The Briefing

I’ll tell you what I do find significant about the revelation that the U.S. now has a long and fast-growing list of witnesses explaining how Diosdado Cabello’s sprawling drug-running operation works in minute detail: The Briefing.

Just imagine the kinds of intelligence briefings Thomas Shannon must be giving to cancillerías all up and down the hemisphere.

It must be a thing of beauty.

Granted, these governments have been hearing ghastly stories about Diosdado Cabello for years as it is. But “stories” isn’t the same thing as evidence: professionally collected, contrasted, checked, vetted evidence.

The Americans are probably to the point now of drawing clear connecting links between Diosdado’s operation and whatever local partners he’s using in, say, Lima, Mexico City, Sao Paolo and Santiago. Are you in any doubt that that information is featured prominently in The Briefing?

This, I think, must be the real point of the U.S. decision to devote significant resources to this investigation. Foreign Ministries up and down the Americas have proven again and again that they don’t give a shit if chavismo shreds civil liberties and makes a mockery of democratic institutions as long as it keeps making the right leftie noises. As a way of isolating the Venezuelan regime, that’s a dead end.

But drugs…that’s different. At some point, even the blockhead retread commies running the hemisphere’s diplomacy will have to accept you can’t apply normal diplomatic protocols to a drug-cartel with a National Anthem.