Trump Admin Considering a Strike on Venezuela, Military Sources Say

US President Donald Trump's administration is considering launching military strikes on Venezuela, according to new reporting from independent journalist Ken Klippenstein.

Military sources on Tuesday told Klippenstein that the Trump administration is mulling an attack against Venezuela unless it cracks down on drug cartels that it claims are shipping fentanyl into the United States.

Contrary to the administration's claims, according to the US Drug Enforcement Administration and other agencies, Venezuela plays virtually no role in fentanyl manufacturing and trafficking.

Klippenstein's sources said the attack was likely to involve "shooting down Venezuelan military aircraft or by bombing Venezuelan military airfield," and that the US Air Force has been rehearsing for such a mission in recent weeks.

Such an attack would mark a dramatic escalation in the Trump administration's hostilities toward Venezuela, which escalated last week when the administration bombed a boat off the Venezuelan coast that it alleged was carrying drug traffickers.

Many legal experts were quick to condemn the strike as a violation of maritime law. Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky was among those who condemned the military attack on suspected drug smugglers without due process.

A leaked Department of Homeland Security memo obtained by Klippenstein gives clues as to why the administration is taking an aggressive military posture toward Venezuela.

Specifically, writes Klippenstein, the memo gives insight into the administration's view that Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro is actually in charge of the Tren de Aragua cartel and is giving it orders to poison American citizens by getting them addicted to drugs.

However, Klippenstein cautions that this view of Maduro as the commander of an international drug cartel is not backed up by US intelligence agencies.

"A declassified assessment prepared by the National Intelligence Council concluded in April that the Maduro regime 'probably does not have a policy of cooperating with TdA and is not directing TdA operations in the United States,'" he noted.

Klippenstein closed his report by likening the situation to the buildup to the 2003 Iraq War, but with fentanyl taking the place of "weapons of mass destruction" as the purported casus belli.

"Similar to the 'debate' about Saddam's WMD, Democrats in Congress are busy discussing whether the strike on a small drug boat was legal and complaining that they weren't briefed on the operation," he wrote. "The fundamental question—is there any evidence that the Venezuela government is directing fentanyl into the U.S.?—is hardly ever asked. And most importantly, would bombing Venezuela do anything to reduce the flow of drugs into the U.S.?"