Mike Waltz defends the United States at the UN: “We are not occupying a country”

The American ambassador to the UN, Mike Waltz, defended American military actions in Venezuela during an emergency meeting at the United Nations on Monday, and maintained that there was no regime change or US occupation. He repeated the The Trump administration’s argument that the air and ground assault was not an attack but rather a military force used as a tool to assist a law enforcement operation.

“As Secretary Rubio said, there is no war against Venezuela or its people. We are not occupying a country,” Waltz said, according to the statement. “This was a law enforcement operation based on legal indictments that have existed for decades. The United States has arrested a drug trafficker who will now be tried in the United States under the rule of law for the crimes he committed against our people for 15 years.”

“It’s not about regime change, it’s about justice” Waltz wrote in a social media post SATURDAY.

In a statement, the spokesperson for the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, said he was “deeply alarmed by the recent escalation in Venezuela”, believing that it has “potentially worrying implications for the region”.

“The Secretary-General calls on all actors in Venezuela to engage in inclusive dialogue, with full respect for human rights and the rule of law,” the statement said.

The French foreign minister has already condemned the operation as violating international law, although President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday that he “neither supported nor approved” the operation, according to France 24.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation” Sunday that “the president still retains his optional character on any and all of these issues” when asked if the United States had ruled out an occupation of Venezuela. Rubio argued that President Trump would not explicitly rule out anything and maintained the authority to invoke military force in the event of imminent threats. He stressed that economic pressure was the main tool used against the remaining indicted members of the regime currently ruling the country.

As Brennan pointed out, other Maduro government officials who are still in power in Venezuela, including Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello and Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López, who have also been indicted in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and have a multi-million dollar bounty on the U.S. government’s head. Rubio argued Sunday that it was not possible to arrest four individuals in five different locations in a single complex raid and that there would have been an outcry if the United States had tried to do so.

“Imagine the screams we would get from everyone else if we had to stay there four days to capture four more people. We had top priority,” Rubio said.

As for the Trump administration’s ability to control the current regime, Rubio stressed that the main pressure remains to cut their financial lifelines.

“What you’re seeing right now is an oil quarantine that allows us to have tremendous influence over what happens next,” Rubio said.