"Yeah, I'm gonna pardon El Chapo's pal, Juan Hernandez! So sue me"
"The Trump administration has been blowing up fishing boats in the Caribbean — and now one in the Pacific — claiming without evidence that they’re “drug boats.”
These are extrajudicial executions outside any system of law. And there’s a reason we shouldn’t allow drug warriors to act as judge, jury, and executioner: because over the years, they’ve made many, many tragic mistakes and killed lots of civilians.
What makes these strikes so appealing to Trump is that it gives him the godlike power to look down from above and smite anyone who displeases him, without consequence. He’s even told sick jokes about local fishermen in the Caribbean now being afraid to get in their boats."
That was written over a month before Trump's pardon of the most notorious drug henchman in Central America. A thug who'd been given 45 years and Trump let out after serving barely one. Like he pardoned the nearly 1,600 traitors who attempted to overthrow and torch the Capitol. What is going on? Easy, we have a traitor and felon in power who is willing to release (or interfere in) the case of any fellow felon or traitor (like Jaire Bolsonaro in Brazil) who he believed "got a raw deal'.
As the WSJ piece expatiates:
"In power from 2014 until his arrest days after leaving office in 2022, Hernandez used his political influence to allow smugglers to ship more than 400 tons of cocaine into the U.S. In exchange for protecting drug loads he received millions of dollars from some of the world's most powerful and violent cartels, money he used to fuel his political rise.
Hernandez's younger brother was among the drug bosses who prosecutors said profited from the former president's connections. During the younger Hernandez trial a witness testified that Mexican drug boss 'El Chapo' Guzman gave $1 million in cash during a 2013 meeting to help Juan Orlando Hernndez's presidential campaign. The expectation was that Guzman's cocaine routes would be protected after Hernandez became president."
"Prosecutors described Honduras as a state where drug traffickers aligned with Hernandez's National Party were completely protected from investigation and arrest. The cartels even sent troops to the Honduran border with Guatemala to protect their turf."
Adding at the end:
"Trump's planned pardon shocked many observers, including Republicans. The pardon comes as the Trump administration is blowing up small boats, allegedly carrying drugs in the Caribbean and Pacific. 'Why would we pardon this guy and then go after Venezuelan president Nicholas Maduro for running drugs into the United States ' wrote Sen. Bill Cassidy (R, La) on X."
Elementary, Mr. Cassidy. Because a convicted felon like Trump will always extend favor to another felon, and damned adherence to the law or justice. This was before the foul drunk maniac Hegseth spouted at a Pentagon presser on Saturday - about further boat strikes in the Caribbean:
"And we'll keep killing them until they stop poisoning our people!"
The drunken Turd clearly oblivious to his master Trump pardoning a guy who enabled cocaine shipments that likely poisoned tens of thousands of Americans. Sorry, Bubba, two systems of justice - one minus any evidence and carried out without due process - ain't worth lickspittle. And yet a White House spokesperson (also on Saturday) having the absolute gall to spout this further hogwash:
"The narco terrorist shipments in the region directly threaten Americans and the national security interests of the United States."
Sorry, you don't get to use a double standard when you have a so-called "president" who just pardoned a genuine narco terrorist who did a thousandfold worse, and got to WALK! Clearly the actions of this orange felon mean the national security prattle is pure smokescreen and merely used as an excuse to commit extra-judicial murder as the orange traitor decides.
This is also why the Armed Services Committee needs to not only go after Hegseth for ordering the murder of survivors in the Sept. 2 re-strike (not "double tap") but also Trump himself - demanding why he pardoned a bloody narco thug while trying to overthrow Maduro.
Even The Wall Street Journal in a recent editorial ('Shooting The Wounded On Drug Boats', p. A14, Dec. 2) is adamant that congress needs to act, i.e.
"Every time the Senate Armed Services Committee asks the Pentagon for more details they seem to get mostly a stonewall. That's all the more reason for Congress to learn the truth about the Hegseth story."
Yes indeed, we are ready to learn. And also why, up to now, the Trump cabal has not provided an iota of evidence that the boats it's blowing up with loss of life are transporting anything more than fish! In the meantime, we can assert that Trump's pardoning of the narco-trafficking felon Juan Hernandez shows he isn't serious at all about stopping drugs from entering the US of A. And hence, his "war"against the imagined "drug cartels" of Venezuela is bogus.
So if it's not about stopping drugs from getting into the U.S. what is it? In my reckoning it's plain old application of the old 'wag the dog' strategy. In this case start a fake war with Venezuela over "drugs" to keep attention of the media (and public) off the imminent release of the remaining Epstein files.
See Also:
Trump pardons major drug traffickers despite his anti-drug rhetoric - Anchorage Daily News
Excerpt:
On President Donald Trump’s first full day in office this
year, he pardoned Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, who was convicted of
creating the largest online black market for illegal drugs and other illicit
goods of its time.
In the months since, he has granted clemency to others, including Chicago gang leader Larry Hoover and Baltimore drug kingpin Garnett Gilbert Smith. And last week, he pardoned former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, who had been sentenced to 45 years in prison for running his country as a vast “narco-state” that helped to move at least 400 tons of cocaine into the United States
Overall, Trump - who campaigned against America’s worsening drug crisis and promised to crack down on the illegal flow of deadly drugs coming across the border - has pardoned or granted clemency to at least 10 people for drug-related crimes since the beginning of his second term, according to a Washington Post analysis. He also granted pardons or commutations to almost 90 others for drug-related crimes during the four years of his first term, the analysis showed.
And:
by George Cassidy Payne | December 10, 2025 - 6:10am | permalink
Two blasts split the water. A burning hull drifted. Survivors clawed at debris, then vanished under a second strike.
That was the opening image delivered by the Pentagon in early September: a tightly edited video of a US military aircraft obliterating an alleged drug-smuggling boat in the Caribbean. It was released with cinematic timing, framed as a bold success in the Trump administration’s newly intensified campaign against “narco-terrorists.” But the more Americans have learned about what followed—the killing of two dazed, shipwrecked survivors in a second strike—the more the narrative has begun to disintegrate.
For many, the scene forces a reckoning: What happens when “national security” becomes a blank check for lethal power?
And:
by Phyllis Bennis | December 11, 2025 - 6:33am | permalink
by Phyllis Bennis and Khury Petersen-Smith
It’s all good that members of Congress, mainstream headlines, and the various talking heads are discussing something we don’t hear about often enough—that the US is committing war crimes; how we need a new War Powers Resolution; or why heads should roll at the Pentagon over a series of boat bombings in the Pacific and Caribbean in recent months that are nothing less than premeditated murder.
It is important that—after years of the Pentagon using unchecked power to carry out violence all over the world—Congress is finally asking questions. The debate is rising over whether the Sept. 2 murder of two men who survived an initial US attack on their small boat in international waters of the Caribbean, only to be killed by a second US bombing designed specifically to eliminate them, constitutes a war crime.
And:
by Marjorie Cohn | December 6, 2025 - 6:12am | permalink
Public outrage is mounting over the Trump administration’s September 2 “double tap” strike, in which the U.S. military bombed a small boat for a second time to kill the survivors of a first strike. This particular strike has garnered significant attention due to its clear violation of U.S. and international law because shipwrecked sailors should never be targeted. But it is crucial to note that Donald Trump’s entire bombing operation against vessels in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific is illegal as well.
Trump’s campaign of extrajudicial violence under the pretext of fighting a “drug war” is reminiscent of the policies of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who is currently in custody in the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Netherlands, awaiting trial for murdering alleged drug dealers and users. Like Duterte, Trump’s bombing campaign should be considered a crime against humanity.
And:
Opinion | The Laws of War Are Not Woke - The New York Times
Excerpt:
In their military campaign in South America, Donald Trump
and Pete Hegseth aren’t just defying the Constitution and breaking the law.
They are attacking the very character and identity of the American military.
To make this case, I have to begin in the most boring way
possible — by quoting a legal manual. Bear with me.
Specifically, it’s the most recent edition of the Department of Defense Law of War Manual. Tucked away on
page 1,088 are two sentences that illustrate the gravity of the crisis in the
Pentagon: “The requirement to refuse to comply with orders to commit law of war
violations applies to orders to perform conduct that is clearly illegal or orders
that the subordinate knows, in fact, are illegal. For example, orders to fire
upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal.”
Here’s another key line: “It is forbidden to declare that no
quarter will be given.” A no quarter order is an order directing soldiers to
kill every combatant, including prisoners, the sick and the wounded. The manual
continues, “Moreover, it is also prohibited to conduct hostilities on the basis
that there shall be no survivors, or to threaten the adversary with the denial
of quarter.”
There are now good reasons to believe that the U.S.
military, under the command of President Trump and Hegseth, his secretary of
defense, has blatantly violated the laws of war. On Nov. 28, The Washington Post reported that Hegseth issued a
verbal order to “kill everybody” the day that the United States launched its
military campaign against suspected drug traffickers.
According to The Post, the first strike on the targeted speedboat left two people alive in the water. The commander of the operation then ordered a second strike to kill the shipwrecked survivors, apparently — according to The Post — “because they could theoretically call other traffickers to retrieve them and their cargo.” If that reporting is correct, then we have clear evidence of unequivocal war crimes — a no quarter order and a strike on the incapacitated crew of a burning boat.
And:
by John Feffer | December 11, 2025 - 6:27am | permalink
— from Foreign Policy In Focus
Donald Trump certainly has global ambitions. He is using tariffs to remake the global economy. He is withdrawing the United States from as many multinational organizations and agreements as possible in order to destroy the liberal international order. And he has alternated between confronting adversaries (like Iran) and brokering ceasefires (like the one in Gaza).
But he also has hemispheric aims—to consolidate U.S. hegemony in America’s “backyard” of Latin America and the Caribbean. In some ways, these aims are merely his global ambitions writ small. Here, too, he is slapping tariffs on allies and adversaries alike. He has threatened to withdraw the United States from multinational pacts like the Organization of American States. He has embraced autocratic friends—Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, Javier Milei of Argentina, Daniel Noboa of Ecuador—and sought to punish anyone who has stood up to him, including Lula in Brazil and Gustavo Petro in Colombia.
And:
And:
by Steven Harper | December 5, 2025 - 6:11am | permalink
On Friday, November 28, the Washington Post reported that when the US military began attacking small boats in the Caribbean, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had issued a verbal order that it should “kill everybody.”
When the first attack occurred on September 2, the initial missile strike destroyed the boat but left two survivors clinging to the wreckage. To comply with Hegseth’s order, Admiral Frank M. “Mitch” Bradley authorized a second strike that killed them.
If true, it’s a war crime.
Hegseth called the Post‘s reporting “fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory,” claiming that the drug-smuggling operations were “lawful under both US and international law.”
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