Original article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

“The US government must be held accountable,” said Amnesty International USA.

President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced on social media Friday that they bombed another boat in the Caribbean—at least the fourth alleged drug-smuggling vessel attacked by the US military since early September.

Critics, including congressional Democrats, legal scholars, and human rights groups, have stressed that even if any of the boats recently bombed by the Trump administration were trafficking drugs, the strikes still violate international and federal law. Such criticism has not deterred the administration.

Hegseth, who leads what Trump renamed the Department of War, said Friday that “earlier this morning, on President Trump’s orders, I directed a lethal, kinetic strike on a narco-trafficking vessel affiliated with designated terrorist organizations. Four male narco-terrorists aboard the vessel were killed in the strike, and no US forces were harmed in the operation.”

“The strike was conducted in international waters just off the coast of Venezuela while the vessel was transporting substantial amounts of narcotics—headed to America to poison our people,” wrote the Pentagon chief, including a video of the bombing, but no evidence that the boat was involved in running drugs.

Hegseth claimed that “our intelligence, without a doubt, confirmed that this vessel was trafficking narcotics, the people onboard were narco-terrorists, and they were operating on a known narco-trafficking transit route. These strikes will continue until the attacks on the American people are over!!!!”

Trump similarly said, without offering any proof, that “a boat loaded with enough drugs to kill 25 TO 50 THOUSAND PEOPLE was stopped, early this morning off the Coast of Venezuela, from entering American Territory.”

Responding to the latest lethal bombing, Amnesty International USA declared: “This is murder. The US government must be held accountable.”

Richard Painter, a University of Minnesota law professor who served as chief White House ethics counsel under former President George W. Bush, said, “Again, this is a violation of international law, and without the consent of Congress a violation of federal law.”

The strikes come amid Trump’s ”aggressive pursuit” of a Nobel Peace Prize. Nodding to this, Congressman Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.) wrote on social media Friday, “To President Trump: They don’t give Nobel Peace Prizes to people who murder civilians without a trial.”

The first confirmed bombing, on September 2, killed 11 people. The second and third, on September 15 and 19, each killed three. In at least one case, a woman who identified herself as the wife of one of the men killed said her husband was a fisher.

Friday’s bombing followed the leak of a confidential notice that the administration sent to multiple congressional committees this week, attempting to legally justify the bombings. It says in part, “The president determined these cartels are nonstate armed groups, designated them as terrorist organizations, and determined that their actions constitute an armed attack against the United States.”

Multiple legal experts and members of Congress publicly weighed in on the memo, including Senate Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Jack Reed (D-RI), who said that “every American should be alarmed that President Trump has decided he can wage secret wars against anyone he labels an enemy.”

After the Friday attack, Tess Bridgeman, co-editor-in-chief of Just Security and a nonresident senior fellow at New York University School of Law, emphasized that “if it can happen at sea, it can happen anywhere.”

“Trump has offered no definition or limiting principle for who can be labeled a ‘terrorist’ and summarily killed,” she added. “And no plausible legal theory for why an armed conflict exists.”

Original article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).