Pentagon Pete’s Embarrassing New Boat Strike Blunder Exposed: Turns out, bombing “terrorists” without due process makes it difficult to arrest said “terrorists.”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/pentagon-petes-embarrassing-new-boat-strike-blunder-exposed/
29 Comments
Snippets:
* Andrés Fernando Tufiño Chila, a 42-year-old Ecuadorian native with a drug-trafficking record, was one of two survivors of an Oct. 16 U.S. strike on a submarine that the Pentagon alleges was carrying drugs overseas. Two others were killed in the strike, and the fourth was extradited to Colombia.
* The U.S. military captured Chila, then sent him back to Ecuador to be prosecuted. However, the U.S. provided the Ecuadorian government with no evidence that could lead to Chila’s arrest. Any evidence proving that Chila was committing a crime on that boat, such as seized drugs, GPS records, or cell phones, was blasted to the bottom of the sea.
* The Ecuadorian government **was forced to let Chila go**, according to the Washington Post.
* The failure to even apprehend an alleged narcoterrorist is at extreme odds with the 45-year-old Defense Secretary’s tough-on-narcoterrorism rhetoric.
>*“If these people were drug traffickers and deserving of death, how is it that you would pick them up and just let them go?” Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), a member of the House intelligence and foreign affairs committees, told the Post.*
* Hegseth has staked his reputation and potentially his job on the effectiveness of the boat strikes. Hegseth recently landed in hot water for an alleged “kill them all” order on a Venezuelan drug boat, killing survivors of an initial September 2 strike that critics have labeled a potential war crime.
* When reports of the order surfaced in late November, Hegseth boasted, **“Biden coddled terrorists, we kill them.”**
/s Don’t blame Pete, he was drunk on the job.
Trump’s administration is very corrupt, lawless, and weak.
He’s an idiot
If you’re killing people without warning or due process, YOU are the terrorist
This was never about combatting drug smuggling, this has always been about toppling the Maduro regime, about resource grabbing, about defending murder by blowing up boats under a false pretense, and about securing funding for Trump’s excessive national security measures at home and military interventionism abroad.
Venezuela has oil, and Trump is willing to carry out summary executions, force regime change and pursue another foreign war to steal that oil.
And those who are defending and enabling this effort by falsely disguising it as some kind of act of sympathy or justice for Americans struggling with drug addiction, are nothing but complicit.
History is repeating itself. Have we learned anything?
This revisionist, horseshit narrative about Venezuela stealing *our* oil is just another excuse provided to continue conducting these extrajudicial killings and tanker seizures without legal justification or evidence warranting these international crimes.
Another means to an end approach to making the case for military escalation and foreign conflict against “terrorists” and “enemy” countries. Sounds awfully familiar.
Meanwhile, the facts show that a vast portion of the fentanyl being smuggled into the country isn’t being brought in on the backs of migrants. Most seizures are happening at ports of entry, while these drugs are being primarily trafficked in by US citizens no less.
It should also and always be noted that China still remains the major global supplier of fentanyl precursor chemicals. These chemicals are shipped world-wide. Some shipments are sent directly from China to the US as well. And while there is a China-Cartel pipeline, most of these cartels are stationed in Mexico, not South America.
But what does Trump care? Once again, this was never about fighting drug smugglers, it’s always been about rationalizing murder, facilitating regime change, and justifying another foreign war for oil in the name of good ol fashion, “we don’t negotiate with terrorists” American values.
“embarrassing blunder”? This shit is cold-blooded mass murder
He’s said time and time again that the only thing he values is lethality. They don’t care if one guy gets away, they’ve killed 60 others and counting. The murder is the point.
War Clown.
Lol, no surprise there. Ya can’t really slap cuffs on ash, can ya Pete? 😂 Jokes aside tho, seriously, due process matters. Hot take, but we gotta stop being judge, jury, n executioner all at once. Not cool, bro. Not cool at all. It’s about time we step up and demand better.
Dead men tell no tales… against their fellow terrorists.
At least when you arrest someone you can get a ton of intel from them.
Hegseth is an amateur.
It’s a shaministration from top to bottom.
White privileged c students who are sure they are geniuses and terminate anyone who says they are not.
Extra judicial killings are murder. Can we stop with the Orwellian doublespeak.
Stupid and confident,
Dangerous combo
He’s a murderer. Stop twisting yourselves in knots legitimizing it. Some things are in fact very simple.
ETA: so is every single soldier who passed along or followed the command, to be clear.
Oh yeah I’d forgotten about the war crimes after all the pedophilia and infanticide.
It’s not simply “bombing”, it’s murder.
Almost makes one a terrorist to be randomly bombing boats that are not in domestic waters constituting a direct threat
I feel like “Pentagon Pete” and “boat strike blunder” are much too cutesy wording for the seriousness of what is going on here.
This is a nation with an authoritarian regime extra-judicially murdering the citizens of another. It’s not really a “whoopsie” or cute.
Let me know when something happens.
Ummm, the point isn’t to arrest drug dealers – or stop drugs entering the country – or stop terrorists. The entire point of blowing up these boats is to force Maduro to step down (so American oil companies can make a bunch of money) or for Venezuela to fight back (so Trump can invade and American oil and defense companies can make a bunch of money). While signalling to his base that he’s a tough-guy.
Downvoted for Daily Beast. Fuck their paywall and fuck their shoddy journalism.
Expect nothing less from a DUI hire.
>Hegseth has staked his reputation
The only thing more worthless than that is the orange piece of garbage playing president between naps.
The only cabinet this fool is qualified to get into is the liquor cabinet.
I still don’t understand though. Maybe someone could help me out but…
the argument is they are targeting these folks under the pretext of drug interdiction, particularly fentanyl. that they are targeting traffickers
but their own research shows from their own agencies (who are headed by people loyal to the president’s aforementioned agenda) that the majority of fentanyl is coming from Mexico, specifically the Sinaloa and the CJNG cartels; with the precursor chemicals coming almost entirely from China.
Why aren’t they being targeted?
Honestly it would be nice to hear from a mature adult with some background and/or history in international relations, geopolitics, etc
Being labelled a terrorist does not authorize *any* use of force according to US law.
It’s murder.
And they had warned cokey Hegseth about the booze.
He is just a religious fundamentalist like there are plenty in the US of A.