The criminal clown circus that is the Trump regime continues to spin out of control with lethal consequences.
The Washington Post reports that during an attack on an unidentified Venezuelan vessel on September 2, the US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive “to kill everybody,” according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation.
After an initial rocket attack on the craft left two survivors clinging to the burning wreckage, the Special Operations commander overseeing the — the opening salvo in the Trump administration’s war on suspected drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere — ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions. The two men were blown apart in the water.
The alleged traffickers posed no imminent threat of attack against the United States and were not, as the Trump administration has tried to argue, in an “armed conflict” with the U.S., officials and experts have said. Because there is no legitimate war between the two sides, killing any of the men in the boats “amounts to murder,” said Todd Huntley, a former military lawyer who advised Special Operations forces for seven years at the height of the U.S. counterterrorism campaign.
When word of the illegal attack leaked out, Secretary Hegseth attempted to blame Adm Frank M Bradley, who oversees U.S. Special Operations Command, for the attack. Hegseth, writing on social media Monday night, said he stands by the admiral “and the combat decisions he has made — on the September 2 mission and all others since.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle pushed back against Hegseth’s attempt to make Admiral Bradley a scapegoat. The Senate Armed Services Committee said it would be “conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts” related to the 2 September strikes.
The Republican chairman of the committee, Senator Roger Wicker, said on Monday that the lawmakers are planning to interview the “admiral who was in charge of the operation”. He added that it was also seeking audio and video to “see what the orders were”.
The Armed Services Committee in the House of Representatives also said it would lead a “bipartisan action to gather a full accounting of the operation in question”.
“This administration has a long history of asking people to do things that are reckless or lawless, and then throwing them under the bus and shifting blame,” Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) said. “And there’s no doubt that that seems to be what’s happening here.”
President Donald Trump subsequently said he didn’t know anything about a second strike on the alleged Venezuelan drug boat. He also stood by his defence secretary, saying Pete Hegseth didn’t know a US Navy admiral had ordered a second strike. Hegseth also denied knowledge of it, but stated the admiral ‘had the complete authority’ to launch it.
Since the September 2 attack, the Trump regime has attacked more than 20 vessels and killed at least 83 people without providing any evidence that the boats under attack were smuggling drugs or that the sailors being killed were “narco-terrorists.”
These airstrikes have been condemned by Volker Türk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, as violations of international human rights law. He urged the US to halt its “unacceptable” operations and take measures to prevent the “extrajudicial killing of people aboard these boats, whatever the criminal conduct alleged against them.” Notably, the governments of the UK, Canada, the Netherlands, and Australia have stopped sharing intelligence with the US over the illegal targeting of the Venezuelan and Colombian boats.
Criminal clown circus regime? That’s way too far. What do you call the previous clown regime? Or the ones causing wars including covering running drugs? Or the ones rotating drug cartels as favored nations? Who brought drugs into our country and under what presidents? How many of us were poisoned by known biochem warfare and used as guinea pigs without ever being told and what regimes were in place then? I can go on a long time. I was there and then I investigated – after being brought back numerous times to help out. Reporting is one thing – throwing garbage out like that is unnecessary and legally incorrect. How many people in our country and elsewhere get destroyed by drugs along with their families? No, you play you pay. No sympathy for drug runners – they aid and abet death.
I agree drug runners are despicable and cause our citizens who chose to partake of the drugs tremendous harm. The issue here is that we should go after them following legal precedents and protocols. What this administration – and I agree it is more of a three ring circus than a well functioning government- is doing appears to be illegal.
Please be so kind as to give me a break. Referring to the Trump cabal as a criminal clown circus regime seems overly polite to me. The US Coast Guard has been doing a good job interdicting drug smuggling boats and arresting drug boats crews to be taken for trial for decades.
Instead General BoneSpurs violates domestic and international law by blowing up boats and murdering mariners without any due process or ongoing war. The penalty for drug running is not summary execution unless you support outright dictatorship and hate the rule of law.
The criminal thuggery of the Trump gang only puts our own soldiers and sailors at risk. I guess you did not notice that the governments of the UK, Canada, the Netherlands, and Australia have stopped sharing intelligence with the US over the illegal targeting of the Venezuelan and Colombian boats.
In nominal control of this horror show is Bonespurs himself trying to look macho, supported by a Navy Secretary who is a hedge fund manager with no naval experience and Fox media personality with history of public intoxication and not bright enough to hold a secure group chat. They sure look like a criminal clown circus to me.