"Repeat, over."
Ever since the Washington Post first reported, on November 28, that the US military delivered a second strike on a suspected drug boat in the Caribbean, back in September, the Trump-deranged peanut gallery hasn’t been able to shut up over dead narco-terrorists, and they’ve offered some truly off-the-rails opinions on the incident.
And they seem to be deriving particular gratification in referring to it as a “double-tap,” as if describing a mob hit.
Last Thursday, in a classified, closed-door session, a select group of lawmakers was briefed on the operation by Admiral Frank “Mitch” Bradley, the commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, and Joint Chiefs Chairman Dan Caine.
After viewing the video of the incident, Connecticut representative Jim Hines, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, called it “one of the most troubling things I’ve seen in my time in public service,” and said that the clip showed the “United States military attacking shipwrecked sailors.”
“You have two individuals in clear distress, without any means of locomotion, with a destroyed vessel, who were killed by the United States,” he added.
So, Himes is more concerned about a couple of drug smugglers than he is about the 29,000 Americans who died from cocaine overdoses last year.
But, even he admitted that Adm. Bradley had “confirmed that there had not been a ‘kill-them-all’ order, and that there was “not an order to grant no quarter.”
Still, Maryland’s “Senator Margaritas,” Chris Van Hollen, called it “plain murder.”
Senator Jack Reed, of Rhode Island, said he was “deeply disturbed by what I saw this morning,” adding that the classified briefing “confirmed [his] worst fears about the nature of the Trump Administration’s military activities.”
Rep. Maxine Waters (D‑CA) asserted that “President Trump is a killer. I hold him responsible for the murder of individuals in boats whom he claims are ‘Venezuelan drug traffickers.’”
MS Now’s Joe Scarborough argued, “They’re making shit up as they go along every day, and the inconsistency of it all, again, looks very bad.”
Scarborough also mocked what he called the “new Hegseth policy,” asking whether the “new rules of warfare” mean you can shoot a defenseless prisoner in the head if they have a radio.
I’m not sure what “prisoner” Joe was talking about.
He argued the administration keeps shifting the story about the second strike to avoid admitting it was a “double‑tap” that, he believes, likely violated the laws of war.
All of this noise despite the fact that Adm. Bradley told the lawmakers who attended Thursday’s briefing that all eleven of the boat’s passengers were on a list of narco-terrorists whom US military and intelligence officials had determined could be lethally targeted.
It’s funny, but I don’t recall any of these folks having too much to say when President Obama went on his drone binge, authorizing upwards of 540 strikes, including bombing a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan, a hospital in Afghanistan, and killing two US citizens in Yemen.
Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, Chairman of the Intelligence Committee, had a different take on the second strike.
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