't restrain the president
and he is totally free to do what he wants

(09:00):
because he has the law, he has the Justice Department,
he has the Secretary of Defense or Secretary of War.
The courts are not going to intervene, it doesn't appear.
And because he has the house in the Senate right now,
there won't be an impeachment. No one will compel anything,
and certainly the Senate. So that means, yes, he is
free to do whatever he wants with no constraints. And

(09:21):
I'm just telling you that it's bad for America.

Speaker 1 (09:24):
Well, does that mean Supreme Leader Ali Kameni over and
in Iran it feels like his life maybe in jeopardy
as well.

Speaker 2 (09:32):
Why wouldn't he. I mean, there's a lot of people
have to be concerned with that. And already our work
with the Israelis, they had I'd already threatened that in
the past, they had done it with Hezbollah, with his leaders.
Many other leaders in other medium sized leaders in Iraan
have been assassinated, So we just kind of opened up. Really,
the Israelis have opened up this Pandora's box. Although you
can obviously say that Trump did that in twenty twenty

(09:54):
when he took out Solomon he with an assassination, attempt
or execution, and this is, you know, the law of
the jungle man. I mean, it's it's a lot of
people are cheering today because it's an objective that the
US wanted, But I don't see how this benefits our country.
And I see how it could be a really dark
place to where the rule of law gets shredd even further.
And that's problem for.

Speaker 1 (10:15):
All of us. Yeah, I just said, it depends on
whose ox is being gord because Zorhan Mandami has declared
Benjaminett Yaho a war criminal responsible for genocide. If there
were presidents Zorhan Mandami, he could go and do the
same thing we did in Maduro, right, because he's been
labeled a war criminal, right, right.

Speaker 2 (10:32):
And that's that's one of the things that I have
been saying, is that, you know, we want to defend
President Trump's justification to go after because we declared him
Maduro a criminal and then died him at court, and
that Yahoo is in dotted in many countries as a
suspected war criminal, et cetera. And do you want to
say that any of those countries, if they have the power,

(10:53):
that they can go and try and do a snatch
and grab on that Yahoo. I mean, some people may say, well, yeah,
let them try, because you know, Israel is not Venezuela,
and they would not go. Well, almost certainly, that's correct.
But the president has been set and you know, you
can't just you know, say, all right, this one's fine
for us because we lock it. That one's not fine.
That's different because well we lock him. But the problem

(11:15):
is that that's only as you just said, and the
eye of the beholder whose ox is gored, this is
just it's just not good for us. Man.

Speaker 1 (11:22):
I'm just sorry. I'm just telling you, no, I feel
along the same way. I'm always looking down the road
at the next guy at the helm and how this
would implicate, would have implications for every presidential administration from hereafter. Uh,
Daniel Davis got to have you around to bounce these
ideas off of. And I appreciate you coming to the program.
Another twenty twenty six with the Daniel Davis Steve Dive

(11:43):
here on the fifty five KRC Morning Show, Right love
it look forward to it, amen, brother, as do I.
We'll talk about the China Russia implications on this military
action maybe next time we talk. Because that's that's another
couple of wrinkles in the Yes it is bib it
is thought to talk about here the Kennedy Turl Daniel
Davis find his podcast Daniel Davis Deep Dive. You'll enjoy that.

(12:04):
I'll look forward to having you back on again real
soon and Happy New year' sir. Seven seventeen. Right now,
Christopher Smithman waiting in the winnings for the smither vent First,
get your car into foreign exchange. A matter of fact,
I'm getting ready to make an appointment. It's oil change time.