If there's something people want to see, why not let them see? I don't want to see it, because I was taught as a child not to look, and I've always regarded this a moral requirement. If I know it is video of a real person dying, I will read about it if it is newsworthy but I don't watch. I read about the death of George Floyd, but I did not watch.
Do people gain better understanding by watching video of human beings dying? In the case of the boat strike, there are fact questions, and it is evidence – inflammatory evidence, but evidence. And some people want to stare at it and make up their own mind — stare at human beings, desperate and then blown up. How much can be seen? Would we be gazing at phantoms through smoke or is there a specific question to be answered?
We could be told how much time passed between the 2 strikes, but it is different to experience the passage of time while watching a person die and seeing others refrain from saving him. I felt that I understood the George Floyd incident from knowing that it lasted 9 minutes and 29 seconds, but watching that video affected many people very strongly.
So, first, do we know how much time passed between the 2 strikes? The longer it is, the more people will feel. Some will feel profound empathy and others may get a pornographic thrill.
The government may want to orchestrate human feeling, but which human feeling will they get from showing this video? Oh, no, never kill! Or: Yay! That's what you get!
What kind of people are we, and can Hegseth calibrate the predicted emotions and decide who ought to be fed and who ought to be starved?
So how much time between the 2 strikes? Is it 2 seconds? 2 minutes? 2 hours?!
I had to go searching. I found: "The defence secretary also suggested several hours may have passed before the second strike was ordered." As the spelling of "defense" indicates, that's the British press — BBC ("How the White House account of September boat strike has evolved"). We would see hours of men struggling in wreckage, waving and begging for rescue?
Posts
144 comments:
Does the drug runner care how many people his product kills? Why should I care about the drug runner?
Should the drug runner be forced to watch videos of people dying on fentanyl? Does the drug runner have any empathy? Why should we have empathy towards them?
What has really surprised me is that the Left (to my knowledge) has never analogized the coke boat incident to the scene in “Open Range.”
Kevin Costner and Robert Duvall are outnumbered in what I consider the greatest Western gunfight. They are in town to get revenge for the killing of their friend by the cattle baron.
They wipe out the entire crew, but one guy who is crawling away. He’d been shot by Costner, but not killed.
Costner, “I’m not going to be looking over my shoulder the rest of my days.”
Crawling guy, “Mister, I’m not going to do that.”
Costner, “Not likely.”
Duvall, “We came here for revenge; not murder. Those are two different things.”
Costner, “Not today.”
Above is my paraphrase from memory. I think it perfectly captures the issue.
Has it even been established that there was a second strike? The official line when this “scandal” broke is that the report was wrong, there was only one strike. SFAIK, that is still the official position. Releasing a video of one strike won’t change the minds of the people who believe there were two. They’ll just assume the second strike was edited out of the video.
I’m with you. Not as a moral principle, but I just don’t have a desire to see it. Most people who do want to see it are rubbernecking. It is, as you say, not evidence, but porn.
This administration likes to claim transparency, but now repeatedly fails to follow through on their own words.
Same story as happened with Epstein files. Everyone promises to release it, then fights tooth and nail to keep it hidden (at least partially).
Would not be surprised if time/date info is stripped from any video they would release, to make it impossible to track that length of time you mentioned.
It's interesting to ponder. After all "Napalm Girl" became a symbol of that war, so one could reasonably assume that Americans who saw the video of Obama's "double taps," especially incidents like the wedding party where after the first strike nurses and doctors and neighbors and children ran to see what happened only to be evaporated by Obama's second strike.
If video of that "double-tap" had run repeatedly on news shows in conjunction with Obama's cold-blooded laughing assessment "I'm getting pretty good at killing" then perhaps we could have had this national conversation when it was salient. Now, when the "innocent" are actually armed death-dealing drug traffickers who have been targeted by American forces for over 40 years now, and only now does the evil DNC media want to question the process because Obama is safely retired his "even worse" acts can be spun as old news.
Of course our resident retarded dishonest lawyer, who slanders others* on this blog unreservedly, jumps in to offer a pre-event conspiracy theory about what Trump **might do** if, if, if...
Lucky for us his predictions have come to 100% failure up against actual events.
*A strange habit for an alleged lawyer.
Eh it depends. I think a lot of people will not fully understand the seriousness of murder if they're not witness to it. Reading about it is one thing, but seeing it is another. I'm thinking of the Ukrainian woman murdered on the light rail train. I watched it and it was horrific and tragic. Just reading about it though, and it s memory will fade. Watching it enrages you and hopefully spurs more meaningful action.
"because I was taught as a child not to look, and I've always regarded this a moral requirement". And what is the moral requirement here?
This is the same administration that’s censoring demolition images of our sacred East Wing. No videos, no peace!!
I saw the video of Charkie Kirk being shot, and the blood gushing out of his neck as his head slumped. I did not seek it out, it just showed up as I scrolled. I cannot get that 7 seconds out of my head.
People can empathize with persons whose respiratory function is suppressed with drug overdoses (e.g. George "Fentany" Floyd Syndrome), thus the support for abortive interdiction of drug exporters in blue seas. #BLM
Dave Begley: Please! movies ain't for real. Nor was Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.
Dave Begley, great movie. And a good reminder that "cowboy code", not Mother Theresa, is still the best in matters dealing with murderers.
More like a how to manual
Trump -- of all people -- would show the video if it made him and his people look better. He'd put short clips on social media too. So, I figure this event was a typical cold and calculating military operation. Not good, not bad, but "executing the mission and following orders."
Everyone from local police through the military are taught to shoot with "double taps" to increase effectiveness while maintaining accuracy and control. Once they decide to shoot, they accept that the death of the target is acceptable. They fire twice in rapid succession in case the first shot is not effective, and generally fire at "center mass" or mid torso, but will also adapt if they can't see the torso. A double tap can help when the first shot is a simple miss, or when it causes a "flesh wound" to an arm, leg, or tissues.
Speculating here: In the case of shooting a drug boat from an aircraft or other boat, the first shot may have hit only one flotation compartment and allowed the boat/engine to function pretty normally. A boat flesh wound. If the double tap wasn't effect, they'd follow with a second double tap (i.e., 4 shots total). Then, perhaps continue. This follows from plenty of similar gun camera/drone videos dating to the Iraq war and later.
https://x.com/nettermike/status/1997765685922136281?
The awlaki grandpa the fulbright scholar raised some foolish kids and grandpa
I read somewhere that the Rodney King videos were shown 17x more often than the Reginald Denny videos. It was a week before they aired that Ukrainian girl's murder and even then the most harrowing part was edited out.......These men working the boats probably aren't high up the food chain. Their deaths are pathetic, but they have chosen a high risk profession. These drug people, including those at a low level, murder bystanders, witnesses, government officials, and each other at a horrendous rate. Of all the thousands of murdered people, the media will shed the most tears for these.
And grandson
I don’t know what the video would change. The anti-due process crowd is already convinced it’s justified.
I can’t help but think about the J6 videos. A lot of Republican lawmakers, commentators, and MAGA folk were appalled, until they were told not to be. The mob turned into patriots peacefully strolling along.
The boat video, like most anything, wouldn’t matter. For the Gullibles, Trump’s fighting the war on drugs and this is what it takes, even as he’s pardoning major drug trafficking kingpins and gangsters at a record pace.
Lots of current videos of Ukraine drones chasing Russian soldiers, not ending well for the soldiers. An important tactical fact portrayed., not emotive based in any way.
There used to be lots of videos of US helicopter gunners liquifying armed terrorists in the streets in Iraq. Mostly impressive marksmanship.
Move it all into whatever genre that is.
Could be the video is quite boring, Trump knows it, so he will get Democrats to waste a lot of political capital making hay of this only to embarrass them later with the release. Wouldn’t be the first time.
Yes thats my only complaint the one who sent out those crews have yet to be targeted
"Do people gain better understanding by watching video of human beings dying?"
We wont have to worry about this much longer. The videos coming out of Ukraine right now will remove a couple of generations of coddled boomers who never had to see anyone die after their parents won WWII for them.
Anytime there is a war now you will get copious video.
I suspect someone in military ops raised questions of principle and precedent. "Sources and methods" seems to be the analogous issue with non-military situations. Is the military going to have to release films of all its engagements? Are they now going to have to factor in "How will this look on TV" every time they take action?
Does it matter that the intended purpose was to sink the ship and the second strike was to sink what was left?
I mean does it matter in the context of what Obama’s second strikes were intended to do?
They need to get more powerful missiles
Ronald J. Ward said...
I don’t know what the video would change. The anti-due process crowd is already convinced it’s justified.
I can’t help but think about the J6 videos. A lot of Republican lawmakers, commentators, and MAGA folk were appalled, until they were told not to be. The mob turned into patriots peacefully strolling along.
The boat video, like most anything, wouldn’t matter. For the Gullibles, Trump’s fighting the war on drugs and this is what it takes, even as he’s pardoning major drug trafficking kingpins and gangsters at a record pace.
Ronald had no problem with Obama killing people without due process.
the ukrainian drone strikes don't really show people dying because the screen goes blank. they die after that.
FIFY: Ronald had no problem with Obama killing children, doctors, nurses, first responders and wedding attendees without due process.
This has to be one of the dumbest anti-trump "scandals" of all time. And of course, the RINOs in Congress have to race to the TV cameras to give it support. There's some old bore in Congress called Daniel bacon who's always giving us his opinions on Defense/Foreign policy who's especially bad. He's not the Sec of Defense, state, or POTUS but he thinks he is.
BTW. These same people are about to pass a bill requiring Trump to maintain troop levels in Europe. I dunno what happens if Trump doesn't. But its typical of these Republican clowns in Congress. They love to butt into foreign policy. Domestic policy and their Republican voters bore them. Not their concern. Unlike Ukraine or NATO.
narciso said...
They need to get more powerful missiles
Nah. Everyone is dead one way or the other after the first strike.
When we cleaned up after Obama's drone strikes sometimes people were crawling around. The double tap was just ending the pain. Especially with the thermobaric missiles.
From what I can tell we are mostly using blast fragmentation missiles which is certainly a kindness.
The principle of privacy. Was it abortive ideation entertained with liberal license following progressive principle as Planned or in self-defense?
RCOCEAN II said...
BTW. These same people are about to pass a bill requiring Trump to maintain troop levels in Europe. I dunno what happens if Trump doesn't. But its typical of these Republican clowns in Congress.
Really?
Please please please...
Was it Capitol punishment?
For the boats who are Venezuelan navy adjacent
The first strike was because black lives matter. The second strike, if it were required, would be to abort, evacuate, sequester the "burden" of a nonviable boat.
I read somewhere that the conflict in Syria produced 600,000 deaths and produced over two million refugees. The most horrendous casualty and refugee figures were not located in Gaza, but that seems to to the locus of the world's outrage.....Rodney King vs Reginald Denny. Floyd riots vs J6 disturbance.......Of all the hundreds of thousands of deaths associated with the illicit drug trade, these are the deaths that prick the conscience of our leaders and thinkers.
William said: “These men working the boats probably aren't high up the food chain. Their deaths are pathetic, but they have chosen a high risk profession. “
Possibly true but there’s a familiar rot here only on a much higher level.
I’ve lived on the outskirts of a city of around 70,000 people for 67 years. Now, I’d wager this town is much like any other- owned and operated by about 50 or so people. And like most towns, they’ve battled drugs since I can remember. But How?
For starters, many around my town knew or strongly believed the main dealers were a few of the prominent business owners. Let’s call them the Jones, Smiths, and Hancocks.
Periodically, the local sheriff dept, city and state police would have roundups from previous investigations and arrest maybe 50 to 150 low end drug dealers. But the investigations always seemed to have stopped there- drug dealers off the streets and mission accomplished- but the Smiths etc. went unscathed.
I recall laws being enacted for harsher penalties for dealers selling so many feet from a school. Sounds great but the thing is, you’d never find a Smith or a Jones or a Hancock peddling drugs near a school.
Strange thing happened in the 1990s. Homemade meth labs became a thing. So how did the law respond? Vigorously. If you were caught, you became an informer or there was hell to pay. They went to great lengths to stop it, and they pretty much succeeded.
But here’s the thing, Mr. Hancock and his friends weren’t making meth. Meth was actually competing with their racket.
That’s what I’m seeing on a larger scale. Trump is going after small potatoes, destroying evidence and witnesses that could lead to bigger fish, and pardoning the Smiths and Jones and Hancocks with abandon.
It is fun to watch Ronald pretend that aiding and abetting foreign soldiers jumping on boats full of drugs and guns in foreign countries who ship drugs and guns to our country is not treason.
Seth Moulton (D-Commie) saw the video and said it was murder, what more do you need?
Theres his sign
They shouldn't release the video because it will just money the waters much like the way the Zapruder film cast doubts on the Warren Report.
It seems like Achilles is justifying what the Trump administration is doing by claiming their acts are very similar to the evil treasonous interloper Obama. Using the transitive property to justify potentially unlawful Acts is effective with the punters: pimping for Trump!
I quite enjoyed watching General “Stormin’ Norman” Schwartzkopf showing video of Iraqi tanks and bridges and buildings getting blown up. I’ve seen videos of drug smuggling boats getting blown up. You screw with the US, you go “boom.”
Althouse, living in a Democrat owned and operated college town, assumes (no doubt correctly) that her neighbors and university are seriously impacted by anything that interdicts drugs to the US. Consequently she hopes that watching drug boats explode will lead to backlash against Trump.
There are countless videos available of terrorists and insurgents being killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. What you generally see is colorless images like photographic negatives of men on the ground as seen from a Specter or an Apache or a Predator drone. There is often a sound track of the pilots and their controllers talking about what they see and getting clearance to engage.
Typically, the men on the ground are moving around a cluster of small, buildings or a couple trucks or cars. They are being watched from above, but don't realize it. Then a weapon will come into view and the ROE then allow them to be categorized as combatants or terrorists. The aircrew will then lock on and engage them as targets. Soundless explosions bloom and people die. Others scatter. They are in the dark down on the ground. They don't understand that the dark won't hide them. The air crew tracks them down and kills them all. There is no escape. If they are lying injured on the ground, but moving, they are finished off, torn apart literally with electric cannon fire.
No mercy. No rescue. No capture. No medivac. Only violent death.
This how the GWOT has been conducted for more than 20 years by the US military, by Bush and Obama. Those were the rules and tactics. Trump declared these drug runners terrorists and brought the same forces with the same training, tactics and rules to bear.
The War On Drugs was declared decades ago, but it was never prosecuted as a war. Now it is.
Putting death on TV helped the left end the Vietnam war. Americans have seen a tremendous amount of violence both real and pretend on their screens since those days.
If 2 hours passed between strikes, it serves to bolster the claim that the another cartel boat might have come for the drugs. It also means the survivors might have been captured, then the load destroyed. Drug runners on boats don't have much intelligence value, I guessing, but if I'm not mistaken, some drug runners have been taken prisoner in these strikes. Not sure if it was before or after this incident.
Howard said...
It seems like Achilles is justifying what the Trump administration is doing by claiming their acts are very similar to the evil treasonous interloper Obama. Using the transitive property to justify potentially unlawful Acts is effective with the punters: pimping for Trump!
I am not justifying anything. There is no justification for war. It is not a just act. Killing people is something you do or don't do.
In this case you kill people on boats in the gulf of Mexico or they kill people in the United States with drugs and guns. You make a choice.
We got to walk around Afghanistan and clean up after drone strikes. I am not entirely convinced how many Americans those people would have killed. But someone decided the drone strike was a good idea so there we were.
My reasons for wanting to see as many dead Taliban as possible was more of a reaction to taboos and my personal opinions of child rape. It unfortunately extended to quite a large number of people in Afghanistan.
I wish the president had the balls to say what you just said, Achilles. Sanitizing the ugly world we live in with euphemisms is the ultimate hate crime.
How about they publish some videos of babys born addicted to drugs, screaming in the arms of a helpless nurse.
How about some young kids being taken away from their addict mother by strangers...forever.
I don't watch snuff films.
Bob Boyd said...
Typically, the men on the ground are moving around a cluster of small, buildings or a couple trucks or cars. They are being watched from above, but don't realize it.
The drone strikes were about watching people burn to death especially if it was a car which usually caught on fire. The specter was about finding pieces. If you found 3 left feet or 2 right hands etc.
It was better when they sent us in and we balled everyone up to interrogate them.
But then we would almost invariably see black eyes on the women or the pocket boys.
It is really fun to see Americans talk about how awful it is for some drug dealer to get killed on a boat full of drugs and guns and show sympathy in these situations when they have supported shit like this for decades.
The first strike is as problematic as the second.
If the Navy had pulled up alongside that small boat and machine-gunned the occupants, that would be clear. Using missiles clouds the issue.
The justification is Trump’s declaration of war against drug traffickers, but that’s not within his powers under the Constitution.
Howard said...
I wish the president had the balls to say what you just said, Achilles. Sanitizing the ugly world we live in with euphemisms is the ultimate hate crime.
Do you wish Trump would say that? The pendulum is about to swing. You will get what you say you want here. But it is going to be a bumpy ride and Trump is too feminized to say things out loud.
We have been living with a feminized version of reality for a long time.
It would be cool if we could find a balance between that and wherever I am. It just seems like nobody wants equilibrium.
I will also point out that it would be a lot cheaper to machine-gun the small boats. The added expense of the missiles is for legal cover.
I am not justifying anything. There is no justification for war. It is not a just act. Killing people is something you do or don't do.
In this case you kill people on boats in the gulf of Mexico or they kill people in the United States with drugs and guns. You make a choice.
There it is.
The justification is Trump’s declaration of war against drug traffickers
No, it was designating them as terrorists.
Once again the Emotions people just keep saying "it's wrong" with no explanation of why THIS is wrong but THAT was not. The facts people keep saying "this is what we've always done" and there's no explanation needed.
I don’t want to see the video either.
Even if we assume the worst case scenario, this kind of thing goes on all the time. I refuse to pretend to get upset about it.
the ukrainian drone strikes don't really show people dying because the screen goes blank. they die after that.
Some of them have a second camera drone overhead to show the aftermath. From what I have seen, it's obvious that the targeted soldiers are killed or grievously wounded, but these are small explosions like a hand grenade, and it doesn't shred their flesh or blow them to pieces like an artillery shell or land mine would. (In fact, the payloads are so small that one of the most effective counter-drone weapons is a mop or bundle of rags on a long handle that can push the drone a few feet away from its intended target and muffle its explosion.)
What I find more disturbing is how near they get to the targets before the explosion, showing the emotions on the mens' faces in high-resolution detail, close enough to be easily recognizable by their loved ones as they draw their last breaths. Some of them engage in futile resistance, throwing rocks and sticks and pieces of trash at the drone, or shooting at it without effect. Some of them cross themselves and accept the inevitable with what looks like tranquility. Some scream, some cry for their mothers or wives, some flee and are chased down from behind, some glare into the camera with a stone-faced thousand-yard stare.
It's a very disruptive new paradigm for asymmetric warfare, and the Pentagon had better pull its thumb out of its ass and figure out some cheap, reliable countermeasures. Mops and shotguns aren't going to do the trick.
But far beyond warfare, I am more worried about the petty-tyrant Dolores Umbridge types who fill the governments of the formerly-free Western nations using these devices as a means of controlling the population. Let's hope that ordinary people work out how to use them to intimidate the left-wing enemy occupation government scum, rather than the other way around.
From the numbers I’ve read, the product these fine men smuggle into the country is responsible for killing anywhere from tens of thousands to over 100,000 Americans per year. This puts the death toll somewhere in the neighborhood of US soldiers lost annually in WWII. And that doesn’t even begin to count the collateral deaths and damage associated with drug use.
Maybe Obama numbed me to the concept of our government taking out civilians, but at least it’s being done for a good cause. Much better than killing innocents at wedding parties.
To clarify further, the Facts People are not justifying what is being done by using Obama as an example, we are using the Obama illustration to show that the Emotions people do not care (i.e. have no emotions about) Obama doing the same thing that triggers them when Trump does it. We don't care how Emotions People read it and interpret it because we know what we intend by saying it and we know they will ALWAYS misinterpret us anyway.
We say it to point out the folly of the Left and point out that even when it comes to killing people, Civility Bullshit is always and forever 100% bullshit and uncivil at its core.
Left Bank of the Charles said...
I will also point out that it would be a lot cheaper to machine-gun the small boats. The added expense of the missiles is for legal cover.
Machine guns have a short range.
It would cost more in fuel, maintenance, and risk of crashes to get a helicopter out there to "machine gun" the boat. Also Helicopters aren't so much faster than these boats that they can just intercept them like that.
You are an ignorant fool who knows nothing about what you speak.
I am not sure why democrats like to show people how stupid they are.
Seeing real violent death up close also makes one less likely to want to watch it on film. I have zero desire to see such things again and avoided X the day Charlie was shot for that reason.
“Shipwrecked sailors… Epstein… da Bulls… Ditka…”
I am not sure why democrats like to show people how stupid they are.
It just happens over and over until you realize they do it unthinkingly. Like chronic verbal diarrhea, it is a corollary to the general Chaos Theory of everything the left does. It is all designed to produce chaos and calamity in hopes we'll accidentally choose socialism over freedom.
Keeping people enraged or engaged and answering stupid questions is their useful idiot contribution to the neverending Revolution.
Q - So the image of the drug boat bursting into flames isn't the video?
Striking these boats on the open seas is a "shot across the bow" to those on dry land who sent them.
Those decrying the strikes are not throwing a life preserver to the doomed sailors, but those on dry land who sent them.
Left Bank--why do you think those little boats have four massive outboards? In order to "machine gun" the crews they would have to chase them down with a boat.
I wouldn't - couldn't - watch the videos of October 7th. Watching people die is like going to public executions - horrible. It's one thing if it's your duty, quite another if a choice.
Ethical dilemma:
Two men are clinging to the smoldering hull after a first strike on a drug boat. One is wearing a MAGA hat. You're a Dem and you have the launch button. What do you do?
That striking boats on the open seas all but eliminates the risk of innocent collateral casualties from the use of force is central to the moral equation.
The drug runners could start carrying women and kids on the boats as human shields. That'd throw a wrench in things.
And they could collect a fee from American NGO's for bringing the human shields closer to America.
Achillies said; “In this case you kill people on boats in the gulf of Mexico or they kill people in the United States with drugs and guns. You make a choice.”
Unless I misunderstood, your previous justification was for a lead up to invade Venezuela for their resources. Now, the boat people are out to kill us.
Which is it?
I stopped watching after seeing the video of Nick Berg being beheaded in Iraq in 2004. It deeply effected me and still does, but a written description of anything is suspect. It's always just someone's opinion of what they saw, but if all accounts agree, I don't need to see it.
Seeing something like that is a completely different understanding than just reading about it, which is why I avoid it. I can't even watch animals being killed anymore, even when it's completely natural and common, except for mosquitoes, which I give no quarter.
You wanna see them die Ann?? I bet you can find web sites that show that kind of thing... if that floats your boat (no pun intended.)
Last night the Gutfeld gang was discussing SNL's opening sketch where Colin Jost played an only slightly exaggerated Hegseth. The 'felders agreed that a Hegseth fan would not be put off had the real SecWar said Jost's lines.
Extrapolate to the boat videos: anyone who agrees with Trump is not going to stop because he sees footage of Trump's enemies burning to death. Anyone who already thinks he's Hitler can't possibly hate him more. Will the footage even bring out more already -convinced voters on either side? A year from now? CC, JSM
Empathetic cascade theory.
A lot of Republican lawmakers, commentators, and MAGA folk were appalled, until they were told not to be. The mob turned into patriots peacefully strolling along.
Most of the "mob" was people peacefully strolling along. But the media wanted Republican lawmakers, etc., and most especially the public at large to be "appalled," so they told the story they wanted to tell.
As I commented yesterday or so, my father-in-law was absolutely certain that the climax of the drug boat story is that if there are survivors after the first missile, the boat is boarded and the survivors shot, execution style. Why do you think he believes that?
A hint: his news sources are USA Today and MSNBC or whatever they're calling themselves now, via the news feed pushed to him on his iPad. He does not question them. He hates Trump passionately because he believes without question that Trump called WWII veterans "suckers and losers."
P.S. I also avoid videos of people dying; not only do I find them too haunting for me, but I've learned, through episodes like Jan. 6 but going back a lot farther than that, that video makes it very easy to manipulate people's feelings without adding to the store of facts.
We really are quite fortunate. Anyplace not the first world are, for the most part, mean, dirty and violent. Sometimes, in order to make our position known, we have to be violent too. Venezuela went from a first world country to a third world country. Now they do third world country things.
Did we sink their boat?
" You make a choice."
Yep. People who prefer to do nothing think that makes them innocent, but it is still a chosen course of action with a known result,. and you prefer that result. In this case, you prefer all the dead Americans killed by the drugs, you just don't have the courage or honesty to say so.
The privacy of clinics... catamarans are Democratically sanctioned imperatives.
I stopped watching after seeing the video of Nick Berg being beheaded in Iraq in 2004.
That was it for me too. I actually sought that one out, in order to feel that I wasn't hiding from that terrible reality. But never again.
My ex-husband from my brief, youthful first marriage was a fan of those Faces of Death videos back in the day. Yes, I know they were at least largely fake... but they were horrible nonetheless. He also loved really gruesome horror movies - the more gore, the better. In retrospect, I should've assessed these facts differently from the way I did at 21.
Remember a few days ago when Donnie Dementia said he’d release the video and then a few days later, when someone asked him about releasing it, he got big mad and denied he said it?
Donnie doesn’t.
The surprise attacks have a greater deterrent effect over a helicopter or fast boat approaching the drug laden boats. The narco-terrorists can never feel they are safe anywhere on the water.
I’m glad we’re trying something new to stop some supply coming ashore. We were never ahead in the War on Drugs. If we could only decrease demand, as well…
I doubt those "survivors" expected the people who just blew up their boat were going to save them.
There is great effective value in sending the message that you will not survive and go to America to hang out with Democrats and eventually write a book.
Planned Parenthood... Perphood... Piratehood. Just do... show it!
I was and am appalled at drone strikes on the basis of questionable intelligence on people going about their day in other countries that are claimed to be terrorists, often surrounded by non-combatants who at most could be supportive/sympathetic to their cause and at worse could be total innocents.
I am NOT appalled at unregistered, non-nation boats being monitored as conducting illegal activities from foreign nations into our nation being blown up. I would prefer they receive a single warning from our military, unless they are rock solid backed as to what they are in the act of doing.
There are nation and non-nation criminal activities organized against our country. Tolerance of and weak enforcement against those activities encourages more of them, to the detriment of our country. On the opposite side, zero tolerance and strong enforcement against such activities is a very strong and immediate deterrent that actively protects our nation better. This is true of drugs, facilitated illegal immigration, human trafficking, and much more.
Goody! Are there satellite videos of Obama’s 2013 massacre of the wedding party in Yemen? Let’s see ‘em.
Remember a few days ago when Leftist assholes on here said releasing Epstein files was the most important thing in the whole world but now they are dead silent on the subject because the materials did not match their hyping of the story.
Yeah we remember dumbasses
"I was taught as a child not to look, and I've always regarded this a moral requirement." Why? Why isn't it a moral requirement to bear witness to the suffering and deaths of victims of war, terrorism, and criminality? As a society, we've become desensitized to the endless fake gore we've seen in movies and on TV. It's not the same; the emotional toll is negligible, because we know it's fake.
I think you have it backwards, professor. We have a moral duty to see the reality of how others live and die, and to be grateful for our safe, sheltered lives.
Ronald J. Ward said...
Achillies said; “In this case you kill people on boats in the gulf of Mexico or they kill people in the United States with drugs and guns. You make a choice.”
Unless I misunderstood, your previous justification was for a lead up to invade Venezuela for their resources. Now, the boat people are out to kill us.
Which is it?
There is that justification word again.
You can read. But you can’t think. You are just a retard.
Achillies, you just seem to be all over the place in your rationales.
We have the means and capability to seize the drugs, investigate the origins, interrogate the occupants, and get in a better place to cut off the head of the snake. And as a bonus, we’d be preventing these very guns and drugs from entering that you speak of.
Instead, we’re destroying evidence and testimony while pardoning the venomous snakes who are creating the problem.
Perhaps you’re right that I’m too slow to grasp the logic in that.
Ronald J. ‘Tard
United States drug overdose death totals:
1968 - 5,033
.
.
2008 - 36,450
2009 - 37,004
2010 - 38,329
2011 - 41,340
2012 - 41,502
2013 - 43,982
2014 - 47,055
2015 - 52,404
2016 - 63,632
2017 - 70,237
2018 - 67,367
2019 - 70,630
2020 - 91,799
2021 - 107,000
2022 - 111,029
If not now, when will we get serious? At 150,000? At 200,000?
We've been supposedly fighting the War On Drugs since Nixon started it in 1971. Sure, synthetic opioids have increased the lethality, but we still have to do something to stop this, don't we? Or is this acceptable?
Also Helicopters aren't so much faster than these boats that they can just intercept them like that.
What a pile of horseshit! Most of the Navy's helicopters have top speeds around 200 mph (same speed as a NASCAR, F1 or Indy Car). Heck, a Burke Class destroyer (top speed in excess of 30 knots) can easily keep up with most of the boats and has a hell of a lot more range (not to mention much better armored). You could easily chase one of these boats until it runs out of gas (and running any boat at full speed you have very limited range)
Ronald: what you suggest sounds reasonable and appropriate. However, fighting drug runners via standard lawyer approved processes have so far not only failed, but have allowed the cartels to become even more powerful.
Treating them as unlawful combatants/terrorists is a troubling escalation that makes great headlines for people to fight over. Is it any more wrong than the previous efforts? Maybe, maybe not. Personally I'm not hopeful that this will be successful because I believe that most of the cartels especially those in Mexico are too big to fail. The current actions that has everyone kevetching about amount to just more kicking the can down the road.
The missing piece in this thread is this- the way we practice interdiction of drugs for the last 100 years has not worked- that way practiced is exactly what Ronald Ward above advocates continuing and note how the "heads of the snake" are almost certainly going to be outside the borders of the United States- so what then, Ronald?
This failure leaves us with three options:
(1) Continue doing what has failed for a century;
(2) Legalize the use of all recreational drugs and allow them to be sold without product liability and simply live with the results like we do with alcohol and, increasingly, marijuana;
(3) Conduct the War on Drugs like a real war is conducted- by killing them all, including the dealers and their staff outside and inside the borders of the United States.
My personal preference is for option (2) but I am not naive- I know this will lead to more drug addiction and associated pathologies. For me, option (1) is no longer tenable and is a waste of money and resources. Option (3) is at least an honest attempt to conduct a "War on Drugs" and there is evidence that it works but it requires a ruthless prosecution of effort and I doubt we Americans have the will to see it through.
Achilles above is correct- in choosing one option or another, you are choosing whether or not to try to save the 100K Americans who die from drug use every year. Choose wisely.
If not now, when will we get serious? At 150,000? At 200,000?
We can start by putting the drug dealers like the Sacklers in jail (or at least truly bankrupt them) and not pardon those who have imported 400 tons of cocaine into the U.S.
So killing these people and destroying the boats is okay, the real issue is the method employed? You sound like an errand boy working for grocery clerks to collect a bill.
You could easily chase one of these boats until it runs out of gas
The life of a drug smuggler is worth far, far less than the cost of the fuel a destroyer would require to do that, in my estimation.
Sink these boats, then machine-gun the survivors in the water.
Show us how bin Laden was aborted, his children, and other collateral damage from delegated abortive affirmative actions. Show us Floyd in his Fentanyl-induced death throes, which prompted the premature exit and later the public spectacle abd collateral damage of social justice. Show us Babbit aborted under Capitol punishment. Show us the babies aborted in Planned Parenthood umbrella corporation. People need to see the faces of death in a great reveal in order to mitigate their progress.
John A Konrad V
"Everyone knows that so called “double tap” strikes on land are legal, Obama did it all the time, but CNN keeps inviting land lawyers on to say narco terrorists have special privileges at sea.
Let’s look at the admiralty law:"
Read this very informative thread here:
https://x.com/johnkonrad/status/1997996613076189249
We can start by putting the drug dealers like the Sacklers in jail (or at least truly bankrupt them)
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid. Do whatever you want to the Sacklers, but the fentanyl problem is not coming from them. And I bet if Trump went after them you'd be opposed to it and say Trump was violating their rights.
Trump pardoned Hernandez to get him to talk. What he says will be very interesting, but I bet you won't like it much.
To answer your “and what then” Yancey, can we at least agree that pardoning drug cartel kingpins isn’t exactly a good deterrent? Trump’s response to this during the Politico interview is pretty much tipping his hand.
I specifically addressed this at 7:52 AM. There will always be carrot chasers and those are who we’ve targeted in American cities for years, never going after the bigger fish. These boat attacks and freeing mafia figures follows that same playbook.
I can’t see Trump actually wanting to end drug use. Like everything else Trump, I only see him wanting a cut.
I used to be a libertarian. But that will no longer work.
Drugs are getting more addictive. Soon drugs of choice will just be better than life and humans will not be able to resist or avoid addiction and destruction. The drugs are going to be individually tailored. They will take advantage of our biological reality.
We deal with them in a real way or we go extinct.
Do whatever you want to the Sacklers, but the fentanyl problem is not coming from them.
The fentanyl problem is directly related to the oxycontin problem. If the Sacklers had not pushed oxycontin (through outright lies and ignoring where the oxy was going), then all those people who switched to heroin and fentanyl once they no longer could get oxy easily would not be suffering.
The boat strikes aren't really meant to make a significant dent in the US drug problem. They're meant to give Maduro a drug problem: a problem with getting his drugs out. Think of the wholesale value of one of those boatloads. Not gigantic by our standards, but a big hit for Maduro's pocket. And an even bigger hit for the lower level drug dealers and the VZ government/military/LE who enable them. In other words, Maduro will start hearing dissatisfied noises from his underlings. A few are not a problem for a dictator, but eventually you hit a tipping point. CC, JSM
Achilles: "The drugs are going to be individually tailored. They will take advantage of our biological reality."
Yes but they will also be much more easily home-manufactured, won't they? Kind of like how you can 3D-print guns, making an even bigger mockery out of gun control efforts.
How would you stop drugs in an age when the supply chain may be from the user to the user's basement, or at most the dealer's basement? RLTW, JSM
They don't want to release the second video because they know that the general reaction would be horror and would certainly lead to Hegseth's removal and possible criminal charges (right or wrong).
The best defense I have heard for this incident is to compare it to the killing of Bin Laden: that it is a military operation intended to kill specific enemies, and people who have not been involved in such operations cannot really understand what is going on.
A bad argument. I think of Leni Riefenstahl 's reaction (on film) when she saw that German soldiers were murdering Polish civilians.
I'll accept that these guys are drug smugglers, though I'll bet it's coke not fentanyl. They are just the schmucks sent to run the boat from point A to point B. They are not specifically targetted kingpins meant to be destroyed.
Of course this is just a macho performance of, by, and for Trump.
True, I have a friend who went down that road. He was an incredible overachiever. He lost everything. Unbelievably tragic waste. One day I will learn that he has died of an overdose. It is to weep.
But that's not where we're at now, is it? It's a street drug problem now. Punishing the Sacklers is not going to affect the giant problem described by the numbers I posted above, is it? It's not going to send the bullet that has my friends name on it to the bottom of the sea. Maybe a Hellfire will.
Should we not also demand to see the October 7th video that Israel was encouraged to not show widely? Perhaps we should see both?
"9 minutes and 29 seconds" was not the officially-given George Floyd time until the Derek Chauvin trial in 2021.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/29/us/george-floyd-timing-929-846
john mosby said...
Achilles: "The drugs are going to be individually tailored. They will take advantage of our biological reality."
Yes but they will also be much more easily home-manufactured, won't they? Kind of like how you can 3D-print guns, making an even bigger mockery out of gun control efforts.
How would you stop drugs in an age when the supply chain may be from the user to the user's basement, or at most the dealer's basement? RLTW, JSM
The only defenses will be biohacking to change internal biology.
The question will be whether or not those treatments will be required to live in society.
jim said...
They don't want to release the second video because they know that the general reaction would be horror and would certainly lead to Hegseth's removal and possible criminal charges (right or wrong).
This retard voted for Obama.
Obama ordered double taps on weddings.
Just so everyone knows these doucheweasels are misusing the term double tap. Clearing a target and killing people who are still moving on target is just standard military procedure and it’s stupid to do anything different.
Double Tap is actually a term for when Obama would drone strike a wedding then wait for 20 minutes and drone strike the first responders and family members trying to help the injured.
People like jim are just evil dishonest scumbags who don’t believe a single word that they say.
" Most of the Navy's helicopters have top speeds around 200 mph"
Published top speed of an SH-60 Seahawk, the most common Navy helicopter, is 168 MPH. Never exceed speed is over 200, but the true limitation is range. At top speed, the helo sacrifices much of it's 450 NM range.
JK Brown said...
Should we not also demand to see the October 7th video that Israel was encouraged to not show widely? Perhaps we should see both?
They still have every drone strike Barrack Obama ordered recorded in ISR.
If they believed a single thing they said they would demand those videos too.
Freder Frederson said...
Also Helicopters aren't so much faster than these boats that they can just intercept them like that.
What a pile of horseshit! Most of the Navy's helicopters have top speeds around 200 mph (same speed as a NASCAR, F1 or Indy Car). Heck, a Burke Class destroyer (top speed in excess of 30 knots) can easily keep up with most of the boats and has a hell of a lot more range (not to mention much better armored). You could easily chase one of these boats until it runs out of gas (and running any boat at full speed you have very limited range)
I love it when retards like Freder show us the extent of their loud and impassioned ignorance .
They have no idea what spin-up or travel times are. They don’t know how long an asset can be on station or how much a tank of gas for a helicopter costs.
They know everything Wikipedia can tell them about helicopters that aren’t even used. They don’t even know how stupid they are.
Freder Frederson said...
Do whatever you want to the Sacklers, but the fentanyl problem is not coming from them.
The fentanyl problem is directly related to the oxycontin problem. If the Sacklers had not pushed oxycontin (through outright lies and ignoring where the oxy was going), then all those people who switched to heroin and fentanyl once they no longer could get oxy easily would not be suffering.
I agree with freder. If the sacklers live in another country we should treat them like foreign combatants. If they live in the US they should get a fair trial and put in jail the same amount of time the average black man would get for selling drugs.
All of the doctors that got kickbacks for proscribing those drugs too should get a fair trial too. Our entire healthcare system should be made an example of.
It's not like we haven't been trying to interdict drugs using conventional law-enforcement tactics coming via sea routes all these years. Why do you think they use these go-fast boats? Because until now, they worked very well to elude the authorities. It's an enormous area. A few drones with missiles can cover an enormous area and numerous targets. A ship that has to proceed to intercept can not. A helo even less so.
You think Hillary wouldn't blow up these boats if she didn't get her cut? Of course she would and the lefties would applaud her strength as a woman, tougher than any man.
I'm not sure what would be accomplished by releasing the "double tap" boat film to the public. Both parties in congress have seen the unedited films.
Secondly, when wasn't it the Navy's policy to fire on a boat or ship till it was at the bottom of the ocean, even with wounded sailor on board or clinging to it?
“U.S. Navy helicopters have varying top speeds, but common models like the MH-60 Seahawk reach around 180-205 mph (330-333 km/h), while specialized tiltrotors like the V-22 Osprey (used by Marines) are much faster, hitting 310 mph, blending helicopter agility with turboprop speed, with older heavy-lift CH-53s topping out around 170-190 mph.”
Gemini
Don’t believe what Achilles says, he doesn’t know any more about Navy helicopters than anyone else here. He was still spouting the lie that there never was a “double tap” just a few days ago, just like his friend Peachy.
Dems sure get upset when the cartels' cash flow is disturbed, whether its from human trafficking across the border or from drugs across the Caribbean. I wonder why that is.
I know it's not a good thing to feed trolls, but ...
Achilles said...
This retard voted for Obama.
This retard voted for Obama once. That was because my preferred candidate, who after all kind of old, chose a crazy person for his VP.
Actually she was the sanest of the bunch
She was the one who warned of the invasion of ukraine in 200i
"I can’t see Trump actually wanting to end drug use. Like everything else Trump, I only see him wanting a cut."
It is shit like this, Ronald, why we don't really take you seriously.
These guys must be fishermen! Here’s evidence of them throwing undersized fish they’ve caught back into the ocean…
https://x.com/JohnLeFevre/status/1998221178788340075?s=20
As usual Inag's AI slop doesn't address the relevant question. It doesn't matter how fast the helicopter goes if the drug boat is out of range before the helicopter can be launched.
Trump once again wins- he now has Democrats defending drug smugglers.
If Congress had authorized military action against drug smugglers, as it did against Al Qaeda and other Islamist terrorists, maybe then the initial attack here would have been lawful. But it didn’t so it wasn’t. Whether or not the initial attack was lawful, killing two shipwrecked sailors who were clinging to the wreckage of their wrecked boat was clearly , unambiguously unlawful. I suppose Hegseth and those in the chain of command have nothing to worry, though, because Trump will pardon them.
It's almost comical watching the left twist and contort themselves into defending drug runners.
Would not be surprised if time/date info is stripped from any video they would release, to make it impossible to track that length of time you mentioned.
In other words, nothing they could release would convince you otherwise. So, why should they bother?
"Shipwrecked sailors"
That's funny. Like Gilligan and the Skipper? Nobody called the Professor and Mary Ann "sailors".
What percentage of their real impact and purpose out there was "sailor" and what portion drug smuggler, attempted murderer, poison delivery technician, or cabin boy? I doubt there was more than one "sailor" on board, probably none, but everybody knows Jeffrey Dahmer was an exotic chef.
"In other words, nothing they could release would convince you otherwise. So, why should they bother?"
See: Epstein Files
“killing two shipwrecked sailors who were clinging to the wreckage of their wrecked boat was clearly , unambiguously unlawful.”
Good Lord… you’d think Jack and Rose were in icy waters, hanging on to the Titanic before it went down.
Strange bedfellows for the Democrats (or are they?), but isn’t it fascinating how the Democrats literally get emotional and lose their mud when the drug cartels’ cashflow is threatened or severely impacted. Why one might think a large number of them are on the payroll.
Freder Frederson said...
The fentanyl problem is directly related to the oxycontin problem.
That is complete bullshit. I've had a front row seat on the whole fentanyl addiction world, and I can assure you that any connection to prescription drug abuse is minimal. The heroin addicts and (to a lesser extent) the serious meth users all made their way into fent because it was cheap, available, and strong. Once it was well entrenched, lots of young new users started doing it because it was available. I was a junkie and a meth user for years, and I never met one person who started via a prescription. I know they must exist, but of the hundreds I have known, I never met one. They do make for a great bit of sob-story propaganda though.
They should show the videos at movie theaters. It would draw in the crowds.
@Iman: I refer you to Charlie Cook at National Review, who wrote, “Were you aware that I love foreign drug traffickers? Love ’em. Yes, sir. Every morning, I wake up, prayerfully close my eyes, and hope, as devoutly as I’ve ever hoped for anything, that somewhere in the Caribbean there is a foreign drug trafficker heading toward the United States.
“Over the past few weeks, I’ve been asked why, despite being a vocally patriotic sort, I have held steadfastly to the conviction that the federal government possesses no freestanding authority to launch rockets at vessels that it suspects might be engaged in the movement of narcotics. In response, I have had to repeatedly explain that, quite obviously, it is because I’m an unreconstructed enthusiast for the global cocaine trade.” https://www.nationalreview.com/2025/12/i-love-drug-traffickers/
Post a Comment
Please use the comments forum to respond to the post. Don't fight with each other. Be substantive... or interesting... or funny. Comments should go up immediately... unless you're commenting on a post older than 2 days. Then you have to wait for us to moderate you through. It's also possible to get shunted into spam by the machine. We try to keep an eye on that and release the miscaught good stuff. We do delete some comments, but not for viewpoint... for bad faith.