Washington (EFE).- United States President Donald Trump said on Saturday that, following the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, his administration will “run the country” with the help of his security team, which includes US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, “until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition.”
Rubio argued that Saturday’s large-scale military operation was not “the kind of mission that you can pre-notify.”
“It was a trigger-based mission in which conditions had to be met night after night. We watched and monitored that for number of days. So it’s just simply not the kind of mission you can call people and say, ‘Hey, we may do this at some point in the next 15 days,’” Rubio told reporters in Florida.
“It’s just not the kind of mission that you can pre-notify because it endangers the mission,” he added.
Trump clarified that he did not inform Congress in advance about the quick operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, as “Congress has a tendency to leak” important information.
Trump’s announcement that US forces had conducted a large-scale attack on Venezuelan soil to capture Maduro and transport him out of the country by air took several senators and congressmen by surprise, including members of the committees that oversee the Armed Forces.
Operation Absolute Resolve
The chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dan Caine, said on Saturday that the mission to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores in Caracas was named Operation Absolute Resolution, described as “the culmination of months of planning and rehearsal.”
“The operation, known as Operation Absolute Resolve, was discreet, precise and conducted during the darkest hours of Jan. 2, and was the culmination of months of planning and rehearsal – an operation that frankly only the US military could undertake,” Caine stated at a press conference with US President Donald Trump and other cabinet members.
He emphasized the enormous complexity of the mission as such a precise extraction involved the takeoff of over 150 aircraft, including F-35, F-22, and F-18 fighter jets; E-2 early warning aircraft; and B-1 strategic bombers.
The goal was to insert an interdiction force into the center of Caracas while maintaining the tactical element of surprise, he added.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff explained that, as the elite unit approached Caracas, the Joint Force Air Component Commander began dismantling and deactivating Venezuela’s air defense systems, employing weapons to ensure the helicopters’ safe passage to the target area.
Caine recounted that the unit arrived at Maduro’s complex at 2:01 am local time on Saturday and “moved with speed, precision and discipline” toward its objective, isolating the area to ensure the security of the ground force while apprehending Maduro.
He confirmed what Trump had said hours earlier, that a US helicopter was hit during the operation, injuring a couple of soldiers. However, he assured that no one died and the aircraft successfully returned to its base. EFE
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