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Lawmaker urges end to 'regime change wars,' cites Iraq parallels in critique of Trump moves on Venezuela
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Summary
A lawmaker on the floor condemned "regime change" interventions, compared President Donald J. Trump's recent actions toward Venezuela to the Iraq War, and raised concerns that oil interests and a lack of congressional briefings shaped the administration's approach.
A lawmaker on the floor delivered a sharp critique of U.S. interventionist policy, saying "No regime change wars" and arguing recent moves toward Venezuela mirror the mistakes that led to the Iraq War.
The lawmaker said nearly 25 years ago George W. Bush and **** Cheney used claims about weapons of mass destruction to justify the Iraq invasion, and warned of a similar pattern now. "We paid a mighty price for our blunder in Iraq," the lawmaker said, citing lives lost and trillions spent.
Pointing to recent actions, the lawmaker noted that "two weeks before ordering the capsule capture of Nicholas Maduro, Donald Trump designated fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction," adding that "Fentanyl's terrible. It is not a weapon of mass destruction." The speaker used that contrast to question the factual framing used to justify force.
Quoting President Trump, the lawmaker said the administration itself made the motive clear: "the difference between Iraq and this is that bush didn't keep the oil. We're going to keep the oil." The speaker argued the administration's explicit focus on oil raised doubts about the stated legal and humanitarian rationales for the operation.
The lawmaker also criticized the administration's information-sharing choices, saying officials briefed oil company executives before strikes while failing to provide real-time briefings to Congress's "gang of 8," the group normally trusted with the most sensitive national security information. "We think, oil executives," the speaker said, asking rhetorically who had been entrusted with operational details.
The floor statement named public figures and agencies in the course of the critique, including Bernie Sanders, a person named in the transcript as "Chelsea Gabbard," Donald John Trump, Donald Rumsfeld, Marco Rubio and the DEA, and it repeatedly contrasted campaign promises not to start new wars with the administration's recent actions.
Concluding the remarks, the lawmaker said, "We have to stop regime change wars," and yielded the floor.
