> So you really believe they are just murdering random fisherman for fun?
I believe they are murdering geographically-selected fisherman and painting them as traffickers targeting the US (even though this is implausible for multiple reasons) as propaganda to manifest justifying “escalation” in a war they have been claiming even before they started those publicized murders was being actively fought between Venezuela in the US as a pretext for bypassing due process and moving toward direct executive fiat and militarization of civilian life within the US, starting with the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act on March 15.
Fisherman? No. But you could go to any marina on a US coast and find endless amounts of boats with 4+ motors on them. You are an idiot if you go out on the open sea with some little boat with just 1 motor, having extra engine power is the only thing keeping you alive out on the open ocean.
> But you could go to any marina on a US coast and find endless amounts of boats with 4+ motors on them.
I live on the coast, in an area of the country where the local culture is, shall we say, fond of excess horsepower in all areas of life, including on boats. My next-door neighbor is a member at the local yacht club. I spend a lot of time walking by boats of many shapes and sizes. I don't recall the last time I saw one with four outboard motors.
Guess these are all purpose built drug smuggling boats. Shit, some have 5 engines.
Shit, I live near some crappy lakes in Texas and I still see a few four-engine boats by people with more money than sense. Guess they're trafficking that fentanyl from Lewisville to Little Elm.
Are these $500K boats in a country with a GDP per capita of $5000? Are these boats taking off from areas that are known origin points for drug trafficking? Are these boats making sketchy long distance one way trips or just cruising around for the day and returning to the same marina? Have you surveilled these boats with insane OP state of the art military surveillance tech and concluded that they are running drugs?
I haven't been to Venezuela, so I couldn't tell you specifically about Venezuela. While there has been a lot of poverty the last couple of decades in Venezuela, there used to be a ton of prosperity. It wouldn't surprise me if there were still a good number of wealthy people with fancy fishing boats in Venezuela despite there being so much poverty.
And while I haven't been to Venezuela, I have been to a number of pretty poor Caribbean countries. I still find some pretty decked out fishing boats, often for hire/rent to international tourists. Or they just are owned by foreigners/tourists. Or as mentioned, they're some of the wealthy people in the otherwise poor country. Rich people are pretty much all over the place, especially in otherwise desirable places to live (some extremely beautiful beaches and coastlines).
Please share the evidence that the boats being targeted cost $500K, that they took off from an origin point of known drug trafficking, that they were on a one way trip, or that they were surveilled with advanced military tech.
Why don't they argue boats loaded with strange cargo hauling ass in the middle of the ocean is probably a drug boat instead of suggesting all boats with four outboard engines can't possibly be a fishing boat? Go to any docks on the Gulf Coast, you'll find tons of four-engine fishing boats. Or are those all used for narcotics smuggling?
I'm not arguing they're definitely not drug boats. They likely are! But the person I replied to suggested all boats with four outboard engines are likely drug boats, which is absurd.
> Tell me about the 100k fentanyl deaths each year. How does this volume of drugs reach the US?
Illicitly manufactured fentanyl used in the US is predominantly produced in Mexico and smuggled across the very large land border between the US and Mexico.
Probably the next most common source is domestic illicit production.
Your rhetorical question suggests you thought lots of fentanyl is coming on boats on the ocean. This might be a good moment to pause and reflect on where you get your information and how you reach your conclusions.
I understand that fentanyl is not coming Venezuala but I dont think what you've stated is the devastating point you think it is.
The US is also awash with cocaine (20k overdoses a year is the tip of the iceberg).
I note that none of the replies to my parent comment had anything to say about the scourge of drugs across America.
I guess 120k deaths a year is a small price to pay if it makes Trump look bad, right?
Then why didn’t you say cocaine? The connection of these boats to any drugs is dubious, but you picked a drug that they’re definitely not involved in even if you 100% believe the administration.
"The connection of these boats to any drugs is dubious..." this is simply ridiculous.
Boats with 3-4 outboards on the back carrying large bails of some unknown "cargo" transiting well-established drug routes is obviously not a "dubious" connection. We also don't know what the intelligence was on the ground which I'm also guessing was quite substantial.
Neither you or I have the faintest clue what information was available behind the targeting decisions. Reality and your desire to frame things to justify your hatred of Trump are two completely different things.
People cooking it up domestically? Its not hard to make (if you don't mind killing some people) and its ingredients can be commonly found in the US.
Through small parcels from China mixed in with regular mail? People mail weed all the time and that's also illegal to go through the mail. A small parcel can carry many thousands of doses with high enough purity.
Most fentanyl in the US probably has little to no connection to Venezuela. Probably lots of other drugs, sure, but not fentanyl.
A lethal amount of fentanyl can be as small as 1-2mg. So enough fentanyl to kill 100k people would be like 50ish grams. Its not nearly some massive amount of material like you seem to think it is.
I believe they are murdering people they have convinced themselves are probably drug traffickers, for fun and geopolitical tensions.
For instance, the CIA was following the preacher Roni Bowers cessna plane as suspicious for drug trafficking. And then she was shot down, and her family killed. Because intelligence is often wrong.
Now you'll point out, after they were shot down, magically it was uncovered the CIA actually suggested the people that shot them down not do it. Even though the CIA was the one sticking them on them in the first place.[] If they had actually been drug traffickers, or just nobodies, of course, we'd hear precisely what we've been hearing about these vessels, which is jack squat from the government other than they killed the "drug traffickers" and we'd never hear about the voices that recommend they not.
If they end up killing a preacher or a scientist in the future, you can be sure they'll magically find the same evidence. "We warned them not to this time, but they did it anyway."
Reasonable take. I think they at least believe they are doing something good for the country.
The El Salvador approach to extreme aggression against cartels has changed the calculus for many leaders in the Americas. See Rio De Janeiro last week.
Can you elaborate? El Salvador's approach seems to me to be "let Trump use our prisons, he lets go of our drug dealers". Bukele's closeness to MS13 of course biases him against their rivals, but that doesn't stop drugs from coming to the US, just who gets the money.
I'm talking about how Bukele went slash and burn against the gangs, arresting anyone loosely associated with them. Yes, plenty of innocent or less-guilty people got swept up in this dragnet, but it totally changed the society there. People can go outside and feel safe now.
Yep, this is clearly what is stupid about the situation. They want to blow the boats up. Now, if I wanted to do it, I'd blow some up, then disable some and show how they were loaded with drugs and we never got the boats wrong.
In this case, I don't think they care what's on the boats.
Yeah, turns out that only a very small fraction of drugs entering the US transit the Caribbean, so no amount of effort interdicting drug boats there is going to lead to meaningful improvement over the previous status quo.
For fun? Not entirely. But these killings make great propaganda pieces about stopping foreigners and drugs despite not making even a dent or scratch against illegal drug importation.
Of course not. They're murdering random fishermen for political gain.
The US has gone to war with entire countries over complete bullshit. Remember WMDs? Gulf of Tonkin? Do you really think the current government is above killing a few randos to make themselves look good?
Yes, that's what the US has been doing for decades after all.. After all, they could easily (attempt to) arrest them without killing them.
Fortunately, it's becoming more of a multipolar world. The neocons (just like yourself) have no morals.
