'The hairs on my neck stood up': Ret. 3-star general shocked by one part of Trump's speech
A retired general said the "hairs on his neck stood up" when he heard one part of Donald Trump's plans for Venezuela.
Ret. Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling appeared on MS NOW on Saturday, where he was asked about the Trump administration's decision to capture the leader of Venezuela. Trump went on to say he plans to have the U.S. take control over the country, as opposed to letting the nation's constitution do its job, and didn't rule out having U.S. boots on the ground.
The host asked Hertling about the administration's plans, saying, "So, general, you used the word difficult, challenging. Would you add dangerous to that description?"
He replied, "Yeah, I most certainly would. And truthfully, it brought back a whole lot of scar tissue for me. Having been in Iraq a couple of times, especially my last tour, there was in an area that had the Baiji oil refineries and some of the Kurdish oil fields. We tried to bring in oil companies to help the Iraqis figure out how to work their their oil facilities better than they had been. And it was difficult because of security issues."
He then added, "And I kind of really... the hairs on my neck stood up when the president said, 'Oh, we don't have to worry about boots on the ground. We can do that.' And that was probably something new to the audience today, too. They probably weren't expecting the fact that we might have military forces in Venezuela and in these kind of situations in a country that's as big as Venezuela with a 300 or with a 30 million citizen population, and with a security force between the army and the police forces, measures about 300,000 in Venezuela."
Concluding his answer on an ominous note, the general said, "I'm not sure they're going to open their welcoming arms to all those people that might be coming in from the various oil companies."