Seems unlikely the US had scores of boats lined up for a well-planned invasion which they chickened out of at the first sign of return fire and then "desperately" captured the enemy president some miles inland in a relatively bloodless operation instead.
A small detachment of US troops didn't succeed in taking some sort of secondary objective like taking out a coastguard station or comms node, maybe.
Forward operating site is not what you seem to think. It's more like a place to set up temporary comms support, recon support, maybe SAMs etc then skedaddle out of there (perhaps leaving the equipment behind for the duration of the operation). If the site cannot be clandestinely set up then it's often not worth trying. What parent described is perfectly reasonable
If the US planned to invade rather than raid Venezuela, I don't think the inability to capture a single forward operating site clandestinely would lead to the entire operation being called off. If they didn't, the alleged beachhead is moot. They had boots on the ground when capturing Maduro too.
What's more likely: the US "desperately" stumbled upon a capture of Maduro at almost zero cost to them after their real plan to seize Venezuelan territory went awry due to heroic Venezuelan defending as the parent implies, or that the intention was to capture and remove Maduro without invading and this was what they did, regardless of whether a few peripheral targets got missed?
Words have meanings and the word relatively present in the original sentence clearly indicates that it was a comparison with the many orders of magnitude more casualties that would be expected from a full scale invasion. Particularly when the consideration was whether the mission panned out as the US intended, and their priority is bringing their own troops home (which they apparently managed with only a few injuries), not sparing Venezuelans unfortunate enough to be at the other end of their weapons.
I agree that it stretches credulity but one scenario is that they were promised the Venezuelan military would stand down and let the US conduct its operation with minimal resistance. If that was not the case then the minimal troops for the beachhead may have decided that the token landing for PR purposes was not necessary and bugged out.
One of the strangest things about the entire operation is how the US left absolutely nobody behind to administer the country. Not even a consultant. The Venezuelan VP is now in charge and the government is largely intact. It's hard to see how this affects any meaningful change in the country. I did find it amusing that the opposition leader released a statement with her lips firmly planted on Trumps ass and even talked about "sharing" the Nobel Peace Prize just to see if he's enough of an idiot that such obvious flattery would work.
> The Venezuelan VP is now in charge and the government is largely intact. It's hard to see how this affects any meaningful change in the country.
It's a threat - "Do as we say or you're next." Which the US was pretty public and explicit about. They don't need anyone on site for that. It's not like they actually care what happens beyond the resources use.
A small detachment of US troops didn't succeed in taking some sort of secondary objective like taking out a coastguard station or comms node, maybe.