Looking to diversify and protect your hard-earned assets, well, schedule a free consultation

with the Birch Gold Group.

They're the precious metals specialists.

Just text PDB to the number 989-89-8-8, and you'll receive a free, no-obligation information kit,

and you'll learn how to convert an existing IRA or a 401k into a gold IRA.

Again, text PDB to 989-89-89898. It's Friday, the 3rd of October. Welcome to the PDB afternoon bulletin. I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage. All right, let's get briefed. First up, the Trump administration alerted Congress on Thursday that the U.S. is now essentially at war with Latin America's drug cartels. We'll have those details. Later in the show,

the U.S. military has begun drawing down its mission in Iraq under an agreement inked with Baghdad

last year, marking the end of America's two-decade-long military presence in the country.

But first, today's afternoon spotlight. President Donald Trump

has made it official. America is formally at war with Latin America's most powerful drug cartels.

In a memo sent to Congress on Thursday, the Trump administration said they had determined that the

U.S. is now, quote, in a non-international armed conflict

with the region's narco-traffickers declaring cartel members to be unlawful combatants

subject to the full wrath of the American military. That's according to a report from Fox News.

The order builds on aggressive actions taken by the administration earlier this year,

such as designating

Latin American cartels and gangs as international terrorist organizations. It marks an unprecedented

assertion of presidential war powers that will give the White House even more latitude to carry

out military operations against the cartels. The memo says President Trump has already directed the Pentagon

to, quote, conduct operations against them pursuant to the law of armed conflict, end quote.

It also serves to bolster Trump's legal justification for recent military strikes in the Caribbean

on drug smuggling boats used by narco-terrorists that first began in

...