1. United States
2. Texas
3. Letter

It is truly a sad state of affairs when political parties cannot even agree on what constitutes murder. When people who know better throw away their morality and human decency for political fealty. Even if it weren’t against any and all international human rights laws recognized across the world, which governed the US strikes killing two people on Sept 2, only a psychopath would champion killing the defenseless. But yet reporting seems to indicate that even after seeing a video doing just that, some in the GOP seemed to shrug and accept explanations as to why it’s a-ok to do so. The US is not in an armed conflict with any cartel or criminal gang. Domestic criminal law and international human rights law both prohibit these kinds of lethal strikes outside of armed conflict. Such killings are recognized as murder and/or extrajudicial killings. Fact. All 21 strikes against suspected drug trafficking boats, killing 83 people to date, have been unlawful. Fact. Testimony by Adm. Bradley stated the boat was not headed to the US. So Trump’s justification that it threatened the homeland is false. The survivors had no weapons, no radio, and no intent to head to the US. How would the guys who shrug watching a murder video feel about a hostile power killing a downed US airman in a raft? There is no war and no factual basis for a war. If Trump cares so about fentanyl (which does not come from Venezuela) or fentanyl addiction, he would have not slashed funding for addiction treatment from Medicaid. Switching the pretext to cocaine doesn’t fly either. No serious anti-cocaine policy would pardon an infamous cocaine smuggler. Or divert thousands of DEA agents to round up gardeners and construction workers instead of drug dealers. This is all BS pretense to invade Venezuela. A working Congress wouldn’t accept extrajudicial killings, wouldn’t support an illegal and unwanted war, or condone endangering troops. A working Congress would look at the inspector general’s report on the reckless, dangerous Signalgate communications outlining US battle plans and these unlawful killings and demand Pete Hegseth’s resignation. Or at least demand public release of the video in question. Let us decide for ourselves if we want to shrug. President Trump said he would be happy to release it. But then he said the same thing about the Epstein files didn’t he?