At least we can all now spell Venezuela, January 5th, 2026.

Introduction.

The raid that captured Nicholas Maduro and his wife was a raid that raised a host of questions,

but also answered a bunch of them. It was also an attack that got a lot of

the chimps jumping, and they don't think the questions were answered, not at all. What remains for

us to do is to sort through the pieces and perhaps come to a few tentative conclusions. Keep in mind

that our assessments may vary depending on which aspect of the operation we are talking about.

One might be enthusiastic about some aspects of Operation

Absolute Resolve, as I am, and also dubious about other portions of it. Read on and see,

my friends. A stunning accomplishment. The first thing to note is that the craft competence

was stunning, a competence that was displayed throughout the entire operation. Nothing succeeds

like success. P. Texas has made it a point to

restore a culture of lethality to the military, recovering the warrior ethos, and it turns out that

this is the kind of emphasis that troops actually need in order to function well. A lot of people

who dismissed Hegseth as a featherweight Fox News personality owe him an apology, which I doubt will be forthcoming.

The military does not exist in order to function as a lab where DEI policies can be celebrated and

test-driven all at the same time. That is not their function. Their purpose, as I believe Rush Limbaugh

once put it, is to kill people and break things. It is plain that a return to that

kind of mission focus, led by Hexeth, is paying dividends. Such success is not something that is

automatically guaranteed just because a well-funded U.S. military is involved. Think of the

withdrawal from Afghanistan. Go back a generation and think of Jimmy Carter's disastrous attempt

to rescue the hostages in Iran.

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