The sorry truth: Trump, who pardons drug traffickers and murders the shipwrecked, is the world’s most dangerous narco-terrorist, and every American who continues to support him is complicit in his crimes.
The worst thing, other than the orders themselves, is that the Navy is perfectly capable of indicating these boats. They can stop, board, and inspect. If drugs are found, the boat, and contents can be confiscated. The crew can be arrested and rendered for prosecution. Bombing and murder are neither legal nor necessary.
As a matter of reducing drug flow, these strikes are nothing but a pin prick. A serious effort would involve arrest and interrogation so the structure of the drug producing enterprise can be understood and the kingpins can be identified and dealt with. But wait. The kingpins get pardons!
But why are we doing this in the first place? The drugs these boats are allegedly running don’t come to the US — most of our drugs come via Mexico. Early on there was talk of the US targeting the cartels and possibly sending troops to Mexico which for very good reason hasn’t happened. Are these attacks on Venezuela merely Trump’s redirection away from attacking Mexico, but giving him drug targets to brag about that the administration believes come at very little cost? I am not sure there is a grand strategy here other than Trump needed to demonstrate winning on the narcotics front which due to incompetence and poor planning has now all gone South.
Oh, don't throw logic at this administration, Keith. They just want to watch things go boom, and do it from a distance where they can pound their chests without being challenged.
Back before America recovered its present greatness, when law was more than the will and whim of Donald J. Trump, we went to the trouble to interdict boats, board them and confiscate the drugs. This is now seen as a time-wasting formality, so they just cut to the chase and kill on sight. It’s a wonder ICE hasn’t received orders to do the same to suspected “illegal aliens”,
…and I’ve always seen Shield as on of The Bulwark’s least fiery, in terms of language used. To me, kinda bears out how bad this military madness really is.
That first boat Trump and Hegseth blew up, on September 2nd, had 11 people on board. 11 people. If you were running drugs on a small boat, would you pack the boat with 11 people? No, you’d pack the boat with drugs. That boat was moving people not drugs. And those people were murdered by the President of the United States. Put that in your pipe and smoke it—if you dare.
Sadly, I am afraid that one day historians will examine the complicity of Americans today as they do with the Germans in the 1930s and 1940s. No, the crimes of this administration are nowhere near the horrors perpetrated by the Third Reich, but they significant nonetheless, especially in the end of USAID, the ruthless deportation of immigrants, the increasing destruction of the American health care system (flawed as it already is) and the use of lethal force off the coast of Venezula without any legal justification or evidence.
This Trump (Miller/Vought) regime is just getting started! It also seems to me as though we have lost sight of the horrors that are probably happening in the immigrant concentration camps. The right stopped bragging about the inhumane treatment and conditions of their detention facilities, but I can’t imagine that the cruelty has been discontinued.
It's worth reviewing why Trump lies. It's not to persuade anyone to believe his lies. Trump lies to assert dominance. Trump lies, and then Republicans have to just stand there and take it. But that doesn't go far enough. Trump lies, and then Republicans have to repeat the lie, over and over again, with vigor and enthusiasm. Everyone knows it is a lie, and everyone knows the people repeating the lie know it is a lie. But, without any doubt, the person repeating the lie is acknowledging their subservience and fealty to Trump. This is the whole point of the lie.
This is also the main reason for Trump's tariffs. Why would he place tariffs on every country in the world, whether or not we have a trade deficit, and whether or not there are more penguins than people in the country? It is not simply, or even mostly, that Trump is ignorant about economics. Trump uses tariffs to show other countries that we are the biggest bully on the block, and they better do what we tell them to do. Like the lies, Trump's tariffs are about dominance.
Why do you think Trump nominated people like RFK jr and Pete Hegseth to cabinet posts? By nominating obviously unqualified people, he forces Bill Cassidy and Joni Ernst to vote for them. They know the nominees are unqualified, and we know that they know. It is all about Trump asserting his dominance over the senators. Trump cares more about dominance than he cares about running the country.
It is not hard to figure out Trump's motives for doing shit once you realize absolutely everything is about dominance.
I have long wondered why people are confused by or shocked at the narratives coming from the WH. DJT isn't lying (I mean of course he is but hear me out) in the conventional way. He isn't coming up with a clever story to hide the truth. Instead, he is making a darker assertion: there is no truth. Or rather truth is whatever he says it is.
It's why he named his social media platform Truth Social - the basic assertion is that every post on there is a "truth" - because he says it is. He owns "truth". He bends reality to his will.
I'm a committed Christian and I've never understood why so many of my fellow believers seem to be OK with this. Especially after all of our theoretically heartfelt denunciations of Clinton's lies and character flaws in the wake of his scandals.
I've quit trying to understand. But we cannot give up the fight for real, objective, truth. It is precious. If our only "truth" is Donald Trump, we're doomed.
In the same way I can't imagine having been a strong Republican (like Tim, Sara, Bill, etc.) and then having to face the reality of almost everyone in your party supporting this utter scumbag, I can't imagine being a true Christian and seeing so many others who claim to be Christians support someone who is literally the antithesis of Jesus.
It explains him knocking down the east wing and plastering fake gold curlicues all over the White House. He's a dog marking territory. When he's carried out of there the new occupant will be confronted with "Trump was here" every time they turn around.
When Andrew writes, “ it’s getting difficult to keep track of all the lies, distortions, and whiplash-inducing story revisions” - in Trump/MAGA domain, that really doesn’t matter. Just keep the firehouse pumping whatever and flood the zone. Overwhelm all attempts at rational discourse on a topic. Cuz rationality is so over
Today I have chosen to view the glass as half full! There have been a few signs that some are not defending the lies. Maybe a few have pulled their heads out of Trump’s butt.
Yup, and he hates Republicans more than Democrats because the Republicans roll over for him like dogs every time. We know Trump hates dogs. (She says while she sobs hysterically in "how the hell could we elect a person who hated dogs?")
My favorite sign from October 18th: “Make Lying Wrong Again”
Sad to know that even if the sign were to read, “Make Bearing False Witness a Sin Again”, the faux Christians leading our government would merely shrug.
Thanks for the link...as someone who lived thru adolescence - I'd argue that we are experiencing the very worst of female adolescent behaviour as well...and trust me it was nasty.... I see it being acted out by every woman in the current admin X 10. 'Original comment Slightly edited for clarity and low caffeine levels'
I went to an all-male Catholic High School, so I may have missed out on the worst aspects of female adolescent behavior. The most disturbing thing to me about all this is how acceptable the administration's behavior is to so many Americans, even when it harms them.
“The task now is straightforward: It’s to maintain momentum. It’s to keep the pressure on. It’s to make the next couple weeks as bad for the Trump administration and the Republican party as the past couple months have been.”
Keep up the resistance and defiance, good people! Every action matters.
"“Maybe they were signaling to other airplanes or drug cartel boats. . . " Signalling ... TO OTHER AIRPLANES? WATER CRAFT? You've got a carrier group in the vicinity and no one working the radar? WTF? No. Oh, Thor's toenails, just NO.
Those are the kinds of questions I would ask ADM Bradley. Once the first strike had taken place, where were the other Narco-Terrorist Assets? We must have known. We've got a carrier battle group in the area now. Everything that flies or floats is being tracked. So how far away were they?
What signals came from the boat after the strike? Again, a carrier battle group with the most sophisticated ESM technology in the world. They're listening to everything. What did they hear?
Since there is a carrier battle group in the area, where was the closest US Coast Guard cutter? It's their job to intercept these boats. Were they called in? And if it was just a Coast Guard Law Enforcement Detachment embarked on a US Navy ship, then where was that ship? Was that ship called in to assist?
What was the need for urgency here? If the idea was that these people were going to right their boat, stow their cargo and proceed, then why not wait for that to happen and then hit them again? Or wait for the other Narco-Terrorist boat to show up and then hit that one too? Why did the strike have to happen right then? If the drone was running out of fuel, send another one to relieve the first one. We've got plenty of those things.
None of this makes any sense unless you see the need for Special Forces to do this instead of regular USN or USCG surface and air assets, which are always in the Caribbean anyway.
And I still want to know what meeting Pete Hegseth ran off to. What was more important than this strike?
And Ol' Pete's pretty fond of crapping on the press for making judgements "from air-conditioned offices." Okay, Pete, how many people who were involved in this strike WEREN'T in an air-conditioned office? Even the guys piloting the drones were in the air-conditioning. Every senior person there had access to their staffs. They had all the time in the world to make a decision and not one of them was at any personal, physical risk.
Nobody has said anything about where the location actually was. Or has given a long range picture. Was it an isolated boat in the middle of an empty sea? Were there other boats around, any planes?
This was a natural question that should have been asked in the closed door session the minute anyone said the survivors were hailing another drug boat/plane/vehicle
Andrew describes a post-truth world. The Cuellar pardon story shows us a post-justice world. And Donald, God has not been happy with you a single day since you filled your first diaper.
Cuellar has the full support of Hakeem Jeffries and the House Democratic leadership. Once he wins the primary, which he will, he'll get all the resources he needs from the DCCC to win the general.
Not thrilled about that, as you're right. From what I'm reading, apparently the D position is that it was a "thin ice" indictment. May be true, but I don't like it.
Then again, TX has a history of not minding if their reps have accusations against them. Glad I don't live there.
The first part (about receiving full support from Jeffries) has been publicly reported. Jeffries publicly praised the pardon and said Trump did the right thing.
The part about the DCCC supporting his re-election is an educated guess. He didn't need their help in previous elections, but his district is one of the five that Texas redrew to benefit Republicans and is now R+10.
Political liberalism proposes the reign of Reason. We are witnessing the total abandonment of that project, substituting the Will of one man as the only thing that matters.
As someone who doesn’t believe in predestination, I will give you that god probably looked at baby Donald snd thought the environment that birthed him wasn’t great, but I would struggle with a god being unhappy with a newborn infant.
Some people in this country still believe in credibility and honesty. We were raised that way. It meant something real to be an American and a patriot, not what Trump espouses every few days. He wants total loyalty, not to our country, but to him. It makes me sad (and furious as hell).
It's really easy to tell a story about something 99.9% of the population hasn't seen and spin it however you like. Nameless and faceless "narco terrorists" can develop superpowers, flip burning speedboats with their bare hands, and pose imminent threats that strike fear in the boots of defenseless Arkansas senators -- threats that justify (if not demand) lobbing another missile straight down their throats.
When the full video of September 2's second boat strike is released and the world gets to view it for the first time, Tom Cotton needs to walk us all through the finer points of how clinging to unseaworthy wreckage equates to "getting back in the fight." Frame by frame and through its fiery, bloody conclusion, commenting as it plays.
As always - a superbly written newsletter and a decent antidote to the daily dose of horrific news coming out of the administration of lunatics. As a Canadian who feels powerless, it is encouraging to read Bill's take on the wins, and I always get a good chuckle out of Andrew's descriptions - "whiplash inducing story revisions ".
Absolutely right on. And it's sickening to me that they keep using the same tired approach and righteous indignation, trying to yell down truth tellers and to impugn them with personal attacks and more lies. And for Republican members of congress to say "I don't know anything about it" when asked about the hypocrisy of murdering people in small boats who may or may not be carrying drugs, at the same time having Trump pardon Juan Orlando Hernandez who was convicted of a drum scheme to flood the US with over 400 tons of cocaine makes me so angry.
Even the term "double tap" is a distortion. Reading the very fine "Inside Delta Force," about the creation of Delta Force, written by one of the original operators, I learned that double tap meant two shots in quick succession, to be sure. The approach and the term arose in the context of assaults into hostage situations--aircraft or rooms. The thought was that leaving a terrorist merely wounded in a space containing hostages, terrorists and fellow Delta force could mean catastrophe. There is *no way* a strike on a boat, then another strike 40 minutes later, is a double tap. They are two separate attacks.
kill everybody aboard—because all 11 people on the boat were on an internal list of military targets previously compiled by the Pentagon." The assertion that the Pentagon actually knew who all these people were (and presumably were actually drug smugglers) is not something anyone should take at face value. I hope Congress finds out who they were.
Republican storytelling--inventive on some levels but always childish and silly. Do they think anyone actually believes their spin? And why do the pundits endlessly discuss what is so patently and obviously outright lies?
There was a line in the newsletter: "There’s no truth or lies. There’s just narratives, crashing into each other at high speeds, and the only way to win is to have yours hit harder."
Unfortunately...we have quite a few fellow citizens who fall for whatever Trump and the GOP say happened...and everything else is "fake news". UGH!
It's that last question. So many people talking about the ballroom that doesn't exist, the peace in Gaza that doesn't exist, and lots of other things that DON'T EXIST. It's maddening in all the senses of the world. I'm spending less time online because I can no longer live in insane people's delusions, and that seems like a good 80% of the "news."
The sorry truth: Trump, who pardons drug traffickers and murders the shipwrecked, is the world’s most dangerous narco-terrorist, and every American who continues to support him is complicit in his crimes.
"What the Trump administration has done . . . . is turn the United States Navy into a death squad."
-Eliot Cohen on Shield of the Republic
The worst thing, other than the orders themselves, is that the Navy is perfectly capable of indicating these boats. They can stop, board, and inspect. If drugs are found, the boat, and contents can be confiscated. The crew can be arrested and rendered for prosecution. Bombing and murder are neither legal nor necessary.
As a matter of reducing drug flow, these strikes are nothing but a pin prick. A serious effort would involve arrest and interrogation so the structure of the drug producing enterprise can be understood and the kingpins can be identified and dealt with. But wait. The kingpins get pardons!
The Coast Guard does this routinely.
Absolutely right!
But why are we doing this in the first place? The drugs these boats are allegedly running don’t come to the US — most of our drugs come via Mexico. Early on there was talk of the US targeting the cartels and possibly sending troops to Mexico which for very good reason hasn’t happened. Are these attacks on Venezuela merely Trump’s redirection away from attacking Mexico, but giving him drug targets to brag about that the administration believes come at very little cost? I am not sure there is a grand strategy here other than Trump needed to demonstrate winning on the narcotics front which due to incompetence and poor planning has now all gone South.
What Keith said! I have been thinking about this for a while.
Oh, don't throw logic at this administration, Keith. They just want to watch things go boom, and do it from a distance where they can pound their chests without being challenged.
We're at war with Venezuela seems to be the answer, I think?
That’s still Schrödinger’s cat territory — depends on the day and Donald’s mood.
Back before America recovered its present greatness, when law was more than the will and whim of Donald J. Trump, we went to the trouble to interdict boats, board them and confiscate the drugs. This is now seen as a time-wasting formality, so they just cut to the chase and kill on sight. It’s a wonder ICE hasn’t received orders to do the same to suspected “illegal aliens”,
…and I’ve always seen Shield as on of The Bulwark’s least fiery, in terms of language used. To me, kinda bears out how bad this military madness really is.
That first boat Trump and Hegseth blew up, on September 2nd, had 11 people on board. 11 people. If you were running drugs on a small boat, would you pack the boat with 11 people? No, you’d pack the boat with drugs. That boat was moving people not drugs. And those people were murdered by the President of the United States. Put that in your pipe and smoke it—if you dare.
Like Duterte in the Philippines.
Sadly, I am afraid that one day historians will examine the complicity of Americans today as they do with the Germans in the 1930s and 1940s. No, the crimes of this administration are nowhere near the horrors perpetrated by the Third Reich, but they significant nonetheless, especially in the end of USAID, the ruthless deportation of immigrants, the increasing destruction of the American health care system (flawed as it already is) and the use of lethal force off the coast of Venezula without any legal justification or evidence.
This Trump (Miller/Vought) regime is just getting started! It also seems to me as though we have lost sight of the horrors that are probably happening in the immigrant concentration camps. The right stopped bragging about the inhumane treatment and conditions of their detention facilities, but I can’t imagine that the cruelty has been discontinued.
It's worth reviewing why Trump lies. It's not to persuade anyone to believe his lies. Trump lies to assert dominance. Trump lies, and then Republicans have to just stand there and take it. But that doesn't go far enough. Trump lies, and then Republicans have to repeat the lie, over and over again, with vigor and enthusiasm. Everyone knows it is a lie, and everyone knows the people repeating the lie know it is a lie. But, without any doubt, the person repeating the lie is acknowledging their subservience and fealty to Trump. This is the whole point of the lie.
This is also the main reason for Trump's tariffs. Why would he place tariffs on every country in the world, whether or not we have a trade deficit, and whether or not there are more penguins than people in the country? It is not simply, or even mostly, that Trump is ignorant about economics. Trump uses tariffs to show other countries that we are the biggest bully on the block, and they better do what we tell them to do. Like the lies, Trump's tariffs are about dominance.
Why do you think Trump nominated people like RFK jr and Pete Hegseth to cabinet posts? By nominating obviously unqualified people, he forces Bill Cassidy and Joni Ernst to vote for them. They know the nominees are unqualified, and we know that they know. It is all about Trump asserting his dominance over the senators. Trump cares more about dominance than he cares about running the country.
It is not hard to figure out Trump's motives for doing shit once you realize absolutely everything is about dominance.
Well said. You nailed it
I have long wondered why people are confused by or shocked at the narratives coming from the WH. DJT isn't lying (I mean of course he is but hear me out) in the conventional way. He isn't coming up with a clever story to hide the truth. Instead, he is making a darker assertion: there is no truth. Or rather truth is whatever he says it is.
It's why he named his social media platform Truth Social - the basic assertion is that every post on there is a "truth" - because he says it is. He owns "truth". He bends reality to his will.
I'm a committed Christian and I've never understood why so many of my fellow believers seem to be OK with this. Especially after all of our theoretically heartfelt denunciations of Clinton's lies and character flaws in the wake of his scandals.
I've quit trying to understand. But we cannot give up the fight for real, objective, truth. It is precious. If our only "truth" is Donald Trump, we're doomed.
In the same way I can't imagine having been a strong Republican (like Tim, Sara, Bill, etc.) and then having to face the reality of almost everyone in your party supporting this utter scumbag, I can't imagine being a true Christian and seeing so many others who claim to be Christians support someone who is literally the antithesis of Jesus.
Blessings to you.
It explains him knocking down the east wing and plastering fake gold curlicues all over the White House. He's a dog marking territory. When he's carried out of there the new occupant will be confronted with "Trump was here" every time they turn around.
James - [mashing Like button].
This is the crux right here.
When Andrew writes, “ it’s getting difficult to keep track of all the lies, distortions, and whiplash-inducing story revisions” - in Trump/MAGA domain, that really doesn’t matter. Just keep the firehouse pumping whatever and flood the zone. Overwhelm all attempts at rational discourse on a topic. Cuz rationality is so over
I think he lies out of force of habit. He’s done it all his life so it’s not second nature, it’s first.
Well said. Trump is that simple. The solution? Fight back. It's that simple.
Today I have chosen to view the glass as half full! There have been a few signs that some are not defending the lies. Maybe a few have pulled their heads out of Trump’s butt.
Yup, and he hates Republicans more than Democrats because the Republicans roll over for him like dogs every time. We know Trump hates dogs. (She says while she sobs hysterically in "how the hell could we elect a person who hated dogs?")
My favorite sign from October 18th: “Make Lying Wrong Again”
Sad to know that even if the sign were to read, “Make Bearing False Witness a Sin Again”, the faux Christians leading our government would merely shrug.
I've attempted that conversation. Shrug is right.
I cannot even express how disgusted I am by the juvenile "updating" of the name on Levine's portrait. Way to own the libs, HHS!
One of the hallmark characteristics of this administration is that it reflects the very worst of male adolescent behavior. Jill Filipovic wrote a great article on this topic last February in The Atlantic, "The Adolescent Style in American Politics". Hopefully this gift link will work for anyone interested in reading the article: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/02/trump-masculinity/681828/?gift=L7D2AM-N8oP1JiKZgQo0RvKHvWdFeJkmlWjx_ZP-uQQ&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
Somewhere in there is also adolescent, short- attention-span online culture.
TomD - yes. And “somewhere” is sorta everywhere, no?
Ha! I left "in" out.
I've been beating this drum for a while now. Big Advertising is trying its hardest to infantilize us. We are all being treated like children.
Thanks for the link...as someone who lived thru adolescence - I'd argue that we are experiencing the very worst of female adolescent behaviour as well...and trust me it was nasty.... I see it being acted out by every woman in the current admin X 10. 'Original comment Slightly edited for clarity and low caffeine levels'
I went to an all-male Catholic High School, so I may have missed out on the worst aspects of female adolescent behavior. The most disturbing thing to me about all this is how acceptable the administration's behavior is to so many Americans, even when it harms them.
"Merry Christmas!" - Cheerful greeting coming from somewhere inside the flaming wreckage of America
“The task now is straightforward: It’s to maintain momentum. It’s to keep the pressure on. It’s to make the next couple weeks as bad for the Trump administration and the Republican party as the past couple months have been.”
Keep up the resistance and defiance, good people! Every action matters.
They need to apply the Bannon tactic: flood the zone
"“Maybe they were signaling to other airplanes or drug cartel boats. . . " Signalling ... TO OTHER AIRPLANES? WATER CRAFT? You've got a carrier group in the vicinity and no one working the radar? WTF? No. Oh, Thor's toenails, just NO.
Those are the kinds of questions I would ask ADM Bradley. Once the first strike had taken place, where were the other Narco-Terrorist Assets? We must have known. We've got a carrier battle group in the area now. Everything that flies or floats is being tracked. So how far away were they?
What signals came from the boat after the strike? Again, a carrier battle group with the most sophisticated ESM technology in the world. They're listening to everything. What did they hear?
Since there is a carrier battle group in the area, where was the closest US Coast Guard cutter? It's their job to intercept these boats. Were they called in? And if it was just a Coast Guard Law Enforcement Detachment embarked on a US Navy ship, then where was that ship? Was that ship called in to assist?
What was the need for urgency here? If the idea was that these people were going to right their boat, stow their cargo and proceed, then why not wait for that to happen and then hit them again? Or wait for the other Narco-Terrorist boat to show up and then hit that one too? Why did the strike have to happen right then? If the drone was running out of fuel, send another one to relieve the first one. We've got plenty of those things.
None of this makes any sense unless you see the need for Special Forces to do this instead of regular USN or USCG surface and air assets, which are always in the Caribbean anyway.
And I still want to know what meeting Pete Hegseth ran off to. What was more important than this strike?
And Ol' Pete's pretty fond of crapping on the press for making judgements "from air-conditioned offices." Okay, Pete, how many people who were involved in this strike WEREN'T in an air-conditioned office? Even the guys piloting the drones were in the air-conditioning. Every senior person there had access to their staffs. They had all the time in the world to make a decision and not one of them was at any personal, physical risk.
Nobody has said anything about where the location actually was. Or has given a long range picture. Was it an isolated boat in the middle of an empty sea? Were there other boats around, any planes?
This was a natural question that should have been asked in the closed door session the minute anyone said the survivors were hailing another drug boat/plane/vehicle
Not to defend the Navy's actions, but I think that strike happened about two months before the U.S.S. Ford departed from the Mediterranean.
Andrew describes a post-truth world. The Cuellar pardon story shows us a post-justice world. And Donald, God has not been happy with you a single day since you filled your first diaper.
Does Cuellar really think the Ds will go anywhere near him? If he does, he's as delusional as his pardoner.
Cuellar has the full support of Hakeem Jeffries and the House Democratic leadership. Once he wins the primary, which he will, he'll get all the resources he needs from the DCCC to win the general.
Not thrilled about that, as you're right. From what I'm reading, apparently the D position is that it was a "thin ice" indictment. May be true, but I don't like it.
Then again, TX has a history of not minding if their reps have accusations against them. Glad I don't live there.
Are you sure about that?
The first part (about receiving full support from Jeffries) has been publicly reported. Jeffries publicly praised the pardon and said Trump did the right thing.
The part about the DCCC supporting his re-election is an educated guess. He didn't need their help in previous elections, but his district is one of the five that Texas redrew to benefit Republicans and is now R+10.
I think at bottom it's post-meaning--nihilism.
Political liberalism proposes the reign of Reason. We are witnessing the total abandonment of that project, substituting the Will of one man as the only thing that matters.
Like they say about Russia, nothing is true and everything is possible. MAGA is really the Sovietization of America.
As someone who doesn’t believe in predestination, I will give you that god probably looked at baby Donald snd thought the environment that birthed him wasn’t great, but I would struggle with a god being unhappy with a newborn infant.
I didn't intend to be taken too literally . . . .
Coming from you I didn’t take it too seriously.
Re The Cheap Shots: My real biological name is AGCGAAAGCCTATACGCGAGATACACTGCC...
I can't remember your genome but your face is familiar.
A ‘lovely’. LOL!!!! (-:
I think we might be related!
Some people in this country still believe in credibility and honesty. We were raised that way. It meant something real to be an American and a patriot, not what Trump espouses every few days. He wants total loyalty, not to our country, but to him. It makes me sad (and furious as hell).
It's really easy to tell a story about something 99.9% of the population hasn't seen and spin it however you like. Nameless and faceless "narco terrorists" can develop superpowers, flip burning speedboats with their bare hands, and pose imminent threats that strike fear in the boots of defenseless Arkansas senators -- threats that justify (if not demand) lobbing another missile straight down their throats.
When the full video of September 2's second boat strike is released and the world gets to view it for the first time, Tom Cotton needs to walk us all through the finer points of how clinging to unseaworthy wreckage equates to "getting back in the fight." Frame by frame and through its fiery, bloody conclusion, commenting as it plays.
As always - a superbly written newsletter and a decent antidote to the daily dose of horrific news coming out of the administration of lunatics. As a Canadian who feels powerless, it is encouraging to read Bill's take on the wins, and I always get a good chuckle out of Andrew's descriptions - "whiplash inducing story revisions ".
Thanks goodness for the Bulwark.
Absolutely right on. And it's sickening to me that they keep using the same tired approach and righteous indignation, trying to yell down truth tellers and to impugn them with personal attacks and more lies. And for Republican members of congress to say "I don't know anything about it" when asked about the hypocrisy of murdering people in small boats who may or may not be carrying drugs, at the same time having Trump pardon Juan Orlando Hernandez who was convicted of a drum scheme to flood the US with over 400 tons of cocaine makes me so angry.
Even the term "double tap" is a distortion. Reading the very fine "Inside Delta Force," about the creation of Delta Force, written by one of the original operators, I learned that double tap meant two shots in quick succession, to be sure. The approach and the term arose in the context of assaults into hostage situations--aircraft or rooms. The thought was that leaving a terrorist merely wounded in a space containing hostages, terrorists and fellow Delta force could mean catastrophe. There is *no way* a strike on a boat, then another strike 40 minutes later, is a double tap. They are two separate attacks.
Thinking about it, I seem to recall that the introduction to "Inside Delta Force" was by David Mamet.
Thank you for this outstanding newsletter.
kill everybody aboard—because all 11 people on the boat were on an internal list of military targets previously compiled by the Pentagon." The assertion that the Pentagon actually knew who all these people were (and presumably were actually drug smugglers) is not something anyone should take at face value. I hope Congress finds out who they were.
They're "names" are probably listed as DS1 thru DS11...
(DS = Drug Smuggler)
Republican storytelling--inventive on some levels but always childish and silly. Do they think anyone actually believes their spin? And why do the pundits endlessly discuss what is so patently and obviously outright lies?
There was a line in the newsletter: "There’s no truth or lies. There’s just narratives, crashing into each other at high speeds, and the only way to win is to have yours hit harder."
Unfortunately...we have quite a few fellow citizens who fall for whatever Trump and the GOP say happened...and everything else is "fake news". UGH!
It's that last question. So many people talking about the ballroom that doesn't exist, the peace in Gaza that doesn't exist, and lots of other things that DON'T EXIST. It's maddening in all the senses of the world. I'm spending less time online because I can no longer live in insane people's delusions, and that seems like a good 80% of the "news."