Insane Clown Pentagon

Its critics may be hypocrites, but the Trump administration has created a massive mess for itself with its Venezuelan boat-bombings

This time, it’s not fake news. Donald Trump, War Secretary Pete Hegseth, Admiral Frank Mitchell Bradley, and soldiers involved with the September 2nd boat-bombing operation that allegedly involved firing a second time on survivors really do face serious legal exposure, with Trump and Hegseth even handing enemies potential grounds for impeachment through their own statements.

The administration’s behavior since Monday has been a master class in political dysfunction. Trump, Karoline Leavitt, and especially Hegseth created major political problems both by clumsily throwing troops under the bus at the first sign of scandal, and also by inadvertently giving evidence against themselves at the exact moment they’re facing a destabilizing challenge from Senators like Mark Kelly. How bad is it? Law professors and military analysts struggled to find words.

“Fucking shameful, and I voted for these guys,” says a former Army officer who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“It’s the kind of thing that makes military lawyers’ heads explode,” said Eugene Fiddell, who teaches military justice at Yale.

“Totally crazy,” added Michel Paradis, an author and human rights lawyer known for representing Guantanamo Bay detainees. “Even if I could come up with some sort of legal theory for why we can start bombing drug boats indiscriminately, you can’t shoot survivors.”

“It’s pretty remarkable that the United States has decided that at the — I’m not going to use the word whim — that at the discretion of the president, he can designate any criminal organization as a terrorist organization and start killing people as a measure of first resort,” said Geoffrey Corn, professor of law and a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel.

Former CIA analyst Larry Johnson described talking to service members who are struggling with these orders, adding that these missions also cross a line for him in a big way. “We’ve sort of enshrined under the banner of fighting terrorism this concept of extrajudicial killings,” he said. “Well, we’re now the goddamn Salvador death squads. It’s outrageous.”

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