Pentagon Reveals Attacks in Latin America Are Just the Beginning

The Intercept reports that while the Trump administration continues to bombard Iran, a top Pentagon official disclosed that U.S. wars in the Western Hemisphere are expanding, unveiling an effort dubbed \"Operation Total Extermination.\"

“As the Trump administration continues to bombard Iran, a top Pentagon official revealed that U”

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Acting assistant secretary of war for homeland defense and Americas security affairs Joseph Humire told members of the House Armed Services Committee that attacks on Latin American drug cartels are \"just the beginning\" and that many more strikes are on the horizon.

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He said the Department of War supported \"bilateral kinetic actions against cartel targets along the Colombia-Ecuador border\"—the March 3 strikes on unnamed \"Designated Terrorist Organizations\" previously reported by The Intercept.

Humire described the joint effort as the start of a military offensive by Ecuador with U.S. support.

The campaign has already spilled into Colombia after a farm was bombed or hit by a \"ricochet effect\" on March 3, leaving an unexploded 500-pound bomb in Colombia’s border region; the Ecuadorian Ministry of Defense confirmed the bomb landed in Colombia.

Humire said the attacks are \"joint land strikes\" and that the U.S. was providing Ecuador with \"capabilities that they otherwise would not have.\"

\"Yes — as @POTUS has said — we are bombing Narco Terrorists on land as well,\" self-styled War Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote on X on March 6, announcing the new strike.

A war powers report announced military action taken on March 6, 2026, against the facilities of narco-terrorists affiliated with a designated terrorist organization.

The attacks in Ecuador are part of, and an expansion of, Operation Southern Spear: the U.S. military’s illegal campaign of strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific Ocean.

The U.S. has conducted 46 attacks since September 2025, destroying 48 vessels and killing almost 160 civilians; the latest strike, on March 19 in the Pacific, killed two more people and left one survivor.

The Trump administration claims its victims are members of at least one of 24 or more cartels and criminal gangs with whom it claims to be at war but refuses to name.

Rebecca Ingber, a former State Department lawyer and Cardozo Law School professor, criticized the administration for barely paying lip service to the constitutional or international law governing the use of force, arguing that rushing to war on one man’s whims is contrary to the Constitution.

Gen. Francis Donovan, SOUTHCOM commander, told lawmakers that \"boat strikes are not the answer,\" but teased a larger campaign, saying the current actions may be an extension of Southern Spear and that a counter-cartel campaign would impose \"total systemic friction across this network.\"

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Humire could not say how many land strikes were conducted across almost 20 Latin American and Caribbean nations, replying to Rep. Adam Smith that he did not have an exact number but acknowledged that there would be \"a lot more terrestrial strikes.\"

The article notes agreements with 17 partner-nations in the Western Hemisphere as part of the Americas Counter Cartel Coalition, though sovereignty details remain vague.

It also mentions a \"permanent FBI presence in Ecuador\" and Donovan’s visit to Quito to meet President Daniel Noboa and senior defense officials.

In January, the U.S. attacked Venezuela and abducted the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and it now rules the country through a puppet regime.

“As the Trump administration continues to bombard Iran, a top Pentagon official revealed that U”

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Federal prosecutors have reportedly drafted a criminal indictment against Venezuelan Interim President Delcy Rodriguez, threatening her with corruption and money laundering charges if she does not continue to do the bidding of the Trump administration.

Trump also teased the possibility of making Venezuela the 51st U.S. state.

The Trump administration is reportedly undertaking a regime-change operation in Cuba, attempting to push out President Miguel Díaz-Canel as a requirement for negotiations, with officials said to favor Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, the grandson of Raúl Castro.

Díaz-Canel referenced U.S. plans to “seize the country” on X and said the U.S. would be met with “impregnable resistance.”

"I am holding Cuba," Trump said, noting his Middle East war takes precedence at the moment, “We’re going to do Iran before Cuba.”

He imposed an oil blockade on Cuba in January, plunging the country into a humanitarian crisis, with the island’s electrical grid collapsing three times this month, and a blackout lasting more than 29 hours.

U.N. human rights experts condemned Trump’s fuel blockade on Cuba as “a serious violation of international law and a grave threat to a democratic and equitable international order.”

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