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U.S. strike on an alleged drug boat kills 3 in the eastern Pacific Ocean

3d agoΒ·submitted bySunBelt_VOTER

The latest attack brings the number of people who have been killed in boat strikes by the U.S. military to at least 211 since the Trump administration began targeting those it calls "narcoterrorists" in early September.

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"Alleged" is doing so much work in that headline it deserves overtime pay. 211 kills on boats where the standard of evidence is apparently "the military said so," no trial, no charges, no nothing, just ordnance from above because Pete Hegseth needs a body count to put on Fox News.

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the "U.S. strike on an alleged drug boat" framing is convenient cover for the military industrial complex expanding its reach in the Pacific, because Hegseth and Mullin are always looking for a reason to project force and keep the money flowing.

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Not every strike in the Pacific is proof of some giant Pentagon grift. If there's evidence it was justified, say it. If not, call that out, but this automatic "military industrial complex" routine is just lazy.

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211 people killed on "alleged" drug boats with zero due process, and the same guy who can't get the Epstein files released is out here playing judge, jury, and executioner in international waters. OJ Simpson got a fair trial, these people didn't even get an accusation that held up in court.

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211 DEAD AND COUNTING, THIS IS WHAT TRUMP CALLS LAW AND ORDER, MORE STATE VIOLENCE, MORE EXECUTIONS BY PRESS RELEASE, MORE AMERICAN POWER USED LIKE A CLUB WHILE THE CON MAN FLOPS AROUND ONLINE AND HIS CROOKS PRETEND IT IS POLICY. IMPEACH HIM, REMOVE HIM, CONVICT HIM, AND LOCK UP EVERYONE GREENLIGHTING THESE KILLINGS, BECAUSE THIS LOSER IS STILL MAKING THE COUNTRY MORE CORRUPT, MORE DANGEROUS, AND MORE ASHAMED BY THE DAY.

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Nineteen years in business and I have paid enough in taxes to fund a few of those operations myself. Two hundred and eleven people taken off the water running fentanyl and cartel product into this country. NPR writes it up like a tragedy. I write it up like a scoreboard. You want to talk about deaths, go count the overdoses in my county from the poison these boats were moving. The military is doing what the DEA spent forty years failing to do because lawyers kept getting in the way. This is what enforcement actually looks like when you stop apologizing for it.

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211 people killed by U.S. military strikes on boats in the eastern Pacific since September. That number needs to sit with people for a moment. Not 211 arrests, not 211 interdictions, not 211 successful prosecutions that get drugs off streets. 211 dead. And the headline calls them "alleged" because that is actually the correct word: we do not know with any certainty who these people were before we killed them.

The "narcoterrorist" label is doing exactly what it was designed to do, which is to preemptively justify the body count by collapsing the legal distinction between a suspected drug mule on a panga boat and a terrorist combatant. Once you accept that framing, every dead fisherman becomes a win for the drug war. Every mistake gets buried in the category of acceptable losses.

Congress authorized none of this. No declaration of war, no formal AUMF for cartels, no legal framework that permits the U.S. military to execute people in international waters based on suspicion. The administration is simply doing it, and the number keeps climbing, and most of Washington is too busy with Iran and Hormuz to notice we are running a kill program in the Pacific with essentially zero public accountability.

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At 211 people killed on the basis of "alleged" drug activity, we are well past the point where this can be framed as targeted enforcement. That number is larger than many combat operations that triggered congressional oversight hearings. The legal basis for using military force against civilian boats in international waters without any judicial process has never been spelled out publicly, and the press has mostly let that slide. Whatever your position on drug trafficking, extrajudicial killing at this scale should require more than an administration's say-so.

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Kamala Harris warned us that handing a fascist the military means "alleged" becomes a death sentence with no trial, no evidence, no accountability. 211 people dead on ALLEGED drug boats while Trump's boys Kash Patel and Todd Blanche weaponize the DOJ against actual political opponents. The MAGATs wanted law and order; what they got is extrajudicial executions in international waters and a president who won't even release the Epstein files.

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