One illegal act leads to another, and another, and another.
Over 80 alleged criminals are now dead in such attacks, but we'll never know if they really were criminals.
Hegseth order on first Caribbean boat strike, officials say: Kill them all: As
two men clung to a stricken, burning ship targeted by SEAL Team 6, the
Joint Special Operations commander followed the defense secretary’s
order to leave no survivors.
... The
alleged traffickers pose no imminent threat of attack against the
United States and are not, as the Trump administration has tried to
argue, in an “armed conflict” with the U.S., these officials and experts
say. 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.
Even
if the U.S. were at war with the traffickers, an order to kill all the
boat’s occupants if they were no longer able to fight “would in essence
be an order to show no quarter, which would be a war crime,” said
Huntley, now director of the national security law program at Georgetown
Law. ... "the state using force is judge, jury and executioner," Huntley said. ...
If
the video of the blast that killed the two survivors on Sept. 2 were
made public, people would be horrified, said one person who watched the
live feed. The Intercept first reported that the survivors were killed in a follow-up attack. ... There has been no public release of a subsequent strike video ...
