WASHINGTON _ Getting humanitarian aid into Venezuela is the top priority for lawmakers, but Nicolas Maduro's military is blocking it.
So Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., named six top military officials he said would receive amnesty from U.S. sanctions and immunity from Venezuela's opposition-controlled National Assembly if they allow aid to be distributed by nongovernmental organizations in the country. Some of the six are already sanctioned by the U.S. government for being part of Maduro's inner circle and for leading "violence and repression" efforts against protesters, according to the Treasury Department.
"In this particular case, the price of avoiding a bloodbath, or a civil war, or continual suffering, is having a handful of really bad people who stole a lot of money get to move somewhere else and live. That's certainly preferable to a bloodbath," Rubio said Monday at a Heritage Foundation forum. "No one is more idealistic about these things than I am, at least in Congress, but sometimes in the history of humanity you are forced to choose between two options and you have to take the one that is least bad."
