VIDEO: God I love the USA!

[Editor]

On a serious note, this was a brilliant operation by every measure that included 150+ military aircraft (the size of most air forces) and likely thousands of personnel involved in the planning and logicistics. The overall plan is equally brilliant if they can pull it off and transition to a democracy in Venezuela without firing a shot or deploying ground troops.

This operation reminds me of Operation Oak/the Skorzeny rescue of Mussolini although the Germans got allot of help from Italians sympathetic to Mussolini (contrary to popular belief Mussolini was still popular in the North and especially in the South despite a losing war) including the removal of heavy equipment that would have prevented this operation from succeeding. Otto Skorzeny would go on to repeat similar operations in WWII that included an attempt to capture Josip Tito alive (Operation Knight's Leap), Operation Armored Fist the kidnapping of Miklos Horthy Jr to force his father Admiral Miklos Horthy to resign as Regent of Hungary in favor of Ferenc Szalasi - a pro-Axis leader. If anyone gets a chance, I recommend watching "The Eagle Has Landed" a 1976 film starring Donald Sutherland, Michael Caine, Larry Hagman and Robert Duvall and although its fiction, the topic is similar and very interesting.

Back to Venezuela, I know Venezuelan engineers that were forced to leave Venezuela only because of their European ancestry, they lost almost everything despite their parents being invited to immigrate to that country in the 1950-60s only to be forced out. Prior to Hugo Chávez, Venezuela was once the most powerful, the richest, most modern/stable democracy in the region and is a clear reminder of how quickly things can change, and more importantly that we should never take democracy or our systems of economics for granted.