A new, disturbing detail in the “drug boat” controversy that has enveloped Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over the past week calls the purpose of the entire operation into question.
According to an exclusive report from CNN, the alleged narco-trafficking boat that the U.S. military targeted on September 2 in a “double tap” strike, which killed 11 people, wasn’t even heading to the U.S.
Navy Admiral Frank “Mitch” Bradley, who was in charge of the operation, reported to lawmakers that the boat they struck was actually en route to link up with a larger boat that was heading to Suriname, a country east of Venezuela, two sources with direct knowledge of his remarks said.
Bradley also said that it was still possible that the alleged drug shipment could have eventually ended up in the U.S., the sources told CNN—rather dubious justification for a strike that left several people dead.
Premeditated murder for political points.
Lock Him Up.
Lock him up! I DECLARE it!
Do people realize how much drugs are brought into the US everyday? These small boats wouldn’t even be able to supply a small city. This is a complete joke. War on Drugs theatre.
Well they are claiming it’s Fentanyl, which is obviously a lie… But if it were then even just 1 kilo could fuel a city for a while. Assuming a 2mg dose, which is literally overkill for people without a tolerance, you would get 500K doses.
This is why the war on drugs is completely lost now. Any person could smuggle like 10G in their butt or shoe and would have like 5000 doses, equivalent of like 25k minimum street value. None of this coming by speedboat, it’s too easy to just hide in commerce.
A rough estimate for cocaine use alone would be anywhere from 4,000-12,000 pounds a day for illicit US use. It is a staggering amount of drugs that need to be made or imported for US citizens.
They also need to send several more times than this to keep supply flowing because of interdiction, waste, and shrinkage. So we are talking about 100,000-250,000 pounds of all illicit drugs every single day.
The War On Drugs was unbelievable success for it’s true intentions. A lot of people don’t understand that it was really a war on minorities. At best it was a political tool to suppress the public and at worst it was a multigenerational genocide.
Instead of giving people the hope and tools for a better future, our government used it to strip our rights, normalize police militarization, destroys countless families, and let people die from overdoses needlessly.
The loss of life is staggering. The dramatic drop in quality of life is mind boggling. The reparations the government would owe if this reality would reach the masses would be easily a hundred trillion dollars if you also count the destruction in Mexico and South America.
Instead of helping vulnerable people they instead decided to let the Sacklers and Eli-Lillys promote hardcore opiates to doctors and patients while claiming they were safe and harmless; feeding the very same drug war machine that leads to a presumably innocent boat to be blasted out of the water and finished off an entire hour later.
It’s rotten to the core.
Do you have some sources for your data? Not that I don’t believe you, it’s just really hard to find drug statistics without wading through pages and pages of drug recovery program links in a Google search.
I did some basic research and made some assumptions. 1-2 million cocaine users that self identify. More likely 10-20 million users with a lot of those being casual take it or leave it users. Probably just under a million chronic users.
So let’s just say about million grams a day over a million users. That is about two tons. I think this is probably an underestimate, honestly.
Obviously my methodology is not great, just rough guesses based upon the best information.
Since when has being wrong ever prevented the US military from acting?
Certainly not since the Gulf of Tolkien
You mean Operation Enduring Ent?
I think this one is Operation Túrin’s Bain, the one with the big, stinky dragon
I could of sworn it was actually a new Johnny Depp movie
You don’t really know, do you?
Not really, it just mostly feels that way
Okay but… even if it was, who the fuck are we to unilaterally make the decision to execute them?
I’d wager the largest contributors to preventable deaths in the US (outside of maybe cholesterol-induced cardiovascular disease) are cigarettes and alcohol, so at best these strikes would be the equivalent of blowing up the trucks delivering the products to distribution centers.
At worst - and what we seem to be doing now - we are indiscriminately annihilating any vehicles that are in the general vicinity of the distilleries.
There have been rum runners, cigar runners, drug runners, all because of prohibition.
Seems like maybe it’s the prohibition part that’s the problem
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They’re not making fentanyl on boats though
Perfect, because these guys aren’t smuggling fentanyl.
Don’t try to prompt critical thinking in the US with your facts. If those citizens could read, they would be very upset.
We are all upset but ww have no political mechanism in place that gives the people a voice in government.
Oh, the senate and house of gerrymandered districts? That represents the people who gerrymandered the districts. The president? He represents the randos who pick him the “electoral college”. And he has dementia. The judicial? They just want a big boat or their religious views to be the ones we follow, they represent themselves.
I feel like “we the people” should vote daily by phone so we could actually have a voice. Who should see the votes? Everyone. Us, them, the world.
If the idiots in charge destroy a boat and the people’s vote immediately turns negative, then they should not do that. If we go to war and our vote is positive, then yeah let’s keep going to war.
This reminds me of the Ludlow Amendment.
I’ll have to read up on that.
You guys and I mean collectively voted for this. Because you didn’t want a woman in power.
It’s more complicated than that. There’s massive gerrymandering, voter suppression, and straight up fraud. I won’t say the popular vote was stolen, because the investigation is ongoing, but there’s credible mounting evidence, unlike Trump’s claims following the 2020 election. Then, ultimately, the electoral college picks for us. We’re not governed for the people, by the people. The majority of Americans have to deal with this, while living in an end-stage-capitalist cage, and we get to read constant insults from ignorant people around the world who can’t see fascism for the cancer it is. It’s on the rise everywhere. Probably in your country as well. Are you responsible for the rise of fascism in your country, or is it the morons actually voting for it?
Sick comeback. I’d forgotten about that.
First-past-the-post needs to go
No, the electoral college vote for the president. We, the people are given a choice just to see what we would pick, but we don’t mean anything. The ballot says purple, the college picks banana yellow. That’s how it works.
It’s quite obvious by now that the US military will not decline following illegal orders. That’s what led to most atrocities committed by German troops in WW2. The free world must get ready to ally and invade the US to prevent further escalation.
lol .ml
Yes, but also what they said was accurate
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I’m well aware. It doesn’t make what the first person in the chain said incorrect
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No I mean
It’s quite obvious by now that the US military will not decline following illegal orders.
And
And That’s what led to most atrocities committed by German troops in WW2.
And I do think that the free world needs to get ready to defend each other
I wouldn’t say it is obvious they won’t decline. This particular event could sway it significantly. If they end up throwing the admiral under the bus, I would bet people would think more about illegal orders in the future.
Does that seem likely to you? I guess it depends on the outcome of the probes by both congress and senate, but it doesn’t seem likely to me that anything will come out of them. If even it did, he would still have to be found guilty by a military court I think. Unless all the strikes are declared illegal due to the US not being at war in which case it could go to a civil court, as far as I understand. That would mean the administration admits that the whole campaign had no legal ground though, which I don’t see happening. Plus the supreme court seemingly being completely corrupted as well…
Obviously what I wrote above is completely impossible, there’s no way to invade the US. And by free world I certainly don’t mean Russia or China either, so no chance. This can only be resolved from within the US. I hope it will, but at the moment it looks grim.
Imagine actually being surprised by this
The people who think it was smuggling drugs are the people who think ICE is only going after people who break the law
These boats would have had to refuel multiple times during the trip, this has been obvious all along
Aren’t these all small boats anyway? Like boats that are too small to carry that much fuel? I thought this was established already.
Something gives me the impression that Trump thinks extra-judicial is a type of bubblegum.
I don’t think they ever claimed it was heading for US. The first time I heard about it it was claimed it was heading for some island.
No shit
