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Notes -
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/white-house-admiral-approved-second-strike-boat-venezuela-was-well-within-legal-2025-12-01/
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/some-us-republicans-want-answers-venezuela-strikes-despite-trump-2025-12-01/
Aaand (after previously denying it?) the White House confirms that a second strike killed survivors of an initial strike on an alleged drug smuggling boat. (Hegseth is joking about it) It even seems the purpose of the second strike was solely to leave no survivors.
Curious that the targeted smuggling boats have large crews, rather than conserving space and weight capacity for drugs...
Anyone have a read on whether or not there are still "Trump is the anti-war President" true believers and, if so, how those people are trying to square the circle?
The stupider this becomes, the more likely it seems that this conflict is a result of Trump's fixation with spoils of war and that he actually thinks we can literally just "take the oil."
Someone online pointed out that 18.3.2.1 of the Department of Defense Law of War Manual reads:
That second strike, if it happened, is literally in the manual as an example of an illegal order that would be a violation of the laws of war. I am as-yet unclear on how involved Trump or Hegseth were in this operation but it sounds like, minimally, everyone in the chain of command between Admiral Frank Bradley and whomever actually executed the strike is, at least, a war criminal.
Well, if that's true, screw that manual and screw your laws of war. You don't let the enemy survive after you've drone striked them once. You finish the job. Nothing in the calculus changes that led you to issuing that strike just because you didn't do a perfect job the first strike.
I agree, this seems to me a perplexing point to focus on. For instance the US used delay-action bombs specifically to target rescuers and firefighters trying to put out fire in burning cities during WW2 and beyond - some of those bombs are active to this day in Germany. As of now you can go and watch similar tactics being used in Ukraine war, where you have literal videos of drones bombing wounded, kneeling and praying soldiers, you have videos of double-tapping tanks and APCs including soldiers seeking refuge under such vehicles and more.
Double-tap operations were famous under Obama, where drone strikes targeted either rescue operations or even funerals of terrorists. But maybe this is the critique? Arguably Hegsegh is stupid and he should have done Obama style duble-tap operation, where the military waits for rescue vessel picking up the drowning terrorists only to bomb them again or maybe bomb attendees at their funeral or hospital visitors? The famous sniper tactics of purposefully only wounding the target and letting him alive as bait to kill medics and other valuable targets of opportunity.
I'm pretty sure no one was coming to pick up the drowning drug dealers.
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