by Jacob G. Hornberger

December 19, 2025

In trying to justify his killing of two survivors of the U.S. military attack on a boat in international waters near Venezuela, Admiral Frank Bradley has made the ridiculous claim that the survivors might have been summoning other boats carrying drugs.

And so what? What’s his point? Is he saying that he was afraid that the massive U.S. military armada, including destroyers and an aircraft carrier, was in danger of coming under attack by supposed drug dealers in small boats? Was he afraid that the “enemy” might be able to sink these Naval vessels with an AR-15 or a handgun?

Why not simply demand a surrender instead of outright killing the survivors? Was Bradley scared to have a well-fortified military vessel approach the survivors for fear that they might fire a gun at them as they clung to their capsized boat? What are the chances they would do that, given the fact that they were surrounded by the most powerful Navy in world history? In fact, is there any evidence whatsoever that the survivors were even armed?

What Bradley and, for that matter, President Trump and Secretary of War Hegseth are trying to do to justify their drug-war killings is to turn the “the war on drugs” and the “war on terrorism” into a real war — a war against “narco-terrorism.” That then entitles them, they apparently claim, to kill the “enemy.” In the “fog of war,” as Hegseth says, understandable mistakes are made, but they are not war crimes, he says.

Their claim that this is a real war, of course, is ridiculous and is an obvious sham to justify extra-judicial killings as part of enforcing U.S. drug laws. The military is simply standing in the stead of the DEA or the Coast Guard. It is serving in the role of the police. The situation would be no different if the military here at home was helping the DEA wage the drug war.

In other words, drug offenses are criminal offenses, regardless of whether it is the DEA, the state police, or the military enforcing the drug laws. The fact that the military is serving in the role of a cop does not convert the drug war into a real war. And drug-war cops, including the military, have no legitimate authority to arbitrarily use deadly force against drug-war suspects.

But there is also a great big elephant in the room that Trump, Hegseth, and Bradley — as well as their drug-war supporters in the mainstream press — are ignoring. That big elephant is the U.S. Constitution, the law that we the people have placed on our federal officials, including the three of them.

Everyone understands that the Constitution requires a congressional declaration of war before the president and the national-security establishment can legally wage war. Yet, everyone also knows that there has been no congressional declaration of war against the “narco-terrorists” or against the nation-state of Venezuela.

Thus, even if we accept the “war on narco-terrorism” nonsense as a real war, there is no question but that these boat killings — whether “single-tap” or “double-tap” — are illegal killings under our form of constitutional government.

The irony, of course, is that U.S. officials expect us to comply with their silly drug laws while they themselves see no need to comply with the higher law of the Constitution that we have placed on them.

The problem, needless to say, is that the Supreme Court and the rest of the federal judiciary long ago made it clear that they would never enforce the Constitution against the national-security establishment — i.e., the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA. That branch of the federal government is simply too powerful. But if we are ever going to get our nation back on the right track, it’s essential that we never cease speaking the truth about the president’s and the national-security establishment’s grave violations of the higher law that we have placed on them — and continue opposing their illegal, immoral, and evil actions.