Hegseth boat strike (Trump administration brewing)

[Syne]

How can you be charged with a crime if you haven't committed one?

[Magical Realist]

How can you be charged with a crime if you haven't committed one?

You can be falsely charged with a crime. Happens all the time.

We're done. I have better things to do than quibbling over your petty shit.

[Syne]

Wow, you found the bottom of your idiot hole. Congratulations!

You can be falsely charged with a crime.

MR doesn't know what the opposite of this is.

[Zinjanthropos]

No, actively engaging in criminal activity is literally what makes you a criminal. Even if never caught or tried. Happens all the time.
Conflating the presumption of innocence in a court of law with what actually happens out in the real world is just naive.

If I trafficked drugs then the USA would probably, under normal circumstances, be a preferred destination. Better to do it there than China, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Laos, Malaysia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, UAE, & Viet Nam to name a few where there’s a chance I might not get to do it again, ever.

[Syne]

Same goes for being gay, illegal immigration, and even petty crime in many of those.

[Syne]

Adm. Bradley testified before a congressional committee. There was no initial "kill them all" order from Hegseth, there was no secondary "no survivors" order from Hegseth, the drug runners reportedly return to the boat, they seemed to be salvaging drugs, and could have had a functioning radio with which to call in backup.

IOW, zero possible crimes from Hegseth and likely none from anyone involved in the strike.

[Yazata]

I haven't been paying a lot of attention to this, because it seemed to me to be another of the endless succession of media-stoked pseudo-crises.

The way it looks to me is that the original order was to sink the boats. In the case in question, the first drone strike didn't succeed in sinking the boat, so the drone hit it again. No "war-crimes" involved, it's simply how military actions are conducted. When they are ordered to destroy something (an enemy ship, plane or infantry) they will fire repeatedly until the target is destroyed.

The fact that there were survivors in the water hanging on to the boat wouldn't seem to make it immune from being sunk if having crew aboard didn't make it immune from being sunk in the first place.

When Obama and Biden ordered drone strikes wherever it happened to be (Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia...), they knew that they were killing human beings: alleged Taliban, Al Qaida, ISIS or Al Shabab. No suggestion that unless the targets were given trials, their human rights were violated by shooting at them.

According to the CDC, there were 76,282 deaths in the United States in 2023 attributable to overdoses of synthetic opioids. (Compare that to a total of 53,402 US battle deaths in all of World War I!) ISIS and Al Qaida never did to the US anything remotely like what Colombian, Venezuelan and Mexican drug cartels are doing to us every year.

Sorry if I can't get very excited. I'd like to see more drug boats get iced.

[Syne]

Not to mention Obama's strikes on US citizens.

Now that this WaPo fabrication from an "anonymous source" has soured, the Dems are trying to resuscitate Signalgate against Pete Hegseth again, even though the Secretary of War has the authority to declassify things under his purview. This is just another empty attack.

Why are the Dems suddenly so afraid of Pete?

[Zinjanthropos]

As usual the crime victim's rights mean little. The advantage of being a criminal in the USA means you have rights no matter how many victims left in their wake. In a country where one can legally kill someone who turns around in a driveway the death of drug runners apparently is a bigger cause for concern.

[Magical Realist]

It's inspiring that the bloody war between US Navy battleships and drug-smugglers in fishing boats is turning towards our favor. It was a close call there for awhile. But it looks like we will win this thing after all. Secretary Hogsweat should get a big shiny medal for this.