The administration keeps insisting that its military strikes against civilian boats in international waters are legal. There's reason for skepticism.
New Justice Dept. memo complicates the administration’s controversial boat strikes policy www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddo...
— Philly Joe (@joehick58.bsky.social) 2025-11-14T19:57:00.305Z
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/new-justice-dept-memo-complicates-administrations-controversial-boat-s-rcna243984
It’s reached the point that some U.S. allies, including officials in the United Kingdom, have curtailed intelligence sharing with the
Trump administration, reportedly because they don’t want to be complicit in the extrajudicial slayings of civilians.
As for the U.S. military personnel responsible for carrying out these deadly strikes, The Washington Post reported last month that “some” junior officers have been looking for legal assurances “before taking part in strikes,” fearing personal legal liability. It’s against this backdrop that The New York Times reported:
A secret Justice Department memo blessing President Trump’s boat strikes as lawful hangs on the idea that the United States and its allies are legally in a state of armed conflict with drug cartels, a premise that derives heavily from assertions that the White House itself has put forward, according to people who have read it. ... In reaching that conclusion, the memo contradicts a broad range of critics, who have rejected the idea that there is any armed conflict and have accused Mr. Trump of illegally ordering the military to commit murders.
.....It dovetailed with a related Washington Post report, which said that the DOJ memo concluded tha
t “personnel taking part in military strikes ... would not be exposed to future prosecution.”.....
What’s more, the memo’s conclusion remains a tough sell. After the White House pitched a related line to Congress in early October, claiming that Trump had “determined” the U.S. is in “armed conflict,”
Geoffrey Corn, a retired judge advocate general lawyer who was formerly the Army’s senior adviser for law-of-war issues, argued that drug cartels are not engaged in “hostilities” — which would mean the White House was crossing a legal line.
“This is not stretching the envelope,” Corn told the New York Times. “
This is shredding it. This is tearing it apart.”
Nevertheless, there’s little to suggest the administration intends to curtail its deadly campaign. On the contrary, Hegseth on Thursday announced something called “Operation Southern Spear,” which he said will target “narco-terrorists” and shield “our homeland from the drugs that are killing our people.”
Hegseth fired all of the JAG heads when he took office so that he could find idiots who greenlight matters that were clearly illegal.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100220067494
In an op-ed for The Washington Post, Sen. Jack Reed, the ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee and a former Army paratrooper, helped explain why:
Firing the military’s most senior legal advisers is an unprecedented and explicit move to install officers who will yield to the president’s interpretation of the law, with the expectation they will be little more than yes men on the most consequential questions of military law.
Hegseth and trump want to convert the military into a force loyal only to trump. It sounds like trump and Hegseth plan to commit acts that a real JAG would block as being an illegal order or unconstitutional
That prediction has become true.
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