Friday on CNN’s “The Lead,” former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said President Donald Trump’s military deployment to Venezuela could mean that one accident could cause a war.
Host Jake Tapper asked, “How serious is this? Do you think we could really see the U.S. strike inside Venezuela, or potentially even having American boots on the ground?”
Panetta said, “Well, look, there’s no question, Jake, there we’re dealing with a very serious deployment of our forces right now. We’ve had B-1 bombers going near Venezuela. We’ve had B-52s and F-35 squadrons now in place. I think there’s also a submarine in place, eight warships, Reaper drones, and now this carrier group. That’s a lot of American men and women in uniform that are being put in harm’s way. And in order to make sense of this, so we don’t just find ourselves by accident in war. I think it’s really important that the president had better present a strategy to the American people and to the Congress as to exactly what are the objectives here. Is this about regime change? Is this about narco trafficking? Is it about something else? Because when you’re deploying that many men and women in harm’s way, you are, in fact, putting their lives at risk, and you better have a good explanation for that.”
He added, “You can’t just do this by the seat of your pants. That’s too much firepower. And one accident, one misplaced target could result in a small war with Venezuela.”
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