U.S. Attacked Boat Near Venezuela Multiple Times to Kill Survivors

People on board the boat off the coast of Venezuela that was destroyed by the U S military last Tuesday were declared to have survived an initial strike according to two American functionaries familiar with the matter They were then killed shortly after in a follow-up attack The boat was under U S surveillance for a considerable period of time Those on board apparently spotted the U S aerial assets and altered the vessel s unit U S representatives noted the boat appeared to have turned back toward shore after which it was subjected to multiple strikes Three sources including Sen Rand Paul disclosed the boat was attacked by one or more drones A very small number of Senate and House staffers separately received highly classified briefings about the attack on Tuesday No Senators or House members were in attendance people familiar with the briefings reported The Intercept Two officers familiar with the strike were left with the impression that more attacks in the Caribbean would be forthcoming in the weeks ahead Multiple sources say that Special Operations Command or SOCOM conducted the lethal operation This is considered highly atypical given all the other military assets based in the region Colonel Allie Weiskopf SOCOM s director of inhabitants affairs would not comment on the command s involvement in the attack We don t have anything for you she recounted The Intercept In response to questions from The Intercept Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell sent this message Narco-terrorists who poison the American people will find no safe harbor in international waters or anywhere in our hemisphere This strike sent a clear message if you traffic drugs toward our shores the United States military will use every tool at our disposal to stop you cold President Donald Trump mentioned he authorized the attack and posted an edited video to social media last week showing a four-engine speedboat cutting through the water with numerous people on board An explosion then destroys the boat Trump reported the strike killed people whom he characterized as narcoterrorists The administration has offered no evidence to aid these assertions Secretary of State Marco Rubio also made clear that the U S could have halted the ship and arrested the crew but chose to kill them instead Instead of interdicting it on the president s orders we blew it up and it ll happen again he boasted Brian Finucane a former State Department lawyer who is an expert in counterterrorism issues and the laws of war stated that the new details while horrific did not change the underlying legal issues The U S president is asserting the power to engage in the premeditated killing of people outside of armed conflict he reported The Intercept There is no evidence that these people were lawful targets The Trump administration hasn t established that there was an armed conflict hasn t established that the law of armed conflict governed any such hostilities and hasn t established that the people aboard the vessel the vessel itself or its cargo were lawful targets under the law of war Members of Congress from both parties have expressed alarm about the attack Sen Rand Paul R-Ky Advised The Intercept that while he didn t oppose the use of drones in war he objected to the U S summarily killing people without due process During my time in the Senate I have been the foremost critic of drones being used on civilians especially Americans stated Paul a member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations The new drone attack on a small speedboat over miles from our shore without identification of the occupants or the content of the boat is in no way part of a declared war and defies our longstanding Coast Guard rules of engagement which include warnings to halt non-lethal force to capture and ultimately lethal force in self-defense or in cases of resistance Related Pentagon Official Trump Boat Strike Was a Criminal Attack on Civilians Last week a high-ranking Pentagon official who spoke to the Intercept on the condition of anonymity mentioned that the strike in the Caribbean a criminal attack on civilians and revealed that the Trump administration paved the way for it by firing the top legal officials of the Army and the Air Force earlier this year The U S is now directly targeting civilians Drug traffickers may be criminals but they aren t combatants the War Department official revealed When Trump fired the military s top lawyers the rest saw the writing on the wall and instead of being a critical firebreak they are now a rubber stamp complicit in this crime The post U S Attacked Boat Near Venezuela Multiple Times to Kill Survivors appeared first on The Intercept