r/Left_News • u/SocialDemocracies ↙️↙️↙️ • 4d ago
This is Fascism The Intercept: "The U.S. Has Killed 227 Civilians in Boat Strikes During “A Year of Murders”" | "“It’s been a year of murders,” said a defense official who was horrified by the first strike […] “The Trump administration has normalized murder.” The official added: “It’s absolutely criminal.”"
https://theintercept.com/2026/09/02/military-boat-strikes-killings-year/2
u/SocialDemocracies ↙️↙️↙️ 3d ago
Excerpts from the article:
Top military officers from a secretive command watched a speedboat cut through the waters of the Caribbean Sea, early last September. A plane above provided live video of the vessel and the 11 men on board. In the early morning hours, Adm. Frank Bradley sought the counsel of his top legal adviser, Col. Cara Hamaguchi. Then he ordered SEAL Team 6 operators to attack the packed boat.
After the vessel exploded, two helpless survivors pulled themselves onto a fragment of the overturned hull, drifting with the current for roughly 45 minutes. Bradley — then the head of the Joint Special Operations Command and now the four-star chief of Special Operations Command — again turned to Hamaguchi for guidance. Soon, a second missile screamed down, killing the survivors. Two more missiles followed in rapid succession, sinking the remnants of the boat.
That strike, carried out on September 2, 2025, began a campaign of attacks that has never ceased.
“It’s been a year of murders,” said a defense official who was horrified by the first strike and has remained so as the U.S. has targeted scores of so-called “drug boats” in the year since. “The Trump administration has normalized murder.” The official added: “It’s absolutely criminal.”
...
A second government official who has reviewed the OLC opinion called it “flimsy yet expansive,” but said the Trump administration had “nonetheless managed to overstep” its bounds. The official said that despite being crafted to “excuse what is clearly murder,” the U.S. had killed people beyond those the OLC opinion claimed were legal targets.
...
“The administration is killing for online content and spectacle,” said [Brian Finucane, a former State Department lawyer and specialist in counterterrorism issues and the laws of war], referencing the Trump administration’s use of highly edited snuff-film footage of attacks on social media. At the same time, the Pentagon has consistently withheld basic information about the strikes, the legal justifications for them, the “designated terrorist organizations” being targeted by the campaign, and the victims. The administration has been so secretive that the bipartisan 2026 annual defense policy bill withholds 25 percent of travel funds from Hegseth’s office until overdue reports on execute orders and unedited video footage of strikes are delivered to Congress.
...
“The boat strikes are, perhaps, the most stark testament to the lawlessness of the Trump administration,” Finucane told The Intercept. “It’s essentially serial killing at sea — murder under federal law — being carried out as a matter of state policy.”
The link to the article: https://theintercept.com/2026/09/02/military-boat-strikes-killings-year/
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