President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference at Mar-a-Lago.Alex Brandon/AP

The US attack on Venezuela relies on the same deception that justified the war in Iraq: the idea of self-financing wars with oil.

President Trump said Saturday that the US will run Venezuela following the capture of Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. “It won’t cost us anything because the money coming out of the ground is very substantial,” he said at a Saturday press conference at Mar-a-Lago following news of the US attack. But we’ve been down this road before.

“There’s a lot of money to pay for this. It doesn’t have to be US taxpayer money,” Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz claimed about Iraq........

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