Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the weekly report.

Regime change and nation building are back.

As was the case, the morning after shock and awe, signaled the start of the Iraq War.

Many are cheering the U.S. military raid on Venezuela and capture of its president, Nicholas

Maduro. Overwhelmingly, U.S. military power and likely some bribe Venezuelan officials

ensured that the operation was swift and dramatic. This was not a war, we were told. It was just a surgical

operation to remove a criminal dictator and restore democracy to the country. American oil

companies would soon get even richer exploiting the country's vast oil reserves. This time,

it will be different. If all this sounds familiar, that's because it is the same narrative used

each time the U.S. has launched a regime-change operation this century.

The Iraq War would be a cakewalk, they swore.

Skeptics were ridiculed.

The staged demolition of the Saddam Hussein's statute in Baghdad

marked the triumph of that short U.S. military operation.

The liberation of Iraq was to be the first domino in the coming a revolution throughout

the Middle East. We were promised. Just weeks into the operation, then President George W. Bush landed on an aircraft carrier

with a huge mission-accomplished banner behind him. Then everything fell apart.

The U.S. could not run Iraq.

It could only use brutal force and torture to give the impression that we would soon turn

the corner.

Victory was at hand.

Just send more troops and spend a little more money. But none of it did the trick.

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