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Notes -
The US military takes prisoners of war because the US is a civilized nation. I believe the Navy absolutely would have rescued the survivors if the situation was straight-forward. But it's not and what exactly happened and what the point of the second strike was remains to be seen.
It seems just a tad goofy to go through that rigamarole of formally capturing these guys, bringing them to the U.S., trying them, then sentencing them to imprisonment (at our expense) or deporting them back home where... they might do the same thing over again?
Which gets into the whole "what is 'due process' when removing an illegal immigrant" debate we've been having sporadically.
This is due in part to Venezuela doing the thing where it apparently sends gang members and drugs at the U.S. with official approval from Maduro, AND doesn't want to claim its boys so it says nothing when they get wasted. So its not a 'war' but its definitely an active campaign of sorts.
Suffice it to say, I don't think they should count as 'civilians' under any fair definition, and if Venezuela doesn't want to make this a formal war, then its... "silly" to think the rules of war need to be strictly observed. If they're going to keep them in that weird grey area, then treating them like pirates until proven otherwise seems fair.
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