For the past two months, the United States military — as directed by President
Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — has been blowing up small
boats in international waters near the nation of Venezuela.

Numerous experts in military and international law are reaching the seemingly
unavoidable conclusion that these unprovoked and unauthorized attacks constitute
outright murder, flagrant war crimes, or both.

Trump and Hegseth have “justified” these actions by claiming they are protecting
Americans from illegal drugs.

That patently artificial excuse would be almost laughable if it weren’t
resulting in what amounts to summary executions of dozens of potentially
innocent civilians from Venezuela (and possibly other countries) and the further
erosion of America’s standing in the world.

A few points to make (this list could be much longer):

* Even if every one of these boats was loaded with illegal drugs, each incident
should have been handled as a crime, not as a pretext for Trump and Hegseth
to practice siccing the United States military on whoever they want (and
testing whether the military will follow even their most outrageous and
potentially unlawful orders).

* Even if every one of these boats was loaded with illegal drugs, that is no
excuse for what was reported a few days ago, which is that after the first
missile strike on one of these boats back in early September, there were two
survivors clinging to the wreckage who were then blown up in a shocking
violation of the Pentagon’s own black-and-white proscription against killing
shipwrecked enemies.

* Even if every one of these boats was loaded with illegal drugs, that would be
merely a drop in the bucket compared to the overall amount of illicit
narcotics being trafficked around the globe at any given moment.

* If Trump is so worried about illegal drugs, why did he just pardon the former
president of Honduras, who had been tried, convicted, and sentenced to 45
years in prison for facilitating a years-long smuggling operation that
brought over 800,000 pounds of cocaine into the United States? (By one
estimate, that’s enough cocaine to get every adult in America high. 17
times.)

Some members of Congress — Democrats *and* Republicans — are calling for formal
investigations into these attacks.

Join Public Citizen in a message to all members of Congress:
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The American people deserve to know much more about these boat attacks, which
appear to be unlawful and pretextual. Congress should immediately initiate
formal investigations into whether these attacks should be happening at all
along with what, if any, laws or Pentagon rules may have been violated by
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth or anyone under his so-called leadership.
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Thanks for taking action.

For justice,

- Robert Weissman & Lisa Gilbert, Co-Presidents of Public Citizen


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