Jack Reed (D-RI), the rating member of the US Senate Armed Companies Committee, strongly condemned the US navy strikes within the Caribbean as President Trump on Sept. 15 disclosed that he had ordered a second strike this month on a ship allegedly carrying medication from Venezuela, killing three on board.
“President Trump’s actions are an outrageous violation of the legislation and a harmful assault on our Structure,” Reed mentioned on Sept. 15. Reed can be a senior member of the Senate’s Banking, Housing, and City Affairs Committee. “No president can secretly wage conflict or perform unjustified killings — that’s authoritarianism, not democracy.”
“These reckless, unauthorized operations not solely put American lives in danger, they threaten to ignite a conflict with Venezuela that might drag our nation right into a battle we didn’t select,” added Reed, considered one of simply eight senators in US historical past to graduate from West Level Navy Academy in New York. “The American individuals should know what’s being executed of their identify and why.
“Congress should demand solutions, drive transparency, and maintain this administration accountable earlier than it plunges us into one other useless conflict,” he continued.
In saying the second strike on his social medium, Fact Social, Trump intimated that the US navy might develop its strikes on alleged drug cartels within the Caribbean.
“The Strike occurred whereas these confirmed narcoterrorists from Venezuela had been in Worldwide Waters transporting unlawful narcotics (A DEADLY WEAPON POISONING AMERICANS!) headed to the U.S.,” he posted.
“These extraordinarily violent drug trafficking cartels POSE A THREAT to U.S. Nationwide Safety, Overseas Coverage, and very important U.S. Pursuits,” he added.
About two weeks in the past, Trump had ordered the US navy to strike a ship within the Caribbean Sea, off Venezuela, killing 11, allegedly carrying medication.
Later, on Monday, Trump informed reporters from the Oval Workplace that he has sturdy proof that the most recent boat was carrying medication.
“We’ve got proof,” he mentioned. “All it’s a must to do is take a look at the cargo that was spattered everywhere in the ocean — huge luggage of cocaine and fentanyl all over.”
Trump warned that the navy strikes would develop to land, doubtlessly triggering a land conflict with Venezuela.
“We’re telling the cartels proper now we’re going to be stopping them, too,” he mentioned. “After they come by land, we’re going to be stopping them the identical means we stopped the boats.
“However possibly by speaking about it a little bit bit, it gained’t occur,” the US President added. “If it doesn’t occur, that’s good.”
Talking from the Senate’s flooring final week, Reed famous that Trump gave two orders to the US navy that he described as “astonishing, even by this administration’s requirements.
“First, he ordered the Division of Protection to be renamed the ‘Division of Struggle’ — a political theater train designed to sound powerful whereas distracting from the true points going through this nation,” he mentioned. “Second, he ordered a navy strike on a speedboat working within the Caribbean, reportedly killing 11 individuals on board.”
In response to the assault, Reed mentioned Venezuela has positioned its navy on excessive alert, “and we’re one miscalculation away from a capturing conflict that nobody on this chamber has licensed.
“Quite than rebranding itself, the Pentagon needs to be offering to Congress and the American public solutions: the intelligence that justified that strike, the authorized authority the president relied upon, and an assurance that we aren’t drifting towards one other undeclared conflict,” Reed mentioned.
“I’m deeply involved in regards to the president’s navy actions within the Caribbean, which had been taken with out congressional authorization, with out clear authorized justification, and with none proof introduced that it was vital to guard the USA or its forces from an imminent risk,” he added. “Now almost every week after the operation and amid threats of extra actions, the administration is simply starting to transient Congress on these points.
“I wish to be very clear: All of us share a dedication to defending the American individuals from transnational legal organizations. Cartels are violent and harmful, they usually can’t be allowed to visitors throughout our borders. However we can not permit that homeland safety mission to change into a clean test for conflict,” the senator warned. “We can not let one man’s impulsive decision-making entangle this nation in one other battle we neither want nor need.”
Reed mentioned the preliminary US strike within the Caribbean was “no minor confrontation.
“This was a deliberate, deadly use of American navy energy,” he mentioned. “There isn’t any proof — none — that this strike was carried out in self-defense. That issues, as a result of below each home and worldwide legislation, the US navy merely doesn’t have the authority to make use of deadly drive towards a civilian vessel except appearing in self-defense.
“The Trump administration has provided no proof that this vessel was engaged in an assault, and even that it was engaged in drug trafficking on the time,” Reed added. “They’ve provided no constructive identification that the boat was Venezuelan, nor that its crew had been members of Tren de Aragua or some other cartel.
“We can not permit the USA to slip into one other senseless battle,” Reed mentioned. “We can not threat the lives of American servicemembers primarily based on secret orders and doubtful authorized theories.”
Queens Democratic Congressman Gregory W. Meeks, the Rating Member of the US Home of Representatives’ Overseas Affairs Committee, can be demanding solutions from the Trump administration for the authorized justification for the US Armed Forces’ strike on an alleged drug vessel within the Caribbean Sea.
“I’m deeply involved by the Trump administration’s shifting narratives, contradictory information, and utter failure to offer a authorized justification for this strike,” mentioned Meeks, who represents New York’s 5th Congressional District in Queens, on Tuesday, Sept. 9.
“Donald Trump doesn’t have the authority to order strikes in worldwide waters,” the congressman continued. “Solely Congress has the constitutional energy to declare conflict or authorize navy drive. The administration should make its authorized justification for these strikes clear, as a result of this strike seems illegal below each US and worldwide legislation.”
Meeks additionally desires the Trump administration to offer Congress the intelligence, together with what speedy risk to the USA justified the extrajudicial killing of 11 people.
“Unjustified unilateral actions like this emulate the conduct of authoritarian leaders, resembling Maduro (the Venezuelan chief), fairly than counter them,” he mentioned.
“The Trump administration’s credibility is already in tatters, from deporting individuals to overseas gulags primarily based on false claims and cherry-picking intelligence that fits its political agenda, to now contradicting itself about the place the boat was heading when it was struck,” Meeks added. “The American individuals deserve the reality.
