Just a couple of weeks ago, we heard about a military strike on a boat in international waters that, according to President Trump, was full of drug smugglers from Venezuela and resulted in 11 deaths. There was no proof of this, but Trump felt that he could do whatever he wanted in international waters to civilian boats from other countries. Now, just as questions were piling up about the legality and justification of that first strike, the president has gone and announced two more.
Per NBC, President Trump announced that U.S. forces had carried out a second strike on a Venezuelan vessel. He said the ship was helmed by “narcoterrorists” and was carrying “illegal narcotics” headed to the U.S.. This time, he said the strike killed three people, and that “no U.S. forces were harmed”. The president and his team have been pretty tight-lipped about the specifics of these operations, including the legal justification, but he wasn’t shy about claiming what was on the boats.
