Andrew Sage

Panama was the headquarters of the U.S.

Southern Command, the Western Hemisphere headquarters of the Pentagon.

We had 13,000 troops already there, ready to go.

I think they doubled that for the invasion, which was officially termed Operation Just Cause, originally called Operation Blue Spoon, but they had to come up with a sexier name.

And of course, Panama is a tiny country and Venezuela is 20 times larger than Panama.

Yeah, it's fast.

So it's very odd.

It's obviously they have deployed many more troops in a much larger fleet than is necessary for a counter-narcotics operation.

Incidentally, it's the U.S.

Coast Guard that carries out counter-narcotics interdictions and does it very effectively.

And incidentally, does it with the cooperation of other countries, which...

coordinate intelligence or just simply surveillance of suspicious ships or boats or planes and tip off the U.S.

Coast Guard.

Even the Cuban government does that.

In fact, it's the Coast Guard that is the U.S.

agency that has the best relationships with Cuba.

It's oftentimes diplomacy kind of starts with the Coast Guard's ties with Cuba.

But anyway, that aside...

It doesn't make sense from a counter-narcotics standpoint because, look, if you actually wanted to break up a cartel, what do you do?

I mean, if you are a prosecutor, investigator, right, you capture the smugglers, you seize the cargo, the contraband, which is evidence.