As long as we’re blowing up drug boats, I have a question: How many billionaire yachts do you suppose have a bunch of illegal drugs on them? Hey, I’m just asking questions.
[Full disclosure: I copied that from elsewhere.]
Quoth the Pirate King:
When I sally forth to seek my prey
I help myself in a royal way.
I sink a few more ships, it’s true,
Than a well-bred monarch ought to do;
But many a king on a first-class throne,
If he wants to call his crown his own,
Must manage somehow to get through
More dirty work than ever I do!
Donald Trump probably wasn’t even specifically aware of this before it happened. This almost certainly started at the Secretary of Defense level with an order to interdict and destroy boats coming for Venezuela, and the kill chain of the specific order may have not even gone to him.
Regardless, nobody will be held to account for this just as there were no proceedings regarding the extrajudicial killing of US citizens. Powerful governments and their leaders have different rules than everyone else.
Stranger
Yeah this stood out to me. Like, it wouldn’t make it ok if it was actually a drug smuggling vessel, but it’s a massive indictment of the media that none of them actually did their job over this. There is a huge hole in the administration’s justification for murdering 11 people, and I’ve not heard any journalist press them on this.
Bullshit. He wanted to kill people. And Kegbreath had the military find the easiest vaguely justifiable target to satisfy Trump’s blood lust.
“Will no one rid me of this turbulent boat?”
Congratulations, Mr President! We killed 11 people in your name!
Were they drug smugglers?
That’s what we’re sayin’!
Oh, I’m sure Trump expressed the desire for something like this, and he’s blithely celebrated the result. I just doubt he was actually in the kill chain for this specific action, i.e. that he gave the specific order to fire upon the boat. He just doesn’t have the patience or attention span to sit around while the Navy located a plausible target to shoot at.
Stranger
I’m sure he was. Where’s the fun in it if doesn’t get to explicitly use the authority of Commander in Chief to kill some brown people?
He wanted to kill some people. Kegbreath followed his orders (which at their absolutely most detailed was something like “I want to kill some Venezuelan fentanyl smugglers like that guy who beat us in the supreme court”). And came back with this random boat in the Caribbean. Trump took great pleasure in saying “Very good. Yes, I order you to kill those specific people” and watching it happen.
Were they granted letters of marque?
“Letters of marque” have not been generally recognized as legal implements since then Paris Declaration Respecting Maritime Law, notwithstanding that this wasn’t action by a privateer but by the formal military forces of the US Navy.
Stranger
Not sure Cad was serious 
I am aware of that. It was a play on calling it “piracy”.
Assuming the video is real, and I do assume it is…
- They murdered 11 people.
- They don’t even know who they were.
- All of you are people.
- They don’t know who YOU are, either.
- They can make up “reasons.” It’s still murder.
Mary talks about it:
Talks about what?
The subject of the thread. Murder. What else would it be about?
I thought it would start at the relevant part. It starts at 13:45
Do these people realize they just made every US military vessel a legit target? For everyone?
”I recognized a pirate vessel”
That you are, in actual fact, a rogue nation, a terror state?
Anything vaguely connected to the US is liable to be harrassed/ shot at. We’re up to three boats now. International mass murderers should at least not be speaking before the UN.
Trump’s ‘Cartel Boat’ Bombing Leaves Survivors for the First Time
For the first time since President Donald Trump green-lit a string of lethal strikes on suspected Venezuelan cartel boats, survivors have emerged from the wreckage. Two men were pulled from the Caribbean after a U.S. operation blasted their vessel on Thursday. Until now, these missions were one-way trips to the bottom of the sea, with at least five prior attacks leaving more than two dozen dead. The Navy is now holding the rescued men aboard a U.S. warship, according to multiple officials familiar with the operation.
Politically, the timing could not be worse for the White House. Trump has publicly boasted about the missions, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has vowed the administration has “every authorization needed.” But the emergence of survivors threatens to unravel the narrative of clean, surgical strikes. If these men start talking about who hired them, what they were carrying, or where they were headed, the story could quickly shift. For now, one thing is certain, this covert campaign just became a lot harder to explain.