A new, disturbing detail in the “drug boat” controversy that has enveloped Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over the past week calls the purpose of the entire operation into question.
According to an exclusive report from CNN, the alleged narco-trafficking boat that the U.S. military targeted on September 2 in a “double tap” strike, which killed 11 people, wasn’t even heading to the U.S.
Navy Admiral Frank “Mitch” Bradley, who was in charge of the operation, reported to lawmakers that the boat they struck was actually en route to link up with a larger boat that was heading to Suriname, a country east of Venezuela, two sources with direct knowledge of his remarks said.
Bradley also said that it was still possible that the alleged drug shipment could have eventually ended up in the U.S., the sources told CNN—rather dubious justification for a strike that left several people dead.
I don’t think they ever claimed it was heading for US. The first time I heard about it it was claimed it was heading for some island.
Do people realize how much drugs are brought into the US everyday? These small boats wouldn’t even be able to supply a small city. This is a complete joke. War on Drugs theatre.
Well they are claiming it’s Fentanyl, which is obviously a lie… But if it were then even just 1 kilo could fuel a city for a while. Assuming a 2mg dose, which is literally overkill for people without a tolerance, you would get 500K doses.
This is why the war on drugs is completely lost now. Any person could smuggle like 10G in their butt or shoe and would have like 5000 doses, equivalent of like 25k minimum street value. None of this coming by speedboat, it’s too easy to just hide in commerce.
A rough estimate for cocaine use alone would be anywhere from 4,000-12,000 pounds a day for illicit US use. It is a staggering amount of drugs that need to be made or imported for US citizens.
They also need to send several more times than this to keep supply flowing because of interdiction, waste, and shrinkage. So we are talking about 100,000-250,000 pounds of all illicit drugs every single day.
The War On Drugs was unbelievable success for it’s true intentions. A lot of people don’t understand that it was really a war on minorities. At best it was a political tool to suppress the public and at worst it was a multigenerational genocide.
Instead of giving people the hope and tools for a better future, our government used it to strip our rights, normalize police militarization, destroys countless families, and let people die from overdoses needlessly.
The loss of life is staggering. The dramatic drop in quality of life is mind boggling. The reparations the government would owe if this reality would reach the masses would be easily a hundred trillion dollars if you also count the destruction in Mexico and South America.
Instead of helping vulnerable people they instead decided to let the Sacklers and Eli-Lillys promote hardcore opiates to doctors and patients while claiming they were safe and harmless; feeding the very same drug war machine that leads to a presumably innocent boat to be blasted out of the water and finished off an entire hour later.
It’s rotten to the core.
Do you have some sources for your data? Not that I don’t believe you, it’s just really hard to find drug statistics without wading through pages and pages of drug recovery program links in a Google search.
I did some basic research and made some assumptions. 1-2 million cocaine users that self identify. More likely 10-20 million users with a lot of those being casual take it or leave it users. Probably just under a million chronic users.
So let’s let’s say about million grams a day over a million users. That is about two tons. I think this is probably an underestimate, honestly.
Obviously my methodology is not great, just rough guesses based upon the best information.
Don’t try to prompt critical thinking in the US with your facts. If those citizens could read, they would be very upset.
We are all upset but ww have no political mechanism in place that gives the people a voice in government.
Oh, the senate and house of gerrymandered districts? That represents the people who gerrymandered the districts. The president? He represents the randos who pick him the “electoral college”. And he has dementia. The judicial? They just want a big boat or their religious views to be the ones we follow, they represent themselves.
I feel like “we the people” should vote daily by phone so we could actually have a voice. Who should see the votes? Everyone. Us, them, the world.
If the idiots in charge destroy a boat and the people’s vote immediately turns negative, then they should not do that. If we go to war and our vote is positive, then yeah let’s keep going to war.
You guys and I mean collectively voted for this. Because you didn’t want a woman in power.
It’s more complicated than that. There’s massive gerrymandering, voter suppression, and straight up fraud. I won’t say the popular vote was stolen, because the investigation is ongoing, but there’s credible mounting evidence, unlike Trump’s claims following the 2020 election. Then, ultimately, the electoral college picks for us. We’re not governed for the people, by the people. The majority of Americans have to deal with this, while living in an end-stage-capitalist cage, and we get to read constant insults from ignorant people around the world who can’t see fascism for the cancer it is. It’s on the rise everywhere. Probably in your country as well. Are you responsible for the rise of fascism in your country, or is it the morons actually voting for it?
No, the electoral college vote for the president. We, the people are given a choice just to see what we would pick, but we don’t mean anything. The ballot says purple, the college picks banana yellow. That’s how it works.
Aren’t these all small boats anyway? Like boats that are too small to carry that much fuel? I thought this was established already.
Something gives me the impression that Trump thinks extra-judicial is a type of bubblegum.
Okay but… even if it was, who the fuck are we to unilaterally make the decision to execute them?
I’d wager the largest contributors to preventable deaths in the US (outside of maybe cholesterol-induced cardiovascular disease) are cigarettes and alcohol, so at best these strikes would be the equivalent of blowing up the trucks delivering the products to distribution centers.
At worst - and what we seem to be doing now - we are indiscriminately annihilating any vehicles that are in the general vicinity of the distilleries.
There have been rum runners, cigar runners, drug runners, all because of prohibition.
Seems like maybe it’s the prohibition part that’s the problem
These strikes are wrong and must end, but unfettered fentanyl is also not the solution.
They’re not making fentanyl on boats though
It’s quite obvious by now that the US military will not decline following illegal orders. That’s what led to most atrocities committed by German troops in WW2. The free world must get ready to ally and invade the US to prevent further escalation.
lol .ml
Yes, but also what they said was accurate
The free world won’t even fight against an unprovoked Russian invasion, and the Russian military is about 20% as effective as the US military.
I’m well aware. It doesn’t make what the first person in the chain said incorrect
Premeditated murder for political points.
Lock Him Up.
Lock him up! I DECLARE it!
The USA now has death penalty just for being suspected of a crime without evidence.
USA is a rogue nation.Did you forget decades of drone strikes with highlights such as blowing up a civilian wedding?
You are not wrong, just a couple hundred years late to the party.
Since when has being wrong ever prevented the US military from acting?
Certainly not since the Gulf of Tolkien
You mean Operation Enduring Ent?
I could of sworn it was actually a new Johnny Depp movie
You don’t really know, do you?
Not really, it just mostly feels that way
These boats would have had to refuel multiple times during the trip, this has been obvious all along
Imagine actually being surprised by this
The people who think it was smuggling drugs are the people who think ICE is only going after people who break the law
This is a bad position to hold. You’re basing your stance on something that most people won’t believe, and is probably wrong, when it doesn’t even matter. It being a drug smuggling boat does not make it legal, so don’t even discuss that.
It does look exactly like what a drug smuggling boat would look like though, and this statement seems to corroborate that. It’s likely it is a drug boat, so you’re just going to be dismissed by everyone. It’s illegal either way. Argue that point.
You’re right that even if* they were criminals it would still be murder, but there are a lot of authoritarians out there who are perfectly willing to prescribe death penalties for any alleged crime. Going with your tact and forfeiting any need to prove that the victims actually did anything wrong is a weaker argument. Keep in mind, we don’t actually have any evidence that they are what the regime says they are, them " looking like what a drug smuggling boat would look like" is incredibly tenuous.
It’s a significantly stronger argument because you don’t have to forfeit reason. If your only goal is to remove any ability to justify an attack then you can make up anything you want. For example: “It was aliens driving the boat with secret cloaking technology, and they didn’t even come from Venezuela.” Is that a stronger argument? Obviously not. The stronger argument is the one that’s harder to refute, not the one that’s trivial to.
It’s not very tenuous really. There’s a common design used for this, that isn’t used for any other purpose as far as I’m aware. There’s no comfort built in, so it’s not like a consumer boat. They’re built for speed, but also with a lot of cargo space, so they aren’t like a fishing boat or anything else. We have many instances of them being boarded and drugs seized from the past, and they look almost identical. The boats also were loaded with some kind of cargo (we can’t know what, because it was destroyed, but we know there was stuff in there). Here’s a picture:
It’s much easier to argue the regime is doing something illegal starting from a place of reason. If they wanted to stop them they easily could have boarded them (though also illegal where they are). Slaughtering the is illegal and immoral, no matter the justification. You can also point out that Venezuela has huge oil reserves, which is a trend for nations we invade. It isn’t about drugs. Usually they talk about fentanyl, but that’s not coming through Venezuela, so that’s a big hole in their reasoning.
There’s a lot of ways to approach it that don’t require burying your head in the sand and arguing that there aren’t drugs being smuggled. Theres far too much evidence for that.
It isn’t 1982… a drug smuggling ship… is a container ship. With people paid off to let the container through.
There is zero control over drugs entering the United States. It’s a farce. A show. Drugs come in by the container load. 50k to the customs agent, done.
Eh, not exactly. Sometimes, sure. If you don’t think that narco subs or boats exist though then what the hell are those? If you want to say there aren’t boats smuggling drugs then you need to explain a whole lot of shit out there.
Also, again, it doesn’t matter. It’s a lot easier to just not make this claim because it doesn’t change the legality. Youre going to be ignored like a whacko moon landing denier if you claim there aren’t drug smuggling boats, regardless of if these are or not (which they very much resemble them). You’ll seem a lot more reasonable if you just don’t touch that claim, which is a distraction, and argue that it’s illegal whether it’s a drug boat or not.
They never said there where not drug smuggling boats just that they where much bigger. And they’re probably right. Containers full of drugs brought in not little ass boats.
How do you explain the cargo in these boats, and also the pictures from previous interceptions of this kind of boat full of drugs? Is it all manufactured? That’s a hell of a lot of work for a long period of time with no one speaking out.
Tell me more about what drug smuggling boats look like ya jabroni. Their only shared characteristic is “having drugs aboard” and I’m real curious how your eagle eyes are picking that out
No, there is a specific type of boat that’s used. They are long thin boats usually with multiple motors (sometimes four or five). They will have containers, usually drums, in the middle section. They are built for maximum speed.
Technically a civilian could be using one of these perfectly legally. They are not fishing boats or anything like that though. The fuel would cost far too much to be worth it. They could be speed boats I guess for fun, but you still have to explain the cargo. I don’t know what else it could be, and, again, it doesn’t matter. It’s illegal to destroy them (especially killing the shipwrecked) no matter what.
Yeah, who likes going fast anyways? I would bet everything in my pockets that most of the drugs in this country come in on regular container ships with the rest of the freight, and long skinny ass-haulers with multiple outboards are the default toy of wealthy Floridians since time immemorial. I can extrapolate that to Venezuela a lot easier than I can dream up a scenario where it makes sense to ship fent precursors over from China and run a bunch of pills up the coast on speedboats. Talk to a cop or a junkie, whichever fits your politics. Either one will tell you that’s just not how it works
edited to leave this completely unrelated pic here, no reason
Hey go fast boats are a standard in the movie industry it must be true. Yah I’m with you reality is much more boring they are bringing in containers of drugs there is no way the amount of drugs the US uses are coming in on small ships.
You need the go-fast boat to race the other guys to the drug smuggler’s boat. Haven’t you played GTA Vice City?
Yeah, who likes going fast anyways?
If you like going fast you don’t build a vessel like this. You dint need to carry cargo if you’re just going fast. You need to explain what the cargo is if you want to pretend like they aren’t drug boats. They aren’t fishing boats, and other cargo doesn’t need to be transported like this, and it isn’t fuel efficient so it must be something that can’t take other routes.
I would bet everything in my pockets that most of the drugs in this country come in on regular container ships with the rest of the freight…
I’m not making any claim about where most of the drugs come in. How does that have anything to do with the conversation. Even if it is true, it doesn’t mean these aren’t drug boats.
I can extrapolate that to Venezuela a lot easier than I can dream up a scenario where it makes sense to ship fent precursors over from China and run a bunch of pills up the coast on speedboats.
It’s not fentanyl. IIRC, most of that comes in through Mexico, but I might be wrong about that. I believe it’s mostly cocaine coming through Venezuela.
Again, this doesn’t matter. The fact we’re having this discussion proves my point. It’s better to just talk about the legality. It being a drug boat doesn’t make it a legal target. Why even bring that into the discussion. All it’ll ever do is distract from the actual crimes being committed.
Just to be clear, I’m a leftist (anarchist). I’m very against this administration, and I’m also generally pro legalization of any drug. That doesn’t mean I need to be stupid and pretend drugs aren’t being smuggled. There’s a hell of a lot of evidence ships like these, and others, have been used to smuggle drugs. Technically all of that could have been staged, but I doubt it. There are drugs being smuggled through Venezuela and you’d have to be very ignorant to think that isn’t happening. Hell, there are drugs being smuggled through the US. None of that has anything to do with these acts being illegal though, so don’t shoot yourself in the foot by arguing about it.
Edit: On the image you posted, in case this makes you think I’m more reasonable, this is a comment I made a while back: https://lemmy.zip/comment/23085761
I agree with you it’s bad. However, drugs are being smuggled. This isn’t really something that can be denied. It’s happening everywhere all the time. It just isn’t relevant. It’s illegal no matter what, even if these are drug smugglers or not.
Man the only thing us having this discussion proves is that you’re either putting a whole lot of effort into justifying US intervention for a self professed leftist or see this conversation as something to win. The “crime” here is regime change in Venezuela for a shitton of oil and we’re here arguing about the plausibility of some set dressing for the manufacture of consent. Check out this factory fresh drug smuggling boat. Definitely not a rich man’s sportfishing plaything, purpose built by brown commie narcoterrorists to destroy our freedom
No shit
