Pete Hegseth continues to celebrate the killing of boaters..total is 76 now

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

U.S. Military Kills 6 in Strikes on Suspected Drug Boats, Hegseth Says - The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/10/us/politics/us-boat-strike-deaths-hegseth.html

U.S. Military Kills 6 in Strikes on Suspected Drug Boats, Hegseth Says
The latest strikes raised the death toll in the campaign to 76 people in 19 attacks in the Pacific and the Caribbean Sea since early September.

In a post on social media, Mr. Hegseth cited “intelligence” and included two short video clips of the bombings of two separate boats that he said were traveling “along a known narco-trafficking transit route in the Eastern Pacific.”

One of the boats appeared to be at a full stop with two visible passengers and possibly with an outboard motor raised out of the water. The other was moving at high speed. But in neither case did Mr. Hegseth provide evidence for his claim that the three men aboard each of the two boats were smuggling narcotics. He said the attacks took place in international waters.

A wide range of specialists in laws governing the use of force have denounced the killings as illegal because the U.S. military is not allowed to intentionally target civilians who pose no threat of imminent violence, even those suspected of being criminals. The Trump administration says the strikes are lawful because President Trump has “determined” that the United States is in a formal armed conflict with drug cartels.

Mr. Trump has falsely asserted that each destroyed boat saves 25,000 American lives. In reality, as many as 100,000 Americans die each year from drug overdoses, but most of those deaths are a result of fentanyl, which comes from labs in Mexico. South America produces cocaine.

[Easterncedar]

1. We are murderers

These deaths are crimes

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

2. How much does it cost to destroy a boat?

[malaise]

3. Murder plain and simple

That is all

[NotHardly]

4. Can you say "new Nuremburg trials"?

[LetMyPeopleVote]

5. Maddowblog-New Justice Dept. memo complicates the administration's controversial boat strikes policy

The administration keeps insisting that its military strikes against civilian boats in international waters are legal. There's reason for skepticism.

New Justice Dept. memo complicates the administration’s controversial boat strikes policy www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddo...

— Philly Joe (@joehick58.bsky.social) 2025-11-14T19:57:00.305Z

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/new-justice-dept-memo-complicates-administrations-controversial-boat-s-rcna243984

It’s reached the point that some U.S. allies, including officials in the United Kingdom, have curtailed intelligence sharing with the

Trump administration, reportedly because they don’t want to be complicit in the extrajudicial slayings of civilians.

As for the U.S. military personnel responsible for carrying out these deadly strikes, The Washington Post reported last month that “some” junior officers have been looking for legal assurances “before taking part in strikes,” fearing personal legal liability. It’s against this backdrop that The New York Times reported:

A secret Justice Department memo blessing President Trump’s boat strikes as lawful hangs on the idea that the United States and its allies are legally in a state of armed conflict with drug cartels, a premise that derives heavily from assertions that the White House itself has put forward, according to people who have read it. ... In reaching that conclusion, the memo contradicts a broad range of critics, who have rejected the idea that there is any armed conflict and have accused Mr. Trump of illegally ordering the military to commit murders.

.....It dovetailed with a related Washington Post report, which said that the DOJ memo concluded that “personnel taking part in military strikes ... would not be exposed to future prosecution.”.....

What’s more, the memo’s conclusion remains a tough sell. After the White House pitched a related line to Congress in early October, claiming that Trump had “determined” the U.S. is in “armed conflict,” Geoffrey Corn, a retired judge advocate general lawyer who was formerly the Army’s senior adviser for law-of-war issues, argued that drug cartels are not engaged in “hostilities” — which would mean the White House was crossing a legal line.

“This is not stretching the envelope,” Corn told the New York Times. “This is shredding it. This is tearing it apart.”

Nevertheless, there’s little to suggest the administration intends to curtail its deadly campaign. On the contrary, Hegseth on Thursday announced something called “Operation Southern Spear,” which he said will target “narco-terrorists” and shield “our homeland from the drugs that are killing our people.”

Hegseth fired all of the JAG heads when he took office so that he could find idiots who greenlight matters that were clearly illegal. https://www.democraticunderground.com/100220067494

In an op-ed for The Washington Post, Sen. Jack Reed, the ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee and a former Army paratrooper, helped explain why:

Firing the military’s most senior legal advisers is an unprecedented and explicit move to install officers who will yield to the president’s interpretation of the law, with the expectation they will be little more than yes men on the most consequential questions of military law.

Hegseth and trump want to convert the military into a force loyal only to trump. It sounds like trump and Hegseth plan to commit acts that a real JAG would block as being an illegal order or unconstitutional

That prediction has become true.