"The 'double-tap' boat strike scandal seems to get more complicated by the hour. Not because the facts of what took place that September day are complicated, but because it’s getting difficult to keep track of all the lies, distortions, and whiplash-inducing story revisions the Pentagon and its Republican allies have floated the last few weeks."
~ Andrew Egger
"These men were shipwrecked. Our own rules prohibit killing shipwrecked men, even if we are at war. But we aren’t."
~ Joyce Vance
"On Friday, Natasha Bertrand of CNN reported that the boat the U.S. military struck on September 2 was not, in fact, headed for the U.S., a claim from the president that had always seemed doubtful because of how far away from the U.S. the small boats the U.S. has been hitting are."
~ Heather Cox Richardson
“I think it’s really important that this video be made public,” Representative Jim Himes (D-CT) said today on Face the Nation. Himes was referring to a video of the September 2 U.S. military strike on a small boat with 11 people on it. In that attack, the first strike broke the boat apart and set it on fire. The strike killed nine people but left two alive, clinging to the remains of the vessel.
"Instead, Admiral Frank “Mitch” Bradley, who was overseeing Special Operations on that day, told Congress that the intelligence he received said the boat was on its way to meet a larger vessel bound for Suriname, a small South American country to the east of Venezuela, to transfer drugs to it. Bradley told the lawmakers that the military could not find the second, larger vessel."
"According to U.S. drug enforcement officials, drugs trafficked through Suriname generally are bound for Europe."
"Attention has focused on the United States’ shocking, illegal, and reprehensible action in murdering unarmed civilians whose ship our military had already destroyed. No justification exists for killing shipwrecked civilians. …
Throughout last weeks, even more disturbing facts emerged."
~ Jennifer Rubin
#Trump #Hegseth #WarCrimes #murder #DoubleTap
/6
https://contrarian.substack.com/p/the-second-strike-isnt-the-only-problem
"CNN reported: 'The alleged drug traffickers killed by the US military in a strike on September 2 were heading to link up with another, larger vessel that was bound for Suriname.' The boat was not headed to the U.S., so Trump’s attenuated logic that it threatened the homeland collapses."
"One of the saddest jokes of our time is that Arkansas, a state once primarily known for rice, Wal-Mart founders, and the Clintons, has now given our nation a U.S. Senator whose chief distinction is an instinct for the most primitive idea in any room.
I am talking, of course, about Republican Tom Cotton."
~ David Shuster
#Trump #Hegseth #TomCotton #Arkansas #WarCrimes #murder #DoubleTap
/8
https://www.blueamp.co/p/the-double-tap-doctrine-tom-cottons
"Even the U.S. military leaders who briefed Congress sheepishly acknowledged the boat carried no missiles, no explosives, and no plausible path toward any U.S. shore. ...
Some day when a future archaeologist digs up the remains of this once respected republic, he or she will undoubtedly find among the ruins a MAGA plaque, signed by Trump and Hegseth, honoring Tom Cotton for his gallant stand against a capsized and burned speedboat."
"History will also record that Cotton and the other deranged Trumpian psychopaths caused more harm to America than any fleet of drug boats ever could."
#Trump #Hegseth #TomCotton #Arkansas #WarCrimes #murder #DoubleTap
/10
Blue Amp continues its reporting on a story I noted here yesterday re: two survivors of a US attack on a boat on 17 October who were rescued by the US military. They were then photographed and videotaped in accord with law — but someone somewhere apparently then gave an order to destroy this documentation in contravention of law.
#Trump #Hegseth #TomCotton #Arkansas #WarCrimes #murder #DoubleTap
/11
https://www.blueamp.co/p/deletegate-blows-open-how-a-dod-cover
New revelations in #DeleteGate expose unlawful military orders to delete evidence of rescued survivors from U.S. boat strikes in the Caribbean.
"Nick [Paro]— Army sergeant, trained interrogator, expert on detainee procedures — breaks down just how profoundly illegal all of this is. The United States is not in a congressionally authorized armed conflict with Venezuela. No war declared, no authorization, no oversight, no nothing.
Which means every person seized at sea is legally a civilian until proven otherwise, not some magically self-justifying 'narco-terrorist.'”
"And the law — U.S. law, military law, international law — could not be clearer: you document everything. You collect biometrics. You record medical status. You keep chain-of-custody logs. You do not delete evidence. You do convene a competent tribunal. None of that happened.
Instead, someone — almost certainly above the Admiral level — ordered everything wiped."
"And the enlisted sailors and Marines on that ship knew immediately it was wrong. They fought it. They went to JAG. And they were overridden. ...
This is a top-down moral collapse under Pete Hegseth and whoever in the Trump orbit green-lit these illegal strikes. And let’s be clear: if a private citizen killed 85 people with no legal authority, we wouldn’t debate terminology — we’d call it murder."
"Congress inserted language into the annual defense bill withholding a quarter of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s travel budget until the Pentagon hands over unedited videos of U.S. strikes on suspected drug-smuggling boats, escalating scrutiny of a controversial Sept. 2 follow-up strike that killed survivors and prompting calls for a full investigation as lawmakers dispute what the footage shows."
~ Aaron Parnas
#Trump #Hegseth #WarCrimes #murder #DoubleTap
/15
https://aaronparnas.substack.com/p/news-congress-moves-to-block-hegseths
Good evening everyone.
"Donald Trump says that he never said that he would commit to releasing the video of the boat strikes."
Parnas then offers a video of Trump saying he had never committed to releasing this footage, and then Parnas offers another clip, noting
"This is him five days ago saying he would release the video."
"For much of the world, the entirety of the Trump administration’s military campaign against alleged narcotics traffickers is a serious violation of international law. But even if one accepts every unorthodox element of the Trump administration’s international legal justification, the second strike pursued on Sept. 2 is still a problem."
~ Scott R. Anderson and Natalie K. Orpett
#Trump #Hegseth #WarCrimes #murder #DoubleTap
/17
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/the-troubling-defense-of-the-second-strike
"It’s not just in tension with longstanding Defense Department guidance on what is lawful and unlawful—it’s a paradigmatic example of the latter. If there are facts that vindicate the decision to pursue it, they are far from evident in the public record currently available. Until that changes, the issue demands further scrutiny."
"The strong take what they want, the weak suffer what they must. That was the world prior to the end of World War II. And that world led to endless wars, terrible poverty, mass death, 70 million people died in World War II at the culmination of that way of looking at the world. No rules, just power. That’s the world that Trump wants to create…."
~ Rep. Adam Smith
#Trump #Hegseth #WarCrimes #murder #DoubleTap
/19
https://contrarian.substack.com/p/venezuela-western-dominance-and-regime
"The capsized bow of the boat...probably wasn't any bigger than your average kitchen table."
@wdlindsy [insert DEI joke about Neanderthals here]
@wdlindsy I almost said something speculating that right-wing money might have helped him through Harvard (since he became an advocate for their ideas very early in his academic career) specifically with regard to "tutoring" and, you know, proof-reading (shall we say) written assignments... but it was very speculative and I have no evidence. I'd even call it "mean-spirited" for me to suggest it, except it's kind of the very milk of human kindness compared to what he's endorsing now. -.-
@wdlindsy It's pretty obvious that it did happen at some point, yeah.
@wdlindsy which is absurd and shows that their approach to "shoot first, ask questions later" is in fact self-sabotaging.
William Lindsey 
Divert
GJ Groothedde 🇪🇺
Martin Vermeer FCD
RainbowFrog
Roknrol like the slur
Woozle Hypertwin
StarkRG
Kevin Karhan 