Legal Or Not?

The Trump administration engages in a policy of extrajudicial killings of purported narco terrorists in the Gulf of Mexico and Eastern Pacific.  The legal justification goes like this:  The US is engaged in an "armed conflict" with the specific drug cartels, designating them as "unlawful combatants" and "foreign terrorist organizations" (FTOs).  Consequently, the President can order them rubbed-out.  Judge, jury and executioner sans trial and process.

I sorta get this - presidents have rubbed-out bad dudes by means of drone strikes all day long; nevertheless, we've not been attacked by or exist in a state of war with the country of Venezuela.   Nicolás Maduro Moros is a Venezuelan politician and former union leader who has been serving as the president of Venezuela since 2013.  He's a dictator, cartel leader and all-around bad dude who, unlike former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, hasn't been worthy of a Trump presidential pardon.  A singularly vexing conundrum for which not a single MAGA adherent can offer me a rational explanation.  There's something more at play here.  Millions upon tens of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of untraceable Trump Meme Coins to launder a deal?  I can't quite put my finger on it.  But I digress.  Back to the narco terrorist boat strikes.

Set-aside the high tech standoff nature of the strikes for a moment and consider this:  How would Americans respond if our law enforcement on the high seas simply interdicted and boarded the boats, summarily executed everyone aboard, and then sank the evidence including the boat, bodies and the cargo? 

The horrors of this policy haven't changed - only the methodology - raising serious concerns about the legality of this stratagem.

Now it is reported that the military "double-tapped" survivors of an initial strike on a boat on September 2nd.  That's right; if factually true, someone ordered the killing of a couple of shipwrecked survivors.

That would very likely be criminal under the UCMJ.    

Nevertheless, according to Karoline Leavitt survivors clinging to floating wreckage constitute an imminent threat to the US.  But let's face it, her body language is a terrible look, dontcha think?

Gonna be interesting how this plays-out.  

And nobody's talking about Jeffrey Epstein trafficking young girls for billionaire perverts....