I want to talk right now about the Trump administration's recent attack on a boat that had

departed from Venezuela and was in the Caribbean Sea. The Trump administration bombed the boat

killing 11 people aboard.

Now, the Trump administration has said that they knew that the people on this boat were drug smugglers,

that they were narco-terrorists, that they were headed for the United States. Although they've

offered a little bit of contradictory information, Marco Rubio initially said that they were

headed for Trinidad, but later changed his story saying that this drug-laden boat was bound for the United States.

The Trump administration has not given a detailed legal rationale for blowing up this

boat, allegedly containing drugs, nor have they provided any actual evidence that there were drugs or drug

traffickers aboard this boat. And this raises, to say the least, some pretty deep problems.

One of the problems is that this was blatantly illegal. This is an act of mass murder, right?

There's no allegation that this was actual self-defense, that these people, the Trump administration

is not even saying that these people open fire. They are saying that these people were trying

to basically import a contraband product into the United States, and that

the Trump administration, rather than intercepting this boat, just killed everyone, just,

murdered everyone. And they aren't really claiming that otherwise, they're really sort of

bragging about the fact that these people

were trying to bring in something illegal into the United States, basically violating trade laws,

really, and that in response they were all killed. Officials have said that there's no plan

to go further in explaining, providing evidence, providing legal justification

for this strike. Although the New York Times quotes a former federal law enforcement official,

a little vague who that person is, and it's part of the New York Times standard practice of saying

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