7 ms·
Secret Boat Strike Memo Justifies Kills by Claiming Targeting Drugs, Not People
- gigatexal 11mo agoHere’s hoping Congress wakes up and passes laws that curbs presidential power.
- pissmeself 11mo ago[dead]
- Terr_ 11mo agoThat was my wishful hope in 2016, today I can't imagine it happening without a very different Congress.
- amanaplanacanal 11mo agoMidterms are next year. Think about who you want in Congress and vote appropriately.
- kelnos 11mo agoThat will only work if Democrats can obtain a veto-proof supermajority in both houses. Good luck with that. The problem right now is that the Executive Branch is refusing to carry out the existing will of Congress. Passing more bills (that will be vetoed) to tell the executive to do its job isn't all that helpful. At this point I think only the courts can save us, but I don't think we can rely on SCOTUS to do the right thing. And even if they did, they have no real teeth to force Trump to do anything. I carefully think we are better off with Democrats controlling both (or at least one) houses of Congress, but that won't magically fix things.
- r00fus 11mo agoYou can at least remove the pursestrings from the executive by changing Congress from the rubber-stamp it currently is.
- Terr_ 11mo agoMaybe, but Trump is already violating plenty of Constitutional and statutory "pursestrings", and so far Republicans have been quite complicit in the process. Even with a reduced presence, they are likely to keep ~34 senate seats [0][1] which is enough to continue protecting him from justice. How would/should our system recover if a President commits all sorts of crimes with the support of 34 senators? (Bonus fun fact: The theoretical minimum popular support needed for 34 senators would be 3.6% of the population.)
- amanaplanacanal 11mo agoBetween the Epstein stuff and the economy, if it starts to look like Trump is going down Republicans in Congress will start bailing like rats leaving a sinking ship. They may be amoral, but they aren't stupid.
- Terr_ 11mo agoEventually, but the last 10 years are the story of me constantly overestimating them, so I think we should err on the side of pessimism. Heck, if would be very difficult to craft any factual account of political events these days that Me-of-2005 wouldn't dismiss as mad ramblings.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- jrmg 11mo agoThere already are laws! They’re not being enforced (enforcement is an Executive Branch function...). The remedy for the Executive Branch breaking and/or not enforcing laws made by the Legislative Branch is supposed to be impeachment by congress.
- gigatexal 11mo agotrue and teh Supreme Court having been packed by trump admin #1 and an incompetent democratic leadership or rather Sith-lord 5D chess playing Mitch mcconell blocking appointments to the court ... isn't helping protect the rule of law much at all.
- standardUser 11mo agoCongress has all the power they need, they simply refuse to use it.
- leobg 11mo agoYou’re welcome to move to the EU. Everything is a committee. Nobody is ever responsible. Nothing ever gets done.
- codyb 11mo agoSeems like we're bombing a bunch of low level, poverty stricken fisherman who occasionally bring a load of drugs from point A to point B. I'm sure the complete lack of effectiveness will be worth the condemnation and lost intelligence by our allies, and further erosion of our separation of powers.
- Qem 11mo ago> Seems like we're bombing a bunch of low level, poverty stricken fisherman There is some precedent: https://www.reuters.com/article/world/cia-faulted-in-shooting-down-of-missionary-plane-idUSTRE4AJ9AX/ https://www.reuters.com/article/world/cia-faulted-in-shootin...
- teachrdan 11mo agoHeh, I thought you were going to link to this: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/9/6/us-navy-seals-killed-north-korean-civilians-during-botched-mission-report https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/9/6/us-navy-seals-killed...
- steveBK123 11mo agoReading a GWOT era CIA book and.. you'll never guess where some of the guys responsible for this shootdown ended up next..
- bad_haircut72 11mo agoIm not actually in support of killing these people but I have to say, people seem to gloss over that each boatload of these drugs literally destroys multiple American families. People who have lost someone (either through death or just throwing their life away) to drugs will tell you these "poor fishermen" are murderers, who in no way extend the kind of empathy to us that we're expected to show them. It does get very complicated when you consider they're probably under a lot of "carrot AND stick" from the cartels... but the damage they do is real.
- victorbjorklund 11mo ago
- Qem 11mo agoOne wonders what kinds of domestic abuse such legal hacking enables as side-effect as well: "Sorry Ma'am, your husband was killed in that traffic stop, but you know, the officers were not actually targeting him, just his car..."
- viraptor 11mo agoThe US already has the "confiscate and sue the money" legal loophole process for robbing people at random, without heaving to charge the people with anything. Yay civil forfeiture.
- scuff3d 11mo agoI wonder if they're trying to setup a precedent to start deploying the military in force on US soil to fight "narco-terrorists"... "We'll we can't kill them all in the boats, so obviously we need military strike forces deployed in all major American cities and tanks on the boarder with Mexico"
- christkv 11mo agoThey did it in Panama against Noriega in 1989.
- ethin 11mo agoAm I the only one who thinks that this will effectively enable vigilantism? What is stopping this from trickling downwards to lower levels of government and law enforcement? And then, of course, it trickles down to the citizenry because of the actions of that government.
- siliconc0w 11mo agoDue to the sheer number of outright lies and bad faith arguments the courts really ought to order an independent council to review all administration opinions and briefs.
- jrs235 11mo agoCivil forfeiture taken to a new level? "We're suing the money and confiscating it, we're not suing you." -> "We're bombing drugs, not people." Collateral damage be damned!
- esbranson 11mo agoAs here, saying the Islamic State was a criminal organization may have been true, but once they were declared to be organized armed groups participating in an non-international armed conflict, they were subject to lawful killing. Should they give clear indication that they have placed themselves hors de combat (surrendered), they are subject to life imprisonment. Though it'd probably be safer to set their own boat on fire and jump off before heading out to sea.
- wbshaw 11mo agoYou can make up any story you want about the actual reason these people are in the boats, where they're going, or if they are or are not committing crimes (even intermittently). None of those stories are true. At the end of the day, we are murdering people without due process. Full stop.