https://archive.md/jeLke
"The lethal strike on a boat in the Caribbean on Tuesday was a criminal attack
on civilians, according to a high-ranking Pentagon official who spoke to the
Intercept on the condition of anonymity.
The Trump administration paved the way for the attack, he said, by firing the
top legal authorities of the Army and the Air Force earlier this year.
“The U.S. is now directly targeting civilians. Drug traffickers may be
criminals but they aren’t combatants,” the Department of Defense official said.
“When Trump fired the military’s top lawyers the rest saw the writing on the
wall, and instead of being a critical firebreak they are now a rubber stamp
complicit in this crime.”
President Donald Trump claimed that the attack was aimed “against positively
identified Tren de Aragua Narcoterrorists,” in a TruthSocial post. He
continued: “TDA is a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization, operating under
the control of [Venezuelan President] Nicolas Maduro, responsible for mass
murder, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, and acts of violence and terror
across the United States and Western Hemisphere.”
Trump accompanied the post with a video of a four-engine speedboat cutting
through the water with numerous people on board. An explosion then destroys the
boat. Trump said the attack killed 11 people. It was unclear whether they were
given a chance to surrender before the United States killed them.
After days of silence, the White House issued a statement late Thursday
claiming the attack was lawful. White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly
said it was “taken in defense of vital U.S. national interests and in the
collective self-defense of other nations who have long suffered due to the
narcotics trafficking and violent cartel activities of such organizations.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth offered his own justification for the strike the
same day. “Every boatload of any form of drug that poisons the American people
is an imminent threat. And at the DoD our job is to defeat imminent threats,”
he told a group of journalists. “A foreign terrorist organization poisoning
your people with drugs coming from a drug cartel is no different than Al Qaeda,
and they will be treated as such as they were in international waters.”
Two U.S. government officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said
that Hegseth’s justification – which one called “completely unserious” – took
shape after the attack.
Experts said Hegseth’s rationale was flimsy, if not farcical. “Tren de Aragua
being designated as a foreign terrorist organization is a purely domestic law
enforcement designation. It offers no authority for the military to use deadly
force,” said Todd Huntley, who was an active-duty judge advocate for more than
23 years, serving as a legal advisor to Special Operations forces engaged in
counterterrorism missions around the world. “Under international law, there’s
no way this even gets close to being a legitimate use of force.”"
Original at
<
https://theintercept.com/2025/09/05/pentagon-official-trump-boat-strike-was-a-criminal-attack-on-civilians/>
Via Janet Logan.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
