[A] boat, some guns, and 62 men of dubious military skill.

[randomness]

Raised from comments elsewhere:

I have never been a Green Beret, and I have never attempted a coup, though who knows where the future will take me. Nevertheless, I did assume — naïvely! erroneously! — that the first rule of organizing a coup is that you do not tweet about it. And doesn’t it require a lot of planning? Based on my many years spent playing successive versions of Civilization, I think that if you want to capture a country’s capital city, you are going to need more than a boat, some guns, and 62 men of dubious military skill."

(https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/05/mercenaries-arrested-after-alleged-failed-coup-in-venezuela.html)

Edit to add quotes from a somewhat more serious article:

From https://apnews.com/79346b4e428676424c0e5669c80fc310:

Planning for the incursion began after an April 30, 2019, barracks revolt by a cadre of soldiers who swore loyalty to Maduro’s would-be replacement, Juan Guaidó, the opposition leader recognized by the U.S. and some 60 other nations as Venezuela’s rightful leader. Contrary to U.S. expectations at the time, key Maduro aides never joined with the opposition and the government quickly quashed the uprising.

A few weeks later, some soldiers and politicians involved in the failed rebellion retreated to the JW Marriott in Bogota, Colombia. The hotel was a center of intrigue among Venezuelan exiles. For this occasion, conference rooms were reserved for what one participant described as the “Star Wars summit of anti-Maduro goofballs” — military deserters accused of drug trafficking, shady financiers and former Maduro officials seeking redemption.

Among those angling in the open lobby was Jordan Goudreau, an American citizen and three-time Bronze Star recipient for bravery in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he served as a medic in U.S. Army special forces, according to five people who met with the former soldier.

Those he interacted with in the U.S. and Colombia described him in interviews alternately as a freedom-loving patriot, a mercenary and a gifted warrior scarred by battle and in way over his head.

and

“He was always chasing the golden BB,” said Drew White, a former business partner at Silvercorp, using military slang for a one-in-a-million shot. White said he broke with his former special forces comrade last fall when Goudreau asked for help raising money to fund his regime change initiative.

“As supportive as you want to be as a friend, his head wasn’t in the world of reality,” said White. “Nothing he said lined up.”

Comments

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

Worse than that, I think. The CIA supposedly warned them off more than once. It's believable that the US warned the Venezuelan government to buy some credibility. It leaves the question of who paid for the mess. I suppose it wasn't very expensive, since they didn't have proper training or equipment. I wonder if Goudreau either made or inherited a tidy pile of money, and like so many people, when freed from financial constraints, indulged his demons freely...

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

I don't think your examples are particularly *worse*, but just examples of other parties using them for their own purposes.

Also, it seems pretty clear Goudreau didn't have any money of his own. He was going around begging for money and picking up jobs wherever he could find them.

I think the turncoat Venezuelan general might well have been using the mercenaries as cover for his drug-running operations, and spent a small amount of the proceeds on that.