President Trump and Secretary of Defense Hegseth are adept at lying. But truth needs to have the last word, especially when the facts are so obvious about war crimes or murders being committed by the United States military at the behest of the Trump administration.
Fact 1: There is no evidence that the boats in the Caribbean supposedly containing cocaine that the U.S. has been hitting with drone-fired missiles are heading to our country. For one thing they are too small to make it to the United States. Also, I’ve heard that most cocaine from Venezuela goes to Europe or Caribbean islands.
Fact 2: Drug smugglers, in the Caribbean or elsewhere, are criminals. They aren’t enemy combatants. The United States isn’t at war with Venezuela or any other country. Calling drug smugglers “narco-terrorists” is ridiculous. Illegal drugs enter our country because there is a demand for those drugs. This is a criminal, cultural, and mental health problem, not a military problem.
Fact 3: It is illegal under both American and International law to kill suspected drug smugglers. Interdict them. Capture them. Put them on trial. That’s what the law demands, not blowing up boats with suspected drug smugglers aboard.
Fact 4: It is mandatory for members of the military to refuse illegal orders. Blowing up boats that might be carrying illegal drugs and killing everybody on board obviously is illegal, given the preceding three facts. The Trump administration hasn’t provided any legal justification for what they’re doing. So whoever has ordered drone strikes on the suspected drug boats has committed murder — or a war crime, except there is no war here.
Fact 5: It is illegal to kill shipwrecked members of a military that the United States is at war with. Since our country isn’t at war with anybody, the “double tap” strike that killed two people clinging to a capsized boat suspected of carrying drugs after initial drone strikes split the boat in half, capsized it, and killed other people on board, is even more clearly murder.
It’s infuriating that the Trump administration is claiming that the murder of those two shipwrecked people was justified because they might have been able to call for help and then recover some of the cocaine that was supposedly on the boat.
A CNN story makes clear this is a lie.
The two men killed as they floated holding onto their capsized boat in a secondary strike against a suspected drug vessel in early September did not appear to have radio or other communications devices, the top military official overseeing the strike told lawmakers on Thursday, according to three sources with direct knowledge of his congressional briefings.
As far back as September, defense officials have been quietly pushing back on criticism that killing the two survivors amounted to a war crime by arguing, in part, that they were legitimate targets because they appeared to be radioing for help or backup — reinforcements that, if they had received it, could have theoretically allowed them to continue to traffic the drugs aboard their sinking ship.
Defense officials made that claim in at least one briefing in September for congressional staff, according to a source familiar with the session, and several media outlets cited officials repeating that justification in the last week.
But Thursday, Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley acknowledged that the two survivors of the military’s initial strike were in no position to make a distress call in his briefings to lawmakers. Bradley was in charge of Joint Special Operations Command at the time of the strike and was the top military officer directing the attack.
So why did Admiral Bradley order that the men be killed? The answer is absurd. Bradley needs to be charged with either murder or a war crime, along with Hegseth.
Ultimately, Bradley told lawmakers, he ordered a second strike to destroy the remains of the vessel, killing the two survivors, on the grounds that it appeared that part of the vessel remained afloat because it still held cocaine, according to one of the sources. The survivors could hypothetically have floated to safety, been rescued, and carried on with trafficking the drugs, the logic went.
The other source with direct knowledge of the briefing called that rationale “f**king insane.”
It sure is.
Again, trafficking drugs is a crime. The American military is prohibited from carrying out law enforcement duties. No American official can legally order the killing of a suspected criminal who isn’t posing a serious immediate threat. Killing a couple of men clinging to a capsized boat is murder. Bradley has admitted to doing this. He needs to be severely punished for his crime, along with Hegseth, if the Secretary of Defense ordered that the men be killed..
If you disagree, read “Unlawful Orders and Killing Shipwrecked Boat Strike Survivors: An Expert Backgrounder.”
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