Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth a dual danger and maga Republicans are responsible for their illegal behaviors! Trump and Hegseth are war criminals

 You can’t hide from war crimes by calling them ‘fake news:

Since September, the United States military has been blowing up boats allegedly trafficking drugs in the Caribbean.

Echo opinion published in the Los angeles Times by Jonah Goldberg.

You can’t hide from war crimes by calling them ‘fake news’

Whether these attacks are legal is hotly debated. Congress hasn’t declared war or even authorized the use of force. The Trump administration has simply designated various — alleged — drug traffickers as “terrorists” or members of “terrorist organizations,” and then waged war upon them. The legal finding supporting all of this has not been released to the public. But, whatever the administration’s case in private is, it was sufficiently weak that the British government announced in early November it no longer would share intelligence with the U.S. relevant to the Caribbean operation over concerns about its lawfulness❗

On Friday, the Washington Post dropped a bombshell report about the first of these operations. During the strike, the Navy not only took out a suspected drug-trafficking boat — as had been reported previously — but when survivors were spotted clinging to the wreckage, the special operations commander overseeing the operation also ordered a second strike on the survivors, in order to comply with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s order to kill everyone involved.

“Hegseth gave a spoken directive, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation,” the Post reported. “‘The order was to kill everybody,’ one of them said.” ⚠️

Whatever you think about the broader Caribbean operation, it is a simple fact that shooting survivors at sea is war crime, under American and international law.

In a lengthy social media post, Hegseth attacked the Washington Post’s report as an instance of the “fake news … delivering more fabricated, inflammatory and derogatory reporting.”

What Hegseth didn’t do was directly deny the report. Instead, he insisted that “we’ve said from the beginning, and in every statement, these highly effective strikes are specifically intended to be ‘lethal, kinetic strikes.’”

The intent to kill everybody on the first try isn’t a legal excuse to murder survivors clinging to burning wreckage.

Indeed, a much shorter follow-up post was even more of a non-denial denial: “We have only just begun to kill narco-terrorists.” (But the convicted narco-mafia don, Juan Orlando Hernández, former president of Honduras, was convicted of large-scale drug trafficking in the United States and then, unbelievably, he was pardoned by Donald Trump. 🙄 😒💢)

With even Republican members of Congress expressing grave concerns, the official story changed from “fake news” to a more forceful denial over the weekend. Donald Trump said that Hegseth denied giving any such illegal order, “and I believe him, 100%,” adding that he “wouldn’t have wanted that. Not a second strike.”

So, now the White House confirmed there was a second strike on the survivors, and conceded that it would at least be against the president’s policy. 

Whether the White House will concede the strike was unlawful remains to be seen. ("It’s important to understand that all the targeted vessels attacked by the U.S. were operating in international waters and are covered by international law. Both human rights groups and international law experts have expressed serious concern about the ethical and legal issues associated with the attacks which international law experts have characterized as “extrajudicial executions.”- Reported in the Virginian Pilot newspaper by Chris Kelley Cimko)

But, what we do know is that someone gave an order for a second strike. And if it wasn’t Hegseth, whoever that person was could be looking at a court-martial — or given who the commander-in-chief is, a pardon.

But I don’t want to get ahead of the news. 

Instead, I’ll make a few points.

First, a minor gripe: This administration and its defenders need to be more selective in their use of the term “fake news.” I have no problem calling a false story “fake news.” But if you know that a story isn’t false, calling it “fake news” just sets you up to look like even more of a liar and hypocrite down the road when you end up admitting the truth and defending actions you once pretended were slanderous.

More importantly, the whole Caribbean strategy is constitutionally and legally dubious. As a matter of foreign policy, it looks more and more like a pretext for some kind of regime change gambit in Venezuela. If the administration has evidence that justifies its actions, it should reveal it. I understand arguments for secrecy, but if they couldn’t convince the British, through classified channels, of the operation’s legality, it’s probably because the case is unconvincing.

Even more important: Illegal orders, particularly orders to in effect murder people, cannot be justified. When a half-dozen Democratic members of Congress released a video saying that the military shouldn’t follow “illegal orders,” the president and many of his defenders became hysterical. 

Donald Trump lamented that America has become so “soft” that such “seditious behavior” isn’t punished by death anymore.

More sober critics of the Democrats complained that the video sowed confusion in the ranks and hurt morale. I’m somewhat sympathetic to that argument. But you know what else sows confusion and hurts morale❓ Actual illegal orders.

X: @JonahDispatch

Donald Trump and maga Republicans must end illegal attacks on Veneuelan boats and oil tankers Murder and piracy happening with video to prove guilt

We Didn’t Have to Kill Any of Them an echo essay by William Kristol, Andrew Egger and Jim Swift published in The Bulwark "Morning Shots".

"Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro accused the U.S. of "criminal naval piracy" after American forces seized a sanctioned oil tanker carrying Venezuelan crude near Grenada, calling it theft and an attack on international law" (BBC story link here)

If we can seize an oil tanker, why did eighty people have to die❓

Trump;s administration released a new video of the U.S. military (illegally) engaging a vessel off the coast of Venezuela. 

It wasn’t footage of the September 2nd killing of two shipwrecked survivors of a missile attack on an alleged drug-smuggling boat.¹ 

Rather, it was of a new military action in support of U.S. law enforcement agencies: seizing an oil tanker involved in illicit activities. This action was apparently taken pursuant to a warrant issued by a federal judge, as the ship had been put under sanctions by the Treasury Department in 2022, for illegal activities linked to the smuggling of Iranian oil.

Many questions remain about the operation and its justification, and the government should provide clear answers to them. Still, here’s what we’ve been reminded of by yesterday’s action: The U.S. government has the ability to seize boats, sailors, and cargo without killing anyone. 

In fact, the US Coast Guard does this routinely and has for years. The military is able to coordinate with and support law enforcement in such efforts. 

Steps can be taken ahead of time to ensure such efforts are legal.

But the Trump administration has chosen to do none of these things as, over the past three months, it has conducted strikes against at least 22 vessels, killing more than 80 helpless civilians. The administration has provided no evidence to support its claims about the boats and those aboard, and in fact, the original rationale that they were smuggling fentanyl to the United States seems to have been abandoned.

What’s more, the administration has chosen in one case to kill shipwrecked survivors and to try to cover up the fact there were such survivors, and in another instance to return survivors to their home countries rather than risking legal proceedings in the United States that might force the administration to provide a justification for its actions.

And so, now the Trumpzi administration is stonewalling about releasing the full video of the September 2 strike, despite Donald Trump’s statement last week he’d be happy to do so. 

House Intelligence Committee chair and Trump ally Rep. Rick Crawford—installed in that position at the beginning of this year in place of the independent-minded Rep. Mike Turner to ensure congressional acquiescence rather than oversight—said yesterday that he doesn’t want video of the second strike released. His rationale? “What the trained eye can detect from these videos may reveal sources and methods that would imperil troops.” This is implausible on its face. But it becomes a risible excuse for a cover-up when one recalls that the administration was perfectly happy to release the first part of the September 2, video—and then many subsequent videos—for “trained eyes” to inspect.

As Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) noted, “This administration, since they started striking these boats illegally, has been very happy to show their snuff films every time they took out one of these boats. Now suddenly they’re willing to show the first hit but not the second. Why is that?”

We know why. Because, the second strike in particular is horrifying and indefensible.😠💥❗

Meanwhile, Donald Trump is bored by the whole matter. He was asked yesterday, “Has Hegseth told you why he hasn’t released the video of the second strike?” His answer: “No, he hasn’t told me. I thought that issue was dead.”

No, that issue isn’t dead. But, unbelievably, more than 80 people are now dead. Their deaths seem to have been unnecessary, unjustified, and unlawful. Donald Trump obviously does not care. We should.

Donald Trump is 79 years old with visible physical and mental health symptoms. Americans must hear from his physicians NOT lie diva Karoline Leavitt

An open, honest presidential health report, please - Echo editorial published in the Baltimore Sun newspaper:

We don’t have to suffer from “Trump Derangement Syndrome” or be an ugly red-hat-toting Trumpzi loyalist to be more than a little concerned when the most powerful person on the planet, says he doesn’t know what part of his body was scanned for a recent diagnostic MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) medical exam, two times within six months❗.💢😠

“What part of the body❓ (Duh❓) It wasn’t the brain," he said. "Because I took a cognitive test and I aced it.” (OMG...#SIASD)

Donald Trump gave a self assessment health to reporters on Air Force One this month, when questioned about his recent medical exams. (But where is Donald Trump's physician order for these exams❓❓)

White House "3-D printer Barbie", the press secretary Karoline Leavitt described Trump’s October tests (beyond an annual checkup) as showing his cardiovascular system in “excellent health” and major organs appearing “very healthy” and “well-perfused” (meaning they had proper blood flow).  This is a lie 🤥....Trump shows evidence of cardiovascular risks because his ankles are swollen, in other words, the venious blood return from his lower extremities, back to his heart, is not efficient.) 

(As a registered nurse, I am qualified by education, training, experience and license, and even required to ask, "Where is the physicians orders and the exam results❓)

And given Trump's advancing age, he is now 79, Americans have valid reasons to seek more persuasive reassurance about the state of Donald Trump's health, especiallly now when we see him falling asleep at his cabinet meetings while others are telling him how  wonderful he is.....no humble response from the sleeping monster. 

It’s no wonder, then, that the Trump White Houses’ vague and imprecise comments about Donald Trump's health examinations sparked a media frenzy and enormous speculation over whether he is concealing a serious ailment.

The lack of candor is all the more galling because Trump has repeatedly mocked his predecessor for his signs of aging, and Biden regularly showed signs of cognitive decline that even the most basic observer could have noticed.

The point here is not to humiliate anyone. If presidents have problems with incontinence, for example, the public doesn’t necessarily have to know full urinary tract details. 

But when you have the power to: 

• drop bombs on foreign governments
• commit troops to an invasion
• pardon dangerous criminals
• declare emergencies
• explode a nuclear device....

The world must know for certain if you are of sound mind and body❓ Sorry, but reassurances from paid spokespeople are not quite the same as hard medical evidence.

And, a lack of transparency clearly hasn’t succeeded in shoring up public confidence. 

As a general matter, Donald Trump must be forthcoming — or, better yet, Congress must mandate for basic disclosures.

Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth giving American military illegal orders in violation of the Defense Department's policy to save shipwrecked survivors

Echo opinion published in the Virginian Pilot, newpaper in Norfolk Virginia written by Jon Duffy*.

Pege Hegseth is giving illegal orders to American military in violaion of the Pentagon's own policies. 

New reporting from the Washington Post described how the U.S. forces conducting counter-drug operations in the Caribbean fired second missiles at people who survived an initial strike and were left swimming in the water. 

This illegal war crime marks a stark departure from long-standing U.S. military practice and from the most basic prohibitions in the laws of war.

If the United States is firing second missiles at survivors of its own strikes, we are no longer debating policy. 

Rather, we are describing a nation committing the very acts it once prosecuted others for. We have become what we once condemned.

There is a rule every professional military knows it cannot break: You do not kill people who can no longer fight. You don’t do it because the moment you do, you are no longer engaged in war. You are no longer fighting an enemy. You are killing for the state.

For weeks, the country has argued over legal memos, theories of presidential authority and the semantics of “armed conflict.” All of that obscures a simpler truth. Killing survivors is not a legal gray area, a battlefield innovation or a partisan dispute. It is a war crime. Full stop❗

The Geneva Conventions forbids violence against anyone “placed hors de combat,” or “out of the fight.” 

As a matter of fact, the Department of Defense’s Law of War Manual restates this without qualification. Section 18.3.2.1 even states, “For example, orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal.” Every American service member learns it before deploying. Killing people who are swimming for their lives is not a “disputed framework.” It is the abandonment of law.

In three decades of service, I watched how the institution quietly conditions people for moments like this — not through malice, but through the steady rewarding of compliance and the quiet sidelining of candor. By the time a real moral test arrives, most of the system has already learned that silence is the safest choice.

We know that a senior lawyer at U.S. Southern Command raised legal concerns and was sidelined from the process. 

Silencing a dissenting voice is not the act of a confident military. We know the SOUTHCOM commander, Admiral Alvin Holsey, abruptly announced his retirement amid these operations. The effect was unmistakable: The last check on illegality disappeared, and the killing continued.

A second missile does not fire itself. Killing survivors requires the participation or assent of entire layers of command: intelligence analysts, targeteers, pilots, strike cell leads, watch officers, military lawyers, commanders, post-strike assessors. This was not a lone aviator making a catastrophic judgment. This was institutional, and the institution committed a crime.

The cost of this atrocity is suffered by those least empowered to stop it. Young Americans — some barely old enough to drink — will carry this for the rest of their lives. 

Unfortunately, some will rationalize it. Some will break under it. 

A nation that orders its warriors to kill the helpless forfeits the moral standing to ask anything further of them.

Firing on the defenseless is not a gray area or “irregular warfare.” Our uniforms may be cleaner, the legal memos more elaborate, the language more sanitized — but the act is the same. These are war crimes — ordered from the very top of the chain of command. And the consequence is unmistakable: the collapse of the moral credibility of American power.

There must be investigations. There must be consequences — reaching as far up the chain of command as the facts demand. A military that kills the helpless is not operating in a fog of war. It has crossed the final boundary separating a professional force from a system designed to execute, not to think.

A nation that orders its service members to kill the defenseless is not being protected by its military. It is morally injuring its warriors, dishonoring the institution they serve and disfiguring itself.

And a nation that tolerates this — without outrage, without accountability, without demanding that it stop immediately — can make no claim to exceptionalism. It has surrendered its soul.

*Jon Duffy is a retired Navy captain. His active duty career included command at sea and national security roles. He writes about leadership and democracy for the Los Angeles Times.

Donald Trump promised to end Russian agression in the Ukraine on day one but it is now day 323 on December 9 and nothing changed

Echo letter to the editor published in the Los Angeles Times: 

As noted in the Los Angeles Times, Europe has good reason to worry abiyt the fate of Ukraine (“Alarm grows in Europe over what is seen as Trump’s ‘betrayal’ of Ukraine,” December 6). Americans, too, should be concerned, but it seems that the (incompetent) Donald Trump administration is not.

Remember, according to Donald Trump, the war would not have happened if he had been president while President Biden was in office. We can see now that that was wrong❗Then, Trump was going to settle the war on Day 1 of his second term. Wrong again❗
(Maine Writer- As a matter of fact, it has been 323 days since Donald Trump swore to uphold the American constitution and the Russian agression continues.😥)

Trump, it readily appears, has no interest in Ukraine’s best interests nor those of Europe. To the contrary, he is willing to have Ukraine cede land so he can fuel his autocratic bent, placate the evil Russian President Vladimir Putin and falsely 🤥declare he has resolved another war.🙄

From Joseph A. Lea, in Mission Viejo, California

Pete Hegseth is responsible for the murder of Venezualan survivors of the US ordered boat attack. He must be fired

Before he was secretary of defense — Pete Hegseth got it right.
Echo opinion published in the Boston Globe by Joan Vennochi

This isn’t the fog of war. It’s the fog of panic.

“There have to be consequences for abject war crimes,” Hegseth said in a video clip, during a talk he gave in 2016, that has resurfaced and is making the rounds on news stations.

“If you’re doing something that is just completely unlawful and ruthless, then there is a consequence for that. That’s why the military said it won’t follow unlawful orders from their commander in chief. There’s a standard, there’s an ethos. There’s a belief that we are above what so many things that our enemies or others would do.”

Now that Hegseth is facing questions about a possible war crime that occurred on his watch and under his command, he has jettisoned the ethos “that we are above what … others would do.” He pounced on six Democrats who posted a video saying that service members did not have to carry out illegal orders handed down by their commander-in-chief and referred to what was essentially a version of his own remarks from 2016 as “despicable, reckless, and false.” Donald Trump accused the lawmakers of “seditious behavior” and the Pentagon said it was launching an investigation into one of those Democrats, Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, a retired Navy captain.

In his job as defense secretary, Hegseth has also spent a lot of time talking about the “warrior ethos.” But as this controversy shows, he is far from a stand-up warrior, despite doing physical training with troops.

Rather than take ownership for the consequences of his order to strike a boat in the Caribbean on September 2, that he said was carrying drugs, and to kill everyone on it, as The Washington Post first reported, he is shifting accountability to an underling. Admiral Frank M. Bradley, commander of US Special Operations Command, has been identified as the official who made the decision for a follow-up strike that killed two survivors of the initial blast, and Bradley will be answering questions about it during a closed-door session with lawmakers.

The day after that September 2, operation, Hegseth told “(Fake❗)Fox & Friends,” “I watched it live.”  But now, he is saying he watched only the first strike live. At Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting, he said he watched the beginning of the strike before he “moved on” to his next meeting.

When he was asked if he saw any survivors after the first strike, Hegseth said, “I did not personally see survivors.”

Bradley, he said, authorized both strikes. “He sunk the boat, sunk the boat and eliminated the threat, and it was the right call.” Pressed for more information, Hegseth said, “This is called the fog of war.”

No, this is called the fog of panic and the ethos of self-preservation, no matter what the cost to others.

To put this debacle in context, it’s hard to beat this headline over George F. Will’s column in The Washington Post: “A sickening moral slum of an administration.” Or, Will’s opening paragraph: “Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth seems to be a war criminal. Without a war. An interesting achievement.”

Trump and Hegseth have invented a war, one they say gives them license to blow up boats suspected of drug smuggling, without the need to show proof or evidence or to even identify the suspects. 

This invented war has so far killed more than 80 people, a tally that the Trump administration has generally defended. Then came the report about the second September 2, strike to kill those two survivors, what military and legal experts say is a violation of international law.

Hegseth’s reaction shows that he knows that, too, and so does Donald Trump.

Since the story broke, about the second strike to take out the survivors, Trump has been hedging about Hegseth. As reported by The New York Times, on Sunday, aboard Air Force One, he said, “Pete said he did not order the death of those two men.” He added, “I believe him, 100 percent.” But he also said, “I wouldn’t have wanted that. Not a second strike.”

At the Cabinet meeting, Trump again distanced himself from the second strike, saying he didn’t know about it when it happened. 

Trump also said the United States is “going to start doing those strikes on land,” noting that “the land is much easier.”🙄❓

Meanwhile, as he pursues that questionable strategy against drug trafficking, Trump pardoned Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras, who had been sentenced to 45 years in prison for his role in a conspiracy to traffic cocaine into the United States.

Hypocrisy, not to mention immorality, is the hallmark of the Trump administration. Even so, moving past the controversy over the strike that killed those two survivors on September 2, won’t be easy.

As Hegseth said back in 2016, “There have to be consequences for abject war crimes.”

But Hegseth, a champion of the warrior ethos, does not want to be the warrior who faces those consequences.

Donald Trump and maga Republicans must stop evil dehuminization of innocent immigrants. Somalis in Lewiston Maine respond

Published in the Boston Globe by Brian MacQuarrie

LEWISTON, Maine — Saleh Mahamud, an imam in this mid-Maine city, finished his noontime prayers and pointed to a rear window and door in a mosque that serves the religious needs of Lewiston’s large Somali population.

‘This is my country’: Somalis in Maine are angered, insulted by Trump’s racist tirade.

‘This is my country’: Somalis in Maine are angered, insulted by Trump’s racist tirade - The Boston Globe

Gunshots pierced both the window and door in 2017, he said. And now, eight years after that frightening incident during President Trump’s first term, the estimated 6,000 Somalis who seek a better life in Lewiston are reeling once again.

This time, instead of bullets defiling their sacred space, they are recoiling from Trump’s xenophobic rhetoric last week that Somali immigrants are “garbage” who should return to their war-shredded country.

“We expect Donald Trump to be better than that. He is dividing the people instead of uniting them,” Mahamud continued. “This is my country. My children were born here. And we are not going anywhere else.”

In busy shops and on snow-covered sidewalks, Somali immigrants who have lived in Lewiston for decades, graduated from its public schools, and built bustling businesses here said repeatedly that they have been stunned by Trump’s remarks.

Donald Trump's unhinged racial tirade has left them angry, anxious, and in disbelief that Somalis everywhere in the United States — new arrivals and longtime citizens, the hard-working and the less fortunate — are being disparaged as a whole.

“I was deeply offended and shocked that he would target an entire group of American citizens,” said Safiya Khalid, 29, a former Lewiston city councilor who was the first Somali resident to serve on the board.

“People who hate Muslims, they now might feel they can do something because they have support from him,” said Mahamud, who has lived in Lewiston for more than 20 years.

“For him to dehumanize American citizens is unheard of and un-American,” said Khalid, who immigrated to the United States as a refugee at age 6. “There are people out there who are filled with hate and would take his message, unfortunately, and may act on it.”

During a televised Cabinet meeting, Trump denigrated Somalis generally as he spoke about pandemic-related fraud in Minnesota, which implicated some Somali immigrants and bilked the state of hundreds of millions of dollars.

“When they come from hell and they complain and do nothing but bitch, we don’t want them in our country,” Trump said.

Vice President J.D. Vance pounded the table in agreement, and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt praised the remarks as an “epic moment.”

Previously, Trump had said he wants to end temporary protected status for Somali refugees, who are allowed to remain in the United States under the program until they can return home safely. The country remains in the grip of a long civil war.

“They’re trying to use a few bad apples, which every group has, and demonize an entire group of people,” Khalid said.

A rally has been scheduled to support the city’s Somalis. Its organizers said in an announcement that the community is ”hurting after the racist and dehumanizing attacks against Somali Americans.”

“This moment demands courage, solidarity, and love. We refuse to be silent,” they added.

The vast majority of Somali immigrants in Lewiston, a city of about 39,000 people, either are citizens or have green cards, Khalid said. Their presence, she added, has buoyed the economy of what had been a faltering former mill city when they began arriving in the late 1990s.

Nevertheless, as their numbers grew, so did racial and cultural tensions in what historically had been a largely Franco-American community.

In 2002, Mayor Laurier Raymond urged Somali leaders in an open letter to discourage further migration to Lewiston because of a projected strain on social services. In 2003, a white supremacist group staged a rally here, although the protest attracted only a few dozen people compared with a counterdemonstration of about 4,000.

And in 2006, a frozen pig’s head was tossed into the Lewiston/Auburn Islamic Center, where Mahamud serves as imam.

Since that time, many Somalis said, the city has been a welcoming and tolerant place to plant roots, raise a family, and live in peace.

But now, they said, Trump’s rhetoric has rekindled a sense of anxiety.

“Some people will run with this,” said Ifraax Saciid-Ciise, 41, the founder of a nonprofit organization that aids immigrants. “They’ll say, ‘Look at our president. He has the same thinking as us.’ They’ll feel more empowered.”

“It’s just wild to me that he doesn’t consider us as someone he’s representing. He looks at us as not American,” said Saciid-Ciise, who came to Lewiston as a child and graduated from Lewiston High School and the University of Maine.

Lewiston Mayor Carl Sheline has assailed Trump’s remarks, calling them “shameful and inaccurate” in a written statement he released last week,

“Here, Somali entrepreneurs are business owners and hard workers, creating jobs and strengthening our local economy,” Sheline said. “Their active role within our city has been instrumental in Lewiston’s revitalization, making such rhetoric not only cruel but clearly false.”

For a city still recovering from a mass shooting in 2023, that killed 18 people and injured 13 others, Donald Trump's racist attack opened new, emotional wounds. But despite their anger, several Somalis said, they continue to believe in the promise of America.

“I don’t think Trump’s comments reflect the majority of Americans,” said Abas Shidad, 21, after leading a dozen boys, ages 6 to 10, in prayer and religious instruction at the mosque.

But, he is concerned about how the rhetoric could endanger Somalis living in rural areas of the country, where Trump is more popular. “He’s going out of his way to incite violence,” Shidad said.

Many Somali American citizens in Lewiston, fearful of being stopped by federal immigration agents, now make sure they carry their passports in public, Saciid-Ciise said.

Her 63-year-old mother, Shukri Abasheikh, sat in the popular store she opened in 2006, and scoffed at Trump’s assertion that Somali immigrants do not work hard.

“I work 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., seven days a week,” said the mother of eight children. “My first job here❓ I was a janitor at Lewiston High School.”

Customers called her “Mama” as they walked in to buy Somali food, chat about local events, and reconnect in a store awash with fresh foods such as tomatoes, peppers, and onions. Colorful hijabs, or women’s head coverings, adorned the faces of smiling mannequins.

Abdirizak Mahamoud, a scarf around his neck, stepped inside from sub-freezing weather on Lisbon Street. Mahamoud said he arrived in Lewiston in 2002, graduated from the University of Southern Maine, and has always regarded the United States as a beacon of human rights.

Trump’s tirade, he said, is the antithesis of that worldview.

“Send Somalis back❓ Why❓ That’s not the American ethic,” Mahamoud said. “Racists are not supposed to lead in this country. Where are the good Americans❓ We want them to stand up and say. ‘No, we don’t accept that.’ ”

Nearby, self-employed Mumina Isse echoed her community’s anger and bewilderment.  “He called us trash, but I’m working day and night and sleeping maybe five to six hours,” said Isse, a US citizen who emigrated here 30 years ago.

“But I am an American,” she added. “Nobody can change that.”

Donald Trump and maga Republicans must fire Pete Hegseth for incompetence ASAP before he makes another mistake

Echo editorial opinion pubished in the Boston Globe: 

Amounting to murder- US killing shipwrecked sailors raises urgent questions for Congress;  Two people survived the Pentagon’s first strike against drug boats in the Caribbean in September. Clinging to the wreckage, they were no longer a threat. So,why were they killed❗❓😠😳😧😢

Pete Hegseth Is A War Criminal

Hegseth is no stranger to controversy, but the emerging deadly scandal over a war crime he reportedly ordered the US military to commit in the Caribbean, is grave enough that many of his fellow Republicans have joined Democrats in sharply questioning his judgment. Even by the degraded standards of the Trump administration, ordering the murder of shipwrecked sailors, as Hegseth reportedly did in September, would be an abomination. Congress must quickly get to the bottom of what happened and hold Hegseth accountable.

The killings happened at the beginning of the Trump administration’s ongoing violent campaign against what it says are drug traffickers ferrying narcotics through the Caribbean Sea. The offensive has so far killed at least 80 people.

The legality of the operations in the first place is questionable. No evidence has been presented against the people who have been killed. Even if they were running drugs, due process demands that they be arrested and tried through the criminal justice system. In defending the use of military force instead, the Trump administration insists that the drug cartels are terrorists with whom the United States is at war, making the strikes legal.

But even if you accept Trump’s (flawed, wrong minded, evil❗) rationale — especially if you accept Trump’s rationale — it follows that,if this is a war, then the military’s actions must obey the laws of war. Yet The Washington Post reported last week that during the first planned strike on an alleged drug boat in early September, Hegseth gave a clear verbal order: Kill everybody.

“A missile screamed off the Trinidad coast, striking the vessel and igniting a blaze from bow to stern. 

For minutes, commanders watched the boat burning on a live drone feed. As the smoke cleared, they got a jolt: Two survivors were clinging to the smoldering wreck,” the Post reported. So the commander who was overseeing the attack allegedly ordered a second strike, and the two survivors were killed.

The double-tap strike likely constitutes a war crime under international law. The two were clinging on the boat and posed no tangible threat to the United States. 

As Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland, said, “this was an extrajudicial killing amounting to murder or a war crime.” Under the Geneva Conventions and other international treaties, not only can militaries not kill prisoners of war or incapacitated enemy sailors or soldiers, they must protect and rescue them if possible.

“We have always been trained to believe that folks who surrender, we don’t just mow them down for the sake of mowing them down,” Senator Jim Justice, Republican of West Virginia, said. “You have a situation like this where you’ve got survivors evidently in the water and we pulled a second strike off? It’s just not acceptable.”

Hegseth has tried to distance himself from the incident, instead throwing Admiral Frank Mitchell Bradley — who was leading the Joint Special Operations Command at the time of the strike — under the bus. But the good news is that Congress seems to be stepping up to do its job as a check on the executive branch in a bipartisan fashion. GOP-led committees in both the House and the Senate have launched inquiries into the reports.

It’s too early to know whether those congressional inquiries will lead to any tangible consequence for Hegseth. But, it’s precisely this kind of incident that shows why Pete Hegseth's history of irresponsible behavior makes him unfit for this job. 

Hegseth's Senate confirmation process was nearly derailed by reports of sexual misconduct, financial mismanagement, and a history of drinking on the job. 

Just a few months later, he was embroiled in Signalgate, where he was sharing sensitive and classified information — related to planned and imminent airstrikes in Yemen — on a Signal group chat that accidentally included The Atlantic’s editor in chief. According to The New York Times, the Pentagon’s acting inspector general found that the use of a private messaging service had put American troops at risk.

Donald Trump has so far defended Hegseth, though he has also tried to distance himself from the alleged war crime, saying he “wouldn’t have wanted that, not a second strike.” Meanwhile, though the Trump administration’s violent assault on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean continues under the guise of putting an end to drugs getting smuggled into the United States, unbelievably, Trump just recently pardoned former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, who had been previously convicted in the United States on charges of drug trafficking.

Hegseth, formerly a Fox (Fake❗ ) News fill in host, made a show of his job in the Trump administration, aggressively flaunting American military might. Alarmingly, he’s even publicly shown a disregard for international law and rules of engagement. “Maximum lethality, not tepid legality. Violent effect, not politically correct,” Hegseth said earlier this year, after rebranding (senslessly 😟😠) the Defense Department into the “Department of War.”🙄

That sort of reckless attitude toward norms and codes of conduct makes an incident like the double-tap strike unsurprising and indicates that the defense secretary might be capable of doing something far worse.

Republicans are starting to tire of Hegseth’s tough-guy act. “Secretary Hegseth said he had no knowledge of this and it did not happen. It was fake news. It didn’t happen. … And then the next day, from the podium of the White House, they’re saying it did happen,” Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, said of Hegseth and the alleged war crimes. “Either he was lying to us … or he’s incompetent and didn’t know it had happened.”

Of course, this might not be an either-or situation. Hegseth could very well be guilty of lying and incompetence, as evidenced by his other scandals. So whether it comes from Congress or the president himself, Hegseth has to face some form of accountability for his dangerous and potentially illegal actions. Otherwise, Americans should expect only more recklessness and dangerous irresponsibility from the very top of the Pentagon.

Donald Trump maga Republicns must expose, reject and end illegal orders to attack Venezuelan boats- Murder At Sea

 Echo opinion published in The New York Times by Jey Johnson, a lawyer, was a secretary of homeland security in the Obama administration, and, before that, general counsel of the Department of Defense.: 

With its strikes on suspected drug couriers (withour any evidence❗)  in the Caribbean, our U.S. government is conducting extrajudicial killings on the high seas — plain and simple. Some Americans may wonder how this is any different from the targeted killings of other bad guys around the world by previous administrations, including that of Barack Obama, in which I served.

There is a world of legal and moral differences.

First, Donald Trump has effectively unilaterally declared war against Mexican and Venezuelan drug cartels, without authorization from Congress. 

In contrast, following the September 11, attacks, Congress authorized President George W. Bush and his successors to treat terrorist members of Al Qaeda as enemy combatants in war and to use lethal military force against them.

Second, implicit in Congress’s 2001, authorization was the understanding that terrorist members of Al Qaeda and its affiliates were hiding in places such as Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen, beyond the reach of law enforcement. But drug smuggling and drug cartels, even those international in scope, are routine targets for law enforcement. The Mexican drug kingpin known as El Chapo, Joaquín Guzmán, was arrested and brought to justice in a U.S. court.

Before Donald Trump pardoned him last week, the former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández was convicted in a U.S. court and was serving a 45-year sentence in an American jail for drug trafficking. The Coast Guard, supported by the U.S. Navy, routinely interdicts and arrests drug couriers on the high seas.

Our military’s new precision weaponry allows for targeted lethal force with the single tap of a device. But that capability should never become a convenient and expedient substitute for law enforcement. That is the very definition of “extrajudicial killing.”

Third, there is a huge difference between the approaches of the President Barack Obama and the evil DonaldTrump administrations about the use of lethal force. The President Obama administration viewed lethal operations as necessary to protect American lives; officials in the Trump administration seem to revel in them.

Before I became the secretary of homeland security in President Obama’s second term, I was general counsel of the Department of Defense in his first term, overseeing the work of thousands of lawyers. That included providing the legal sign-off for lethal counterterrorism operations before they went to the secretary of defense and the president for approval. I’m sure the repeated experience over four years took a significant toll on me. I thought to myself, if I ever became accustomed to these, it was time to get out.

With these operations we thwarted scores of terrorist plots on America and the American people. We were not perfect; we heard the critics, and we worked hard to continually re-evaluate and improve our conduct of this awesome duty with which we had been entrusted.

I learned the law in this area, asked questions, guided my subordinates with internal memos, and even solicited, in a general way, the views of legal scholars outside the Pentagon. Once a year I summoned nonpartisan groups of national security legal experts — groups that would perhaps include a federal judge, a civil liberties lawyer, a former attorney general, a sitting senator — to ask them the basic question: “How are we doing?”

I sometimes gave a legal “no” for a proposed operation. I believe the disapprovals strengthened the process, as the military staff then knew they had to work harder to justify a strike as it worked its way up the chain of command.

I was not the only senior lawyer in this process. The Obama administration was filled with bright lawyers with a range of views, and President Obama encouraged robust legal debate to arrive at the most sustainable legal answers. He encouraged his national security lawyers, where possible, to provide public explanations of the legal basis for our counterterrorism efforts. Attorney General Eric Holder, the State Department legal adviser Harold Hongju Koh, the C.I.A. general counsel Stephen Preston and I all did so in speeches before audiences.

Books have been written describing the contentious internal legal debates I had with Harold, a liberal Yale Law School professor in his nongovernment career. Harold persistently inserted himself into my legal world at the Pentagon and made my job a lot harder. But, as Daniel Klaidman put it in his book “Kill or Capture,” our “rivalry reflected a healthy government dialectic that led to smarter and better justified policies.”

Sadly, I detect none of this rigor within the legal circles in the current Trumpzi administration. To the contrary, one month into the Trump administration, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fired the top judge advocates general of the Army and Air Force, signaling that he was not interested in the wealth of military law experience they brought to the table, and unnerving the thousands in the JAG communities beneath them.

We are told there is a legal opinion from the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel justifying the lethal boat strikes, but the opinion is classified and the public has heard about its contents only through second- or thirdhand reports. Any such opinion must discuss constitutional law, and constitutional law is not classified. If the Trump administration has confidence in its legal position, it can and should declassify the legal analysis that supposedly supports the strikes. In the absence of this, our government creates the impression that it is shooting first and backfilling the legal reasoning later.

The general tenor of Hegseth’s comments suggests that he relishes, rather than agonizes over, the approval of these lethal operations, and that others below him should do the same. In his September 30, speech at a large gathering of the military’s top brass, he called for creating a “warrior ethos,” promoting “maximum lethality,” and untying “the hands of our war fighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country.” He also ranted about “overbearing” and “stupid” rules of engagement. Such rhetoric encourages abuses of authority, and makes incidents like the “double tap” attack on Sept. 2 — in which our military struck a speedboat said to be carrying drugs a second time, killing the survivors of the first blast as they clung to the boat’s wreckage — almost inevitable.

In its aftermath, Pete Hegseth’s best explanation for the multiple strikes that day was the “fog of war.”

Congress needs to assert its oversight responsibilities. It is frustrating but predictable to hear politicians who saw the video of the Sept. 2 strike characterize it as “righteous” or “one of the most troubling things I’ve seen in my public service” depending upon whether there is a D or an R next to their name.

Congress should demand public release of the video of the second strike on Sept. 2. The House and Senate Armed Services Committees should demand public, sworn testimony from those in the chain of command about the events of that day and the boat attacks generally. Lawmakers should not be content with closed-door, unsworn briefings by select administration officials. The public has a right to hear the explanations for the extrajudicial killings the Trump administration is committing on our behalf.

Extrajudicial killing is something our government condemns when it is conducted by other nations with deplorable human rights records. We must now summon the strength of our convictions to look in the mirror and hold ourselves to the same standards.

Jeh C. Johnson is a lawyer who was a general counsel of the Department of Defense in Barack Obama’s first term and director of homeland security in his second term.