U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is acknowledging that the United States, on orders from President Donald Trump, executed a military strike on an alleged Venezuelan drug cartel’s boat loaded with “poison,” and says the U.S. will continue to do so.
“Instead of interdicting it, on the president’s orders, we blew it up,” Rubio told reporters, according to The Washington Post’s John Hudson. “And it’ll happen again.”
“What will stop them is when you blow them up, when you get rid of them,” Rubio also said (video below). “The President of the United States is going to wage war on narco-terrorist organizations, this one was operating an international waters headed towards the United States to flood our country with poison, and under President Trump, those days are over.”
Hudson also reported, “When asked if the US sent a warning to the boat before it was destroyed, killing everyone onboard, Rubio insisted that the vessel, like others carrying drugs, posed an ‘immediate threat to the United States’ providing the right to destroy it.”
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Critics, questioning the President’s legal authority, were outraged that the occupants were not arrested and tried through the courts, but the Secretary of State defended the President’s actions.
The Atlantic’s James Surowiecki asked, “what’s the legal authority that allows the US military to execute ‘drug traffickers’ whenever it wants?”
“So despite no Authorization for Use of Military Force and no possible invocation of the War Powers Act, the U.S. military is now going to be drone striking people alleged to be committing a crime?” asked attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnick. “Again, on what legal authority?”
Constitutional law professor and political scientist Anthony Michael Kreis added, “This is not heroic; it’s criminal. Make no mistake: denying people due process who are not enemies of the United States through extra-judicial executions is repugnant to everything this country is supposed to stand for like the rule of law.”
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The Washington Post earlier reported that the “U.S. military strike on suspected drug smugglers in the Caribbean Sea killed 11 people Tuesday, according to President Donald Trump, who claimed that the ‘Narcoterrorists’ targeted in the operation were affiliated with a criminal gang that he says acts at the direction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.”
“The attack occurred ‘while the terrorists were at sea in International waters transporting illegal narcotics, heading to the United States,’ Trump wrote on social media. ‘ … Please let this serve as notice to anybody even thinking about bringing drugs into the United States of America. BEWARE!'”
Watch the video below or at this link.
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Image via Reuters