I’m sorry to say I’m starting a new fundraiser. I don’t want to go into a lot of detail, but this is for dental expenses that I’m told aren’t covered by Medicaid. Here’s the Gofundme link. You can read about it there. You can also donate by clicking on the donate button at the top of the right-hand column. Thanks you so much for all help.

Now, on to today’s atrocities. I want to talk about Trump’s boat-bombing. Here is Chris Hayes from last night:

And see Trump Is Crossing a Line That Dates Back to the Revolution by Youssef et al. in The Atlantic.

And see David Kurtz at TPM, Abu Ghraib Meets Tonkin Gulf.

The startling U.S. attack on an alleged drug-running boat in international waters off Venezuela is precisely the kind of no-holds-barred combat that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was clearing the way for when he began firing military lawyers as soon as he settled into his E-ring office.

As bad as some of the U.S. infractions were during the Global War on Terror — and I can scarcely believe I’m writing this — there still remained an understanding among the Dick Cheneys of the world that they needed to come up with at least a thread of an argument for what legal authority they were relying on, however pretextual, unpersuasive, and unavailing it might have been.

This astonishing sentence from the NYT suggests that President Trump — fully immunized for his official acts by the Roberts Court — has dispensed with even putting on a show of legally justifying this week’s attack: “Pentagon officials were still working Wednesday on what legal authority they would tell the public was used to back up the extraordinary strike in international waters.”

Shoot first, figure out the legal cover later.

The Trump administration couldn’t even get its facts straight on the story it was telling publicly, with Trump claiming the boat was headed to the United States and Secretary of State Marco Rubio initially claiming it was headed to Trinidad. Rubio later brought his public statements in line with Trump’s.

I say it’s highly unlikely the craft was heading directly for the U.S. It doesn’t look like a huge boat — I can’t find estimates of its dimensions, but it looked like a speedboat — and it was off the coast of Venezuela. It’s about 1,400 miles between the coast of Venezuela and Florida. There’s only about 7 miles between the coast of Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago. Rubio was probably right the first time.

And Trump is claiming there was a “tremendous” amount of drugs on the boat. Maybe there were, maybe there weren’t. Unless someone can find an official manifest we’ll never know, since the evidence went down with the boat.

Trump is justifying all this by saying that drug-runners are terrorists. But they really aren’t, you know. Drug runners are criminals; terrorists are another kind of beast. It’s true that terrorist groups have been known to get some of their funding from the sale of illegal drugs. It’s also true that these days some of them are getting funds through trading bitcoin. Does that mean everyone who trades in bitcoin is a terrorist? Hmmmmmmm?

This is from the BBC:

Under Article 2(4) of the UN charter, countries can resort to force when under attack and deploying their military in self-defence. Trump has previously accused the Tren de Aragua cartel of conducting irregular warfare against the US, and the state department has designated the group as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation.

But Prof Michael Becker of Trinity College Dublin told BBC Verify that the US actions “stretches the meaning of the term beyond its breaking point”.

“The fact that US officials describe the individuals killed by the US strike as narco-terrorists does not transform them into lawful military targets,” he said. “The US is not engaged in an armed conflict with Venezuela or the Tren de Aragua criminal organization.”

“Not only does the strike appear to have violated the prohibition on the use of force, it also runs afoul of the right to life under international human rights law.”

Prof Moffett said that the use of force in this case could amount to an “extrajudicial arbitrary killing” and “a fundamental violation of human rights”.

“Labelling everyone a terrorist does not make them a lawful target and enables states to side-step international law,” he said.

Back to David Kurtz:

Of particular note is Trump’s unsupported claim those targeted in the killing were Tren de Aragua gang members. Trump has designated TdA as a terrorist organization and used that justification to invoke the Alien Enemies Act for the notorious removals of Venezuelan nationals, many of whom it’s now clear were not TdA members. In an ironic twist, the attack on the boat came the same week that the conservative 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that TdA was not invading the United States for Alien Enemies Act purposes, making Trump’s invocation of the wartime statute unlawful.

Assuming it was a drug boat, former State Department lawyer Brian Finucane surveys the legal landscape for a lethal attack on alleged drug traffickers on the high seas. “The use of lethal force in this attack appears gratuitous and the administration has not explained why law enforcement tools were inadequate to address the situation,” he writes.

Trump always believes there’s a quick fix that no one but him ever thought of before. His plan to put an end to California wildfires by emptying a reservoir is an example. Tariffs are Trump’s quick fix to lower the deficit and bring back manufacturing. His love of quick fixes is probably why he prefers executive orders to passing laws. Why bother slogging through all those legislative processes when you can just sign a piece of paper? It’s possible someone has tried to explain to him that executive orders are not legally binding, but Trump doesn’t want to hear it.  His approach to foreign policy is similar; he likes quick-fix deals.

Hers is Trump’s explanation:

pic.twitter.com/K15IcBG3b3

— Karoline Leavitt (@PressSec) September 2, 2025

This, and other statements by Rubio and Pete Hegseth, tells us the rationale is to just bomb suspected drug traffickers to teach them a lesson. And Trump also seems to have a Thing about Venezuela. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro says Trump is really after Venequela’s oil. And he could be right for all I know.

And, may I add, people have gotten on the wrong side of the International Criminal Court for stuff like that.

In more other news, see Alex Shephard at The New Republic, Donald Trump Has Destroyed American Foreign Policy. Forget the “leader of the free world” thing. That’s over. Really, Trump killed that one in his first term. Now he’s busily wrecking years of diplomatic work and foreign policy — the famous “Pax Americana” — and making the U.S. everybody’s enemy.

When it became clear Trump had won the 2024 election I wrote here that “The nation just committed suicide..” I stand by that. The U.S. will probably be around for awhile, but it will never be the same. And it sure as bleep won’t be “great again” until all traces of Trump and MAGA are pushed back to the powerless fringe.