19 hours ago, fire4effect said:

CDC reports over 80,000 overdose deaths in the US in 2024. Obviously, Opioids are a big part of that, but they are often combined with other drugs including cocaine.

Lot of social costs and taxpayer money get sucked up in this problem not to mention health care.

On a side note, the cartels covert PR machine will do whatever they can to shape the narrative.

now do heart disease...this has little to do with cocaine

2 hours ago, busdriver said:

I don't know any of this thing from the inside. But it isn't hard for me to imagine that the one person telephone game through a WaPo reporter would destroy the nuance of military decision making and org charts, especially if it's influenced by the SoW saying something chest thumping and kinda douchy in response to a CDE type of inquiry (my suspicion).

For sure there was telephone game involved. That still doesn’t absolve any of the dumbassery involved in said string of comms, ranging from outright lying to putting little to no effort into legitimately corroborating statements. Par for the course for MSM and anyone willing to feed that machine.

Generally stated, shack on nuisance and decision making. However in this case, based on the first strike video I saw, there wasn’t really any nuisance. It was clearly a DWE failure with following reattack. This one wasn’t even remotely questionable to anyone who actually knows anything about DWE and doesn’t have a political axe to grind.

Edited yesterday at 03:46 PM1 day by brabus

2 hours ago, Day Man said:

now do heart disease...this has little to do with cocaine

What’s your point?

1 hour ago, brabus said:

Generally stated, shack on nuisance and decision making. However in this case, based on the first strike video I saw, there wasn’t really any nuisance. It was clearly a DWE failure with following reattack.

My point was Hegseth probably said something very close to what he's being accused of saying, just in another context. And the admin folks can't backdown because that would be tantamount to admitting Hegseth made a mistake (or violating the never apologize rule).

So two things can be true: the re-attack in itself can be not a problem and Hegseth opened his mouth and stupid came out.

AC/DC - Thunderstruck (Official Video)

You've Been Thunderstruck

Edited yesterday at 08:02 PM1 day by fire4effect

@busdriver Possible. But the point I was more addressing is the ludicrously stupid, general uproar about war crimes, no due process, they’re just civilians on boats that DEVGRU executed in cold blood against all laws, etc. I have no idea if Hegseth said those exact words, but I do know all of the left’s complaining and wailing about terrorist getting killed, how it’s “illegal,” etc is political ballwash and has zero credibility to it.

@brabus The pearl clutching reaction is certainly political posturing.

However, there is an argument to be made that striking the boats is crossing a line, Rand Paul has made it while acknowledging the cats on the boats are very probably shit heads. So it's not like there is no principled opposition to the ops in the Caribbean either.

11 hours ago, busdriver said:

@brabus The pearl clutching reaction is certainly political posturing.

However, there is an argument to be made that striking the boats is crossing a line, Rand Paul has made it while acknowledging the cats on the boats are very probably shit heads. So it's not like there is no principled opposition to the ops in the Caribbean either.

Rand Paul is full of hot air. From everything I’ve seen, including the first strike video, there wasn’t anything that remotely even touched the line. It went down like thousands of strikes we’ve conducted for decades. Anybody who’s actually done this shit knows this is a total nothing burger.

And if we want to get political, I can think of several strikes I’ve seen under Obama that would apparently have our cities on fire by leftist had they known about them (except they wouldn’t care since it was Obama and not Trump). And FWIW, nothing illegal about those strikes either, but the optics are a billion times worse than this boat.

Edited 8 hours ago8 hr by brabus

5 hours ago, brabus said:

......From everything I’ve seen, including the first strike video, there wasn’t anything that remotely even touched the line. ........

The argument is the entire concept of striking drug runners by calling them terrorists, is over the line.

And yes, Presidents doing this kind of thing isn't new. The war powers resolution became a thing for a reason.

58 minutes ago, busdriver said:

The argument is the entire concept of striking drug runners by calling them terrorists, is over the line.

And yes, Presidents doing this kind of thing isn't new. The war powers resolution became a thing for a reason.

OK, that is more a reasonable take, apologies for not understanding that initially. The 2001 AUMF has been very broadly applied to target terrorist without regard for location. Historically the current strikes are fairly inline with precedence. Now that said, I completely see the logic in Congress wanting to update this to rein it in.

Additionally in accordance with the WPA, the president always has the authority to conduct mil operations when “a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces". Certainly can be debated if throwing drugs at the American population is an “attack upon the US.” Keep in mind China is very involved in this from a supporting role, so I can absolutely see the argument that this is an attack, albeit not in the “traditional sense” with bombs or missiles. Bottom line, a lot nuance and gray area with valid perspectives on both sides of the debate, and therefore it is not currently a “black and white, crosses the line” situation.

Rep Hines after viewing today said “You have two individuals in clear distress without any means of locomotion, with a destroyed vessel, who are killed by the United States.”

If true, seems like that’d be pretty cut and dry based on the DoW law of war manual:

3 minutes ago, lmaolol said:

with a destroyed vessel

Was it?

Boat was the primary target, it was not destroyed with first shot, so follow up was taken. Not our legal problem if two guys decided to get back on.

Certainly that’s the other narrative, although it’s hard to see what’s giving you confidence in it over the alternative.

The legislator was quoted saying that the boat was already a “destroyed vessel” and that they didn’t have any “means of locomotion.” I guess if that were true, would it then be problematic in your eyes?

Edited 24 minutes ago24 min by lmaolol