Free Republic

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is facing bipartisan scrutiny over his reported order to strike a boat in the Caribbean a second time, killing two survivors who were clinging to the ship’s wreckage on Sept. 2. The Washington Post reported Friday that Hegseth issued an order to “kill everybody” after the initial strike, the first of what is now more than 20 such attacks, did not immediately kill all 11 of the people on board the vessel, leading the Special Operations commander overseeing the attack to order a second strike. Some Democrats and a senior Republican said Sunday the strike was...

An explosive Washington Post report, the subject of so much discussion the past two days, says that, in the first missile strike the Trump Defense Department carried out against operatives of a boat suspected of transporting narcotics on the high seas off Venezuela, two survivors were rendered shipwrecked. As they clung to the wreckage, the U.S. commander ordered a second strike, which killed them. If this happened as described in the Post report, it was, at best, a war crime under federal law. I say “at best” because, as regular readers know, I believe the attacks on these suspected drug...

There are a few reasons to doubt the American government's stated aim of wiping out these so-called "narco terrorist" gangs threatening the US from Venezuela, even after one takes out of the equation the sort of equipment the military is deploying - which isn't what they would need for effective drug smuggling interdiction. While the president acknowledges that the synthetic opioid fentanyl is a huge killer in the US (which it is) and is supplied by drug gangs (which it is), to blame Venezuela for fentanyl production is simply incorrect.Mexican cartels produce fentanyl with precursors largely supplied from China, and...

The trade war between the world's two biggest economies shows no signs of slowing down - Beijing has vowed to "fight to the end" hours after US President Donald Trump threatened to nearly double the tariffs on China. That could leave most Chinese imports facing a staggering 104% tax - a sharp escalation between the two sides. Smartphones, computers, lithium-ion batteries, toys and video game consoles make up the bulk of Chinese exports to the US. But there are so many other things, from screws to boilers.With a deadline looming in Washington as Trump threatens to introduce the additional tariffs...

George Galloway on the lions of Britain’s armed forces and the donkeys in charge of them. The politicians who are stuck in the 19th century and don’t realise the empire can now strike back.