Top military officers
from a secretive command watched a speedboat cut through the waters of the Caribbean Sea, early last September. A plane above provided live video of the vessel and the 11 men on board. In the early morning hours,
Adm. Frank Bradley
sought the counsel of his
top legal adviser
, Col. Cara Hamaguchi. Then he ordered SEAL Team 6 operators to attack the packed boat.
U.S. Military Killed Boat Strike Survivors for Not Surrendering Correctly
After the
vessel exploded
, two helpless survivors pulled themselves onto a fragment of the overturned hull, drifting with the current for
roughly 45 minutes
. Bradley — then the head of the Joint Special Operations Command and now the four-star chief of Special Operations Command — again turned to Hamaguchi for guidance. Soon, a second missile screamed down, killing the survivors. Two more missiles followed in rapid succession, sinking the remnants of the boat.
That strike, carried out on September 2, 2025, began a campaign of attacks that has never ceased.
“It’s been a year of murders,” said a defense official who was horrified by the first strike and has remained so as the U.S. has targeted scores of so-called “drug boats” in the year since. “The Trump administration has normalized murder.” The official added: “It’s absolutely criminal.”
“The Trump administration has normalized murder.”
In all, the U.S. has conducted more than 65 attacks, resulting in over 225 civilians
killed
in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean in the last year. The most recent strike, in the Caribbean on
August 25
, killed four people.
classified opinion
from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel — drawn up by an interagency
lawyers working group
including representatives of the CIA, State Department, White House, Department of Justice, and Defense Department — claims that narcotics on supposed drug boats are lawful military targets because they generate revenue for cartels whom the Tru
