The AP went down to Venezuela to find out who Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth are murdering with impunity:
One was a fisherman struggling to eke out a living on $100 a month. Another was a career criminal. A third was a former military cadet. And a fourth was a down-on-his-luck bus driver.
The men had little in common beyond their Venezuelan seaside hometowns and the fact all four were among the more than 60 people killed since early September when the U.S. military began attacking boats that the Trump administration alleges were smuggling drugs. President Donald Trump and top U.S. officials have alleged the craft were being operated by narco-terrorists and cartel members bound with deadly drugs for American communities.
One mother describes the “confusion and anguish” of losing her son, who is believed to have been killed in one of the boats targeted by the U.S. military.
The Associated Press learned the identities of four of the men – and pieced together details about at least five others – who were slain, providing the first detailed account of those who died in the strikes.
[…]
The Trump administration has justified the strikes by declaring drug cartels to be “ unlawful combatants ” and said the U.S. is now in an “armed conflict” with them. Trump has said each sunken boat has saved 25,000 American lives, presumably from overdoses. The boats, however, appear to have been transporting cocaine, not the far more deadly synthetic opioids that kill tens of thousands of Americans each year.
There is no epidemic of cocaine deaths in America, fergawdsakes. It’s the opioids. But I guess since they know it doesn’t matter what they say, they could claim they’re all carrying nuclear weapons and get away with it.
They are murdering these poverty stricken men who are scraping together a few bucks by taking some cocaine to the islands where it will be sent to Europe. (America doesn’t obtain cocaine this way — it comes over the U.S.- Mexican border.) It goes against American law and International law but they don’t care. And if you buy the logic they are using they can claim that anyone who sells or uses drugs in another country or inside the United States is a narco-terrorist subject to summary execution any time the president orders it.
Reminder: Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is sitting in the Hague awaiting trial for enacting this policy.