re: Taibbi - Insane Clown Pentagon.

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Not the question. The question is whether it is lawful. The answer is highly unlikely.

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One one hand, we have a cadre of military leaders, analysts, and lawyers.

On the other, we have DeltaDoc.

This is a tough call, but since we're talking about the legality of military strikes, I'm going to side with the military and the lawyers putting themselves on the line.

Matt Taibbi - its time to stop giving him attention. Hes gone the way of Matt Drudge and David Brock

Why do ghey men do this? Yearn for conservative cred, then just wander off into LaLa land at some point?

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Drunk Pete

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Taibbi is a beta male liberal and you are still cry8ng about maduro

Tell me Constitutionally and/or in view of international law how this is legal. Is there precedent? Absolutely. Was that precedent legal? Probably not.

Article II of the Constitution doesn’t give this authority.

This allows the President to use force only against: imminent threats, hostile forces, or individuals posing an imminent threat to U.S. lives.

Drug trafficking itself is not an “imminent armed threat.”

Therefore, Article II does not allow killing a foreign national solely for drug crimes.

Executive Order 12333 prohibits assassination. The U.S. circumvents this only by claiming:

“Targeting enemy combatants in armed conflict is not assassination.”

Drug dealers are criminals, not enemy combatants. Thus, killing them would violate U.S. executive policy.

Under international law, a state may use lethal force In armed conflict, against enemy combatants; or In self-defense, against an imminent armed attack.

Drug dealing does not qualify as participating in an armed conflict, or
launching an armed attack.

I voted for Trump 3x and would vote for him again over any democrat. That said, I’m not going to just toe the line because my team is doing it anymore.

Trump does some great stuff. He does some bizarrely bad stuff too, like Covid lockdowns and potentially starting a war in South America without congressional approval, or calling someone a terrorist so they can use the military against them when they are clearly not terrorists.

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“It’s the kind of thing that makes military lawyers’ heads explode,” said Eugene Fiddell, who teaches military justice at Yale.

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Lol.


Now do Joe Biden and Afghanistan.


Justice my fricking arse.

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This allows the President to use force only against: imminent threats, hostile forces, or individuals posing an imminent threat to U.S. lives. Drug trafficking itself is not an “imminent armed threat.”

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Drugs are killing more people than arms.

It’s chemical warfare.

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Drug dealing does not qualify as participating in an armed conflict, or launching an armed attack. I voted for Trump 3x and would vote for him again over any democrat. That said, I’m not going to just toe the line because my team is doing it anymore.

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No, you will just toe the line of democrats.

It's sad that I agree with Senator King.

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As noted in the accompanying “Insane Clown Pentagon” piece, the view that the Venezuela operations don’t rise to the level of an armed conflict isn’t exactly rare. You’ll find many legal voices this week denouncing the alleged second strike as not even a war crime, but just crime. Senator King was one of a number of politicians this week to embrace that idea. “That’s a stone-cold war crime. It’s also murder,” King said, seeming to have very different feelings about the level of civilization to drone strikes.

King could be right. The distinction in the Venezuela operations between law enforcement (when the state can use deadly force only as a last resort, in the face of imminent threat) and war or armed conflict (when states can use deadly force as a first resort, against a belligerent nation or group) has been blurred to the point of meaninglessness. The Trump White House has complicated things by not bothering to make a consistent case for why it should be allowed to fire on unarmed boats, and doesn’t seem worried, for instance, that former Philippine president Roderigo Duterte is facing an International Criminal Court charge for “neutralizing” drug dealers.

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I just think the whole saga is an unforced error.

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The second Trump presidency has been marked by a dependably self-harming political cycle. First comes broad goal-setting (let’s crush DEI gravy trains, deport illegals, stop fentanyl imports), followed by bold action (slashing university funds, ICE raids, boat bombings), then predictable outrage of the “Fascism Scholars Flee for Canada” type, in turn inspiring ad-libbed tweets/truths/videos from officials that generate new problems (Trump’s “Agitators will be imprisoned!” post, FCC chair Brendan Carr’s “easy way or hard way” rant about Jimmy Kimmel, etc). Throughout, despite needing maximum popular support to advance their controversial policies, Trump and his top lieutenants trash whole demographics using language that invites obvious historical comparisons, while making one wonder if they know how to use the Google machine. Did Kristi Noem really not know Hitler also liked to call people “leeches”? More to the point, did Hegseth really not read the My Lai case before he replied to the Post’s “Kill them all” story?

In addressing the “fake news” report, Hegseth didn’t challenge the tale of shipwrecked survivors, but followed the pattern of creating new problems by tweet:

These highly effective strikes are specifically intended to be “lethal, kinetic strikes.” The declared intent is to stop lethal drugs, destroy narco-boats, and kill the narco-terrorists who are poisoning the American people… The Biden administration preferred the kid gloves approach… Biden coddled terrorists, we kill them.

“It’s almost word-for-word the order [Captain Ernest] Medina gave at My Lai,” says one attorney with experience in military justice cases. Ernest Medina was the infamous commander who reportedly told subordinates before a search-and-destroy mission in an area north of Quang Ngai, Vietnam, nicknamed “Pinkville” that “everything was to be killed,” including people and animals. “That sounds an awful lot like killing everybody on that boat,” the lawyer added.

“Secretary Hegseth has made many statements that he may come to regret politically, if not legally,” said Fiddell.

There’s already evidence of that regret. On the topic of the boat bombings, the Trump Administration made a sharp course change in the last few days.

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Then why aren’t we bombing China and Mexico, where 90% of the drugs are coming from?