DL Open Thread: Saturday, November 29, 2025
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 Special Operations commander overseeing the Sept. 2 attack — the opening salvo in the Trump administration’s war on suspected drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere — ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions, two people familiar with the matter said. The two men were blown apart in the water.
Hegseth’s order, which has not been previously reported, adds another dimension to the campaign against suspected drug traffickers. Some current and former U.S. officials and law-of-war experts have said that the Pentagon’s lethal campaign — which has killed more than 80 people to date — is unlawful and may expose those most directly involved to future prosecution.
The alleged traffickers pose no imminent threat of attack against the United States and are not, as the Trump administration has tried to argue, in an “armed conflict” with the U.S., these officials and experts say. Because there is no legitimate war between the two sides, killing any of the men in the boats “amounts to murder,” said Todd Huntley, a former military lawyer who advised Special Operations forces for seven years at the height of the U.S. counter terrorism campaign.
Even if the U.S. were at war with the traffickers, an order to kill all the boat’s occupants if they were no longer able to fight “would in essence be an order to show no quarter, which would be a war crime,” said Huntley, now director of the national security law program at Georgetown Law.
Not to mention that nobody in the Trump Administration has provided even a scintilla of evidence that the targets of any of these US attacks were engaged in drug trafficking.
Which Reminds Me–Trump Pardons This Guy:
President Trump announced on Friday afternoon that he would grant “a Full and Complete Pardon” to a former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, who, as the center of a sweeping drug case, was found guilty by an American jury last year of conspiring to import cocaine into the United States.
The news came as a shock not only to Hondurans, but also to the authorities in the United States who had built a major case and won a conviction against Mr. Hernández. They had accused him of taking bribes during his campaign from Joaquín Guzmán, the notorious former leader of the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico known as “El Chapo,” and of running his Central American country like a narco state.
The judge in his case, P. Kevin Castel, had called Mr. Hernández “a two-faced politician hungry for power” who masqueraded as an antidrug crusader while partnering with traffickers. And prosecutors had asked the judge to make sure Mr. Hernández would die behind bars, citing his abuse of power, connections to violent traffickers and “the unfathomable destruction” caused by cocaine.
Am I the only one getting mixed messages? No:
A Drug Enforcement Administration agent, who worked on the investigation into Mr. Hernández and spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter, called the pardon “lunacy.”
Mike Vigil, a former chief of international operations at the same agency, also reacted with disbelief to the news of the pardon. Mr. Vigil said the move imperiled the reputation of the United States and its international investigations into drug trafficking.
“This action would be nothing short of catastrophic and would destroy the credibility of the U.S. in the international community,” Mr. Vigil said on Friday.
Oh, turns out that this narcoterrorist belongs to the same political party of the man Trump has endorsed to be Honduras’ new president.
‘Trump’s Campaign Of Retribution: At Least 470 Targets And Counting”. Your one-stop shop to the insanity that is Trump’s second term, Award-worthy:
A tally by Reuters reveals the scale: At least 470 people, organizations and institutions have been targeted for retribution since Trump took office – an average of more than one a day. Some were singled out for punishment; others swept up in broader purges of perceived enemies. The count excludes foreign individuals, institutions and governments, as well as federal employees dismissed as part of force reductions.
The Trump vengeance campaign fuses personal vendettas with a drive for cultural and political dominance, Reuters found. His administration has wielded executive power to punish perceived foes – firing prosecutors who investigated his bid to overturn the 2020 election, ordering punishments of media organizations seen as hostile, penalizing law firms tied to opponents, and sidelining civil servants who question his policies. Many of those actions face legal challenges.
At the same time, Trump and his appointees have used the government to enforce ideology: ousting military leaders deemed “woke,” slashing funds for cultural institutions held to be divisive, and freezing research grants to universities that embraced diversity initiatives.
Reuters reached out to every person and institution that Trump or his subordinates singled out publicly for retribution, and reviewed hundreds of official orders, directives and public records. The result: the most comprehensive accounting yet of his campaign of payback.
Please read–then demand that our so-called congressional delegation (and every bleeping D federal officeholder) show a spark of, if not outrage, concern.
A historian who spent more than a month in Gaza at the turn of the year says he saw “utterly convincing” evidence that Israel supported looters who attacked aid convoys during the conflict.
Jean-Pierre Filiu, a professor of Middle East studies at France’s prestigious Sciences Po university, entered Gaza in December where he was hosted by an international humanitarian organisation in the southern coastal zone of al-Mawasi.
Israel has blocked international media and other independent observers from Gaza but Filiu was able to evade strict Israeli vetting. He eventually left the territory shortly after the second short-lived truce during the war came into effect in January. His eyewitness account, A Historian in Gaza, was published in French in May and in English this month.
In the book, Filiu describes Israeli military attacks on security personnel protecting aid convoys. These permitted looters to seize huge quantities of food and other supplies destined for desperately needy Palestinians, he writes. Famine threatened parts of Gaza at the time, according to international humanitarian agencies.
UN agencies at the time told the Guardian that law and order had deteriorated across Gaza since Israel began targeting police officers, who guarded aid convoys. Israel considered police in Gaza, which has been run by Hamas since 2007, an integral part of the militant Islamist organisation.
Delaware is seeking applicants for a new statewide inspector general position.
The application period runs through Dec. 15. A selection panel has been formed to review applicants and recommend three candidates to the governor, who will choose the nominee. That person must be confirmed by the state Senate.
The bill, sponsored by state Sen. Laura Sturgeon, D-Brandywine Hundred, created an independent inspector general office tasked with finding instances of fraud, waste and abuse within state government and the General Assembly. Once chosen, the appointee will hire a staff, which is required to be certified in investigation, auditing or evaluation within three years. The inspector general has subpoena power authority to compel document production and issue public reports exposing corruption and wrongdoing.
The list of criteria for evaluating candidates includes requiring applicants to have 10 years of expertise in areas such as law, financial analysis, accounting, ethics or auditing. The ideal candidate would have prior experience in an office of inspector general.
Submitted Without Comment–Council Resolution Seeks To Limit Liquor Stores In Wilmington. Please read this, then comment. Otherwise I might feel compelled to.
That’s not exactly the top shelf of Dover legislators to be fair….
Well, Paradee has a lot of power.