The US military is sending an aircraft carrier to Latin America in a big Essolation – nationally
The US military is sending an aircraft carrier to South American waters, the Pentagon announced Friday, in the latest increase in firefighting from the region where boats are fighting.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the USS Gerald R. Ford and its strike group to deploy to the US Southern Command region to find it,” Pentagon spokesman US Sean Parnell said.
The USS Ford, with five destroyers in its strike group, is now deployed to the Mediterranean Sea. One of the destroyers is in the Arabian Sea and the other is in the Red Sea, a person familiar with the operation told organized media. As of Friday, the aircraft carrier was in Port Croatia on the Adriatic Sea.
The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss critical military operations, would not say how long it would take for the strike group to reach South American waters or if all five destroyers made the trip.
Using the aircraft carrier will draw significant additional resources to a region that has already seen large irregular military buildups in the Caribbean Sea and waters off Venezuela.
The latest moves and the rapid pace of US strikes, including one on Friday, have raised new speculation that the Trump administration may be working on drug trafficking, including Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. He faces narcoterrorism charges in the US
Moving thousands of troops to the region
There are already sailors and marines at eight stations in the region. If the entire USS Ford Strike Group arrives, that would bring nearly 4,500 sailors and more than 9 aircraft carriers assigned to the carrier.
To clarify this situation, tropical Melissa, which has almost stopped in the Central Caribbean, forecasters predict that it will soon strengthen into a powerful storm.
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Hours before parnell announced the news, hegseth said the military carried out a 10-strike on a working boat, leaving six people dead and bringing the death toll to at least 43 people.
Hegseth said on social media that the ship that was hit overnight was used by the Tren de Aragua Gang. It was formed the second time the Trump administration met with some of its operations in its prison group in Venezuela.
“If you are a narco-terrorist drug trafficker in our hemisphere, we will treat you like we treat Al-Qaeda,” Hegseth said in his post. “Day or night, we will seize your networks of networks, trace your people, hunt you down, and kill you.”
The strikes have risen from one every few weeks when they first began last month to three this week, killing at least 43 people. The two latest strikes were carried out in the eastern Pacific Ocean, expanding the area where the military is afraid of attacks and turning to where most of the cocaine is found in the world’s largest producers, including Colombia.
Adding to the controversy about Colombia, the administration of Trump Administered Resenction on Friday against the Colombian President Gustavo Petro, his family and a member of his government over accusations of drug involvement in the world.
Focuses on Venezuela and Tren de Aragua
Friday’s strike Draw the first similarities announced by the US last month by focusing on the Tren de Aragua, which the Trump administration has designated a foreign terrorist organization and accuses of being the root of violence and drugs that face certain distances.
Although there is no word on the origin of the latest boat, the administration of the Republic said that at least four of the boats that arrived came from Venezuela. On Thursday, the US military flew bombers and set off large-scale landmines off the coast of Venezuela.
Maduro says the US operation is the latest attempt to force him out of office.
Maduro on Thursday praised the security forces and the civil war for physical exercises and about 2,000 kilometers (about 1,200 miles) of coastline to prepare for the possibility of a US attack.
In a period of six hours, “100% of all the coasts of the country are covered in real time, with all the equipment and heavy weapons to protect all the rodents of Venezuela if necessary.
The presence of American troops is less about drugs than sending a message to countries in the region to comply with US interests, according to Elizabeth Dickinson, a senior analyst for the Andes group.
“A phrase that I hear a lot is ‘drugs are scary.’ And everybody knows that,” Dickinson said. “And I think the message is very clear to regional intelligence. So sending messages here is that the US is intent on pursuing certain goals. And it will use military force against leaders and countries that don’t fall into line.”
Compare drug addiction to the war on terror
Hegseth’s arguments surrounding the strikes have recently begun to draw direct comparisons between the war on terrorism in the US which has been declared after the crackdown on drug traffickers.
President Donald Trump this month declared the Carcels of drugs to be illegal crimes and said that the US was in the same legal position used by the Bush administration after 9/11.
When reporters asked Trump Thursday if he would ask Congress to declare war on the cartels, he said that was not the plan.
“I think we’re going to kill people who bring drugs into our country, okay? We’re going to kill them, you know?
Lawmakers from the main political parties have expressed concern about Trump Ordering the military without obtaining authorization from Congress or providing more details.
“I have never seen anything like this before,” said Sen. Andy Kim, DN.J., previously worked at the Pentagon and the State Department, including as an adviser in Afghanistan.
“We don’t know how far this goes, how far this can go, you know, is it going to be where we see it for a long time?” he said.
Republican Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida, who has long been involved in foreign affairs in the hemisphere, said Trump’s approach: “It’s time.”
While Trump “obviously hates war,” he also isn’t afraid to use the U.S. military in targeted operations, Diaz-Balart said. “I wouldn’t want to be in the shoes of any of these narco carchels-“
Correspondents Regina Garco Cano in Caracas, Venezuela, and Ben Finley and Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed to this report.
