Survivors Clung to Wreckage for Some 45 Minutes Before U.S. Military Killed Them

Posted by belter 2 days ago

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Comments

Comment by ourmandave 2 days ago

The coast guard interdicts hundreds of boats off the coast. They train to take out the boat engine without causalities so they have evidence and suspects.

So far all we have is 2 fishermen returned to their own countries, 80+ dead bodies, and all physical evidence at the bottom of the sea.

War crimes to support a narrative for a conflict the majority of Americans don't want.

Comment by bobchadwick 1 day ago

But there's no war. These are just crimes.

Comment by jjgreen 2 days ago

Admiral Brady is without honour, as are those who executed his war-crime.

Comment by asdefghyk 2 days ago

Seems US military is set up to be judge and jury .

....the shipwrecked men still posed a threat ... In my opinion ...rubbish..

Comment by watwut 2 days ago

They were never a theat. And their boat could not reach USA without refueling dozens of times.

It was just a murder, literally to make the minister of war feels more manly.

Comment by classified 2 days ago

And an admiral who felt threatened by two drowning people clinging to a piece of debris. I'll never be tough like this.

Comment by votepaunchy 2 days ago

You would just … leave them?

Comment by geoffmanning 2 days ago

Because that's the only logical alternative? If this were truly the mission it claimed to be, they would capture and interrogate them obviously.

Comment by kccoder 1 day ago

Or do what they did in subsequent murder attempts when there were survivors: pick them up alive and return them from whence they came.

Comment by watwut 2 days ago

I mean, it would be better. The other option is to take them out of water. There is no universe where the only option to deal with shipwrecked people is to kill them.

In a war situation, which this was not, this is a war crime.

Comment by NedF 2 days ago

[dead]

Comment by Der_Einzige 2 days ago

You voted for this America. The Latinos who turn coated on the Democratic Party so hard in 2024 are reaping what they sowed.

Americans don’t want rule of law. They don’t want norms. They want people to suffer and they take great pleasure at the concept. We must kill schadenfreude from our psyche or we will continue to celebrate this barbarism.

Comment by beAbU 1 day ago

Not really sure why you are downvoted, but I'm inclined to agree with your sentiment. I've noticed this common thread of extracting glee in the suffering of others.

So long the suffering of "them" is greater, then the suffering I'm experiencing is justified and acceptable.

Not an American by the way.

Comment by nextstep 2 days ago

None of what the US is doing in Venezuela is new ground for the empire. Failed CIA coup plots, bribing Maduro’s pilots and allies in hopes of betrayal, even military action like bombing boats on shaky “national security” grounds— the US has been doing this sort of thing in Latin America (and much of the world) since the 50’s.

But this story has stayed in media because Trump is so brazen, declassifying CIA documents and speaking openly about these war crimes. That’s new for America. Usually these things are denied for a few decades, claims to the contrary are called “conspiracy theory”, before being admitted quietly, maybe mentioned in a back page of the NY Times.

So I’m skeptical that anyone from the US government could ever be held accountable for war crimes or violations of international law, but who knows. This does feel different.

Comment by ourmandave 2 days ago

The Iraq war set the standard. Darth Cheney made torture great again and nobody even saw trial.

After 20+ years of forever war it only came up as a campaign issue, in how did someone vote for the Iraq war when they were in congress.

Comment by IAmBroom 1 day ago

Wasn't one private courtmartialed? Lynndie England. And googling says 7 faced courts-martial this year, while independently another court awarded $42M in damages to the prisoners (who survived).

I'm outraged about Cheney's enshittification of our nation too, but truth is important.

Comment by ourmandave 1 day ago

Yeah, some justice but no one of consequence, which set the stage.

(Like what happened to the psychiatrists they hired to come up with waterboarding and other torture methods?)

Fast forward to today and you have a wannabe King pardoning his own coupists, massive fraudsters, and conspirators with foreign states.

Comment by watwut 2 days ago

Aaaand flagged. Because it reflects badly on Trump.

Comment by tim333 1 day ago

Doubt that's why it was flagged. Probably more the "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime..."

Comment by djdjsjejb 2 days ago

[flagged]

Comment by dbspin 2 days ago

This comment is wilfully gloating over the murder of civilians. It's beneath the standards of the Hacker News community or any civil society. What has become of America?

Comment by Nextgrid 2 days ago

Even if they were, what's the issue? The bullshit "war on drugs" has caused orders of magnitude more death and misery than the drugs themselves.

Comment by mapt 2 days ago

A) Killing drug mules for being drug mules is murder.

B) Killing enemy sailors in a war after their ship has sunk (assuming you can justify the false equivalence of drugs with violence with war in your head) is a war crime. The single most common example of a war crime you'll find in textbooks, in fact. Not only international law & the UCMJ, but even statutory US law forbids this.

C) We have seen no evidence that they're smuggling drugs. In fact, the administration was sort of gloating on social media over the fact that they're going to shoot at anything which moves.

D) There is some evidence that some of these were fishing vessels, and some evidence that others were smuggling cheap Venezuelan fuel to the Caribbean islands where formal trade networks make it expensive.

E) The drug trade originating in Venezuela would be cocaine, not the supposed Fentanyl that Trump claims. It's at least as likely to be headed for eventual consumption in Europe as the US.

F) If they'd just done the Obama thing and killed a bunch of people without bragging about how they can kill anyone they want, we wouldn't be obsessing so much. Trump has already declared anyone skeptical of his administration, of America, of Christianity, and of right-wing politics, to be a "terrorist", and thus a valid target for artillery strike under this current justification.

G) The administration is very clearly pushing the regime change war that the GOP has been pushing since Hugo Chavez took over and limited the power of American oil primes. They have declared the Venezuelan President to be "head of the cartel", and are telling us that they're going to invade with ground troops any day now.

Comment by watwut 2 days ago

There is no proof they are drug mules. None whatsoever. Meanwhile Trump pardoned literal proven head of drug cartel - Juan Orlando Hernández.

And moreover, the punishment for drug dealing is not death.

Comment by harimau777 2 days ago

I mean that just makes it worse right? Bombing drug mules isn't even a war crime, its just regular murder.