US Southern Command said on Wednesday that its forces blew up another alleged drug-running boat in the Caribbean Sea, killing at least four people.
As usual, the command offered no evidence to back up its claim that the boat was carrying drugs, something the Pentagon hasn’t done for any of the small vessels it has struck since the bombing campaign began in early September.
As part of its operations in Latin America, the Pentagon recently began a military operation in support of Ecuador against alleged drug targets in the country, an effort dubbed “Operation Total Extermination.”
According to a report from The New York Times, one of the first operations involved bombing what the US and Ecuador claimed was a drug camp, but turned out to be a dairy farm, raising questions about the credibility of the US military’s intelligence in the region and claims about what it’s targeting.
SOUTHCOM described the four victims of its latest boat strike as “narco-terrorists,” a term the Trump administration has used to justify extra-judicial executions for an alleged crime that doesn’t receive the death penalty in the US. “Applying total systemic friction on the cartels,” SOUTHCOM said in its statement.
According to a count from Airwars, the strike brings the total number of people killed in the bombing campaign to 163. Airwars classifies all the deaths as civilians since they are non-combatants and posed no threat to the US military at the time of the attacks.
The strikes on small boats are part of a US military operation dubbed “Operation Southern Spear,” which also involved the January 3 attack on Venezuela to abduct Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. The US assault on Venezuela killed 83 people, including four civilians.
