As the world gets ready to usher in a new year, the US military campaign against Venezuela has reached another grim milestone. American forces carried out their latest airstrike on a vessel accused of drug trafficking in Latin American waters on Monday.
The operation announced by US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) represents the 30th strike since the campaign began on September 2
The official US announcement indicated the boat was struck in the eastern Pacific Ocean – so the ‘other side’ opposite the Caribbean, which is certainly not the first in this area.
Officials claimed the strike resulted in the deaths of two individuals labeled as “narco-terrorists” – which has been used of the Trump administration to defend lethal actions at sea carried out without judicial proceedings, or so much as a warning.
Analysts have tallied that the number people killed by US military actions at sea connected to the Venezuela campaign has risen to 107 with this latest strike.
Meanwhile the NY Times has begun documenting the “Grim Evidence of Trump’s Airstrikes” which has “Washed Ashore a Colombian Peninsula”:
A thunderous boom rang out through the windless late-afternoon air. Seconds later, smoke began rising out of the sea as if the horizon were on fire.
Watching from the shore on Nov. 6, Erika Palacio Fernández whipped out her phone, she said, unwittingly recording the only verified and independent video known to date of the aftermath of an airstrike in the Trump administration’s campaign against what it calls “narco-terrorists.”
Two days later, on that same shore, a scorched 30-foot-long boat itself would wash up. Then, two mangled bodies. Then charred jerrycans, life jackets and dozens of packets that were observed by The New York Times and were similar to others that have been found after anti-narcotics operations in the region. Most packets were empty, though traces of a substance that looked and smelled like marijuana were found in the lining of a few.
A $30 million Reaper drone launched from a $1 billion navy frigate… all to take out a little wooden boat lined with marijuana packets?
Hellbound and Down 