Thank goodness Trump is protecting us from poor fishermen. Where would we be without him? From Daniel Larison at daniellarison.substack.com:
The U.S. military has murdered more than 70 people in the Caribbean and the Pacific over the last two months.
The Trump administration murdered six more civilians in the Pacific:
The United States struck two alleged drug-carrying vessels in the eastern Pacific Ocean on Sunday, killing six people on board, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Monday, as calls mounted for investigations into the strikes.
The U.S. military has murdered more than 70 people in the Caribbean and the Pacific over the last two months. The president and the Secretary of Defense have given illegal orders to kill civilians on these boats at least 18 times and every time the orders have been carried out. The president wants to use the military as his own assassins, and it appears that no one is willing to refuse that assignment.
The government has a secret list of 24 organizations that it considers “designated terrorist organizations.” At least one of the groups, the so-called Cartel de los Soles, doesn’t really exist. Others have little to do with the drug trade. The rest are drug cartels that have nothing to do with terrorism. One thing they all have in common is that they aren’t engaged in an armed conflict with the United States. The “conflict” is completely made-up because no one is attacking or threatening to attack the U.S. or American forces in the region. The administration’s justification for the murder spree is a lie built on top of a lie built on top of another lie.
The Intercept spoke to Brian Finucane about the administration’s secret list, and he said this:
“The administration has established a factual and legal alternate universe for the executive branch,” said Brian Finucane, a former State Department lawyer who is a specialist in counterterrorism issues and the laws of war. “This is the president, purely by fiat, saying that the U.S. is in conflict with these undisclosed groups without any congressional authorization. So this is not just a secret war, but a secret unauthorized war. Or, in reality, a make-believe war, because most of these groups we probably couldn’t even be in a war with.”
