This week, President Donald Trump announced that he ordered a military attack on what he claimed were drug traffickers in a small boat in the Caribbean. However, two high-ranking Pentagon officials told The Intercept that the strike was a criminal attack on civilians — and the reasoning for it was created only after the attack.
“The U.S. is now directly targeting civilians. Drug traffickers may be criminals but they aren’t combatants,” one official said. “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.”
On Truth Social, Trump claimed the strike was “against positively identified Tren de Aragua Narcoterrorists."
The declassified video shows a small boat with four engines flying through the water when it explodes. It took days for the White House to give the public a story.
Experts called Hegseth’s logic "flimsy, if not farcical," The Intercept reported.
“Tren de Aragua being designated as a foreign terrorist organization is a purely domestic law enforcement designation. It offers no authority for the military to use deadly force,” Todd Huntley told the site. He's spent more than 23 years as an active-duty judge advocate and legal advisor for Special Operations forces. “Under international law, there’s no way this even gets close to being a legitimate use of force."
The report cited everyone from legal experts to members of Congress who have made similar comments.
Hegseth has indicated there will be more strikes to come.
“It won’t stop with just this strike,” he told Fox News on Wednesday. "Anyone else trafficking in those waters who we know is a designated narco-terrorist will face the same fate."