The raid by the mercenaries and deserters was doomed to fail, not because it was idiotic or dumb, but because the Venezuelan extremist opposition in Colombia has been infiltrated by Venezuelan intelligence services for years and the government knew it was coming in advance.
That the mercenaries were caught and made mistakes should not detract from the seriousness of what they were trying to do. The captured Americans say their plan was to kidnap President Maduro, take control of the airport and wait for a plane.
The Trump administration has plausible deniability in the way that every Hollywood spy movie has that scene where the agents are told that if they get caught, they will be disavowed.
So yeah, the Trump administration can say it didn’t know anything (Pompeo, for as much as he brags about being a good liar, stumbled a bit and hinted that the U.S. knows who financed the operation).
But let’s not forget two key things:
1)Trump put a $15 million bounty on Maduro, which is plenty of incentive for the unpaid mercenaries.
2)There’s a massive U.S. naval deployment just off Venezuelan waters.
1)Trump put a $15 million bounty on Maduro, which is plenty of incentive for the unpaid mercenaries.
2)There’s a massive U.S. naval deployment just off Venezuelan waters.
If the plan had succeeded, if the mercenaries had kidnapped Maduro and taken control of the airport, the U.S. Navy would have, at minimum, sent a plane to snatch him.
The mercenaries truly believed they would succeed because they bought into what the US government believes, because the US in turn buys into what Venezuelan extremists believe, which is that chavismo does not exist and has no popular support.
The reality is very different, and in addition to chavistas (who are, at the very least, 6 million people), there are a whole lot of Venezuelans who are anti-imperialist.
Plus there’s a militia that has over 4 million people. That picture and those memes about the fisherman who faced off against the former Green Berets? He’s in the militia. 
