Retired major general alarmed 'big time' as military lawyers miss critical briefing

Retired Maj. Gen. James “Spider" Marks said he is highly concerned about the absence of military lawyers who were scheduled to attend a briefing with lawmakers about continuing U.S. strikes on Venezuelan boats.

“Every operation that I was ever a part of, [attorneys were] the most important person in the room after you laid … your course of action,” Marks told CNN anchors Wolf Blitzer and Pamela Brown. “You laid all this stuff out, then you turn to your JAG (Judge Advocate General), you turn to either your civilian general counsel or your military JAG officer, and you'd say, ‘okay, you've been a part of this planning. You get the last vote right now. Are we doing what we can to meet all legal obligations that we have?’”

“And that's when the lawyers will say, as they probably did during the planning process, ‘look, we can get you to the solution you're looking for, but maybe this path that you guys want, we may have to tweak a little bit because I can't defend that,” said Marks. “I can't give you justification.’ The perspective is always, ‘how do I get to Yes.’ And in this case, not having the lawyers there, that gives me big-time concern.”

For over three months, the U.S. military has repeatedly struck boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, claiming the vessels were carrying drugs into the United States. The strikes have occurred nearly every week since the first attack announced on Sept. 2, killing dozens of people. However, the United Kingdom is no longer sharing intelligence with the U.S. about alleged drug trafficking vessels because it does not want to be complicit in “illegal” attacks.

Another issue Marks had with White House maneuvering into a wider, full-scale attack on Venezuela were the lack of clarity in its motivations, particularly it’s goal to “prevent drugs coming into the United States and to eliminate narco-trafficking in the hemisphere.”

“My only question about those is how do you measure when you're done and you think you've reached a point where everything's good?” Marks told Blitzer and Brown. “… More specifically, when you want to go back to what we did in Afghanistan, how do you know when you say, ‘okay, I think we're good to go here, we can start winding down’ or at least conduct some form of a transition?”