Free Republic

On Friday, I started a regular series that I'll post at the end of each week called "The New Monroe Doctrine." (And thank you all for the wonderful feedback I've received. It's encouraging.) My goal with that is to tell you what's going on in the Western Hemisphere each week as it relates to the United States. Donald Trump and Marco Rubio are making this a priority, thank goodness, and I'm going to cover it every step of the way. In that article, I mentioned that I was also planning to launch a second, complementary column specifically about China's influence...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the U.S. military carried out three strikes Monday in the waters of the Eastern Pacific against boats suspected of carrying drugs, killing 14 and leaving one survivor. The announcement made on social media Tuesday, marks a continued escalation in the pace of the strikes, which began in early September spaced weeks apart. This was the first time multiple strikes were announced in a single day.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the U.S. military carried out three strikes Monday in the waters of the Eastern Pacific against boats suspected of carrying drugs, killing 14 and leaving one survivor. The announcement made on social media Tuesday, marks a continued escalation in the pace of the strikes, which began in early September spaced weeks apart. This was the first time multiple strikes were announced in a single day

@SenRandPaul Bomb first, ask questions “never” makes zero constitutional sense and even less practical sense. I still have questions about the survivors from Ecuador and Colombia. Either they’re drug traffickers, in which case they should be tried and locked up, or they’re not. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that people who value the Constitution and due process are skeptical.

Senator Rand Paul is on a campaign to knock President Donald Trump off of his warpath. During Paul’s appearance on Fox News Sunday, host Shannon Bream asked the Kentucky Republican what information he wanted the government to provide about its military strikes in the Caribbean Sea. But Paul said that a briefing wasn’t what he was after. “A briefing’s not enough to overcome the Constitution,” Paul said. “The Constitution says that when you go to war, Congress has to vote on it. And during a war then, [there are] lower rules for engagement and people do sometimes get killed without...

The Trump administration’s military airstrikes against boats off Venezuela’s coast that the White House claims were being used for drug trafficking are “extrajudicial killings”, said Rand Paul, the president’s fellow Republican and US senator from Kentucky. Paul’s strong comments on the topic came on Sunday during an interview on Republican-friendly Fox News, three days after Donald Trump publicly claimed he “can’t imagine” federal lawmakers would have “any problem” with the strikes when asked about seeking congressional approval for them. US forces in recent weeks have carried out at least eight strikes against boats in the Caribbean off Venezuela’s coast, killing...

https://babylonbee.com/news/rand-paul-heroically-dives-in-front-of-hellfire-missile-before-it-can-hit-venezuelan-drug-boat WORLD — Senator Rand Paul died tragically on Monday after heroically diving in front of an AGM-114 Hellfire missile fired by an MQ-1 Predator Drone before it could strike a Venezuelan drug boat. According to sources, the U.S. Air Force was tracking a suspected Venezuelan drug shipment over international waters when it received explicit authorization from the president to take it out. But just before the missile could make contact with the drug boat, a man later identified as the senator from Kentucky somehow leaped hundreds of feet through the air, putting his body between a Hellfire missile and...

Antifa terrorists, gang members and rioters are endangering federal officers in American cities.President Trump awarded my friend Charlie Kirk a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom this month. As a country, we need to honor Charlie’s memory, face some hard facts and take action. Before it’s too late. Charlie’s assassination forced Americans to confront a dark truth: Leftist extremists are waging war on the rule of law, liberty and our way of life. Terrorists, gang members and rioters routinely attack federal law-enforcement officers working to reimpose order after years of chaos under the Biden administration. Our officers have been shot at...

In a speech before the House of Commons on May 13, 1940, referencing the war against Nazi Germany, Winston Churchill stated, “What is our policy? … To wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark lamentable catalogue of human crime.” The Prussian military theorist Karl von Clausewitz once observed that “war is the continuation of politics by other means.” Various political and moral interpretations exist regarding what constitutes a “just war.” That usually depends on one’s point of view. As the saying goes, one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. What if there were a country...

🚨 JUST IN: Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) accuses President Trump of doing what CHINA and IRAN do when he "executes" narco-terrorists "I would call them extrajudicial killings. This is akin to what China does, what Iran does with drug dealers -- they summarily execute people without presenting evidence to the public. So it's WRONG."

Sen. Lindsey Graham on Sunday defended the White House’s decision to strike Venezuelan boats, hinting that President Donald Trump may even “expand” military operations in the region. In an interview with CBS’ Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation,” the South Carolina Republican said Trump is “doing the right thing.” “President Trump told me yesterday that he plans to brief members of Congress when he gets back from Asia about future potential military operations against Venezuela and Colombia,” Graham said. “So there will be a congressional briefing about a potential expanding from the sea to the land. I support that idea.

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 U.S. military is sending an aircraft carrier to the waters off South America, in the latest escalation and buildup of military forces in the region, the Pentagon announced Friday.Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the USS Gerald R. Ford and its strike group to deploy to U.S. Southern Command to “bolster U.S. capacity to detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors and activities that compromise the safety and prosperity of the United States,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a social media post.Deploying an aircraft carrier is a major escalation of military power in a region that has already seen an...

Donald Trump has ordered the world's largest aircraft carrier to the Caribbean in a major escalation in his war on narco-terrorists from Venezuela. USS Gerald R. Ford is joining the deployment of US Southern Command, Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said on Friday. The 1,090-ft vessel — which can carry more than 75 warplanes — moves as part of a carrier strike group that includes a cruiser, three destroyers and nine aircraft squadrons. It will 'will enhance and augment existing capabilities to disrupt narcotics trafficking and degrade and dismantle' the cartels, Parnell said in a statement. The 100,000-ton warship joins...

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered an aircraft carrier strike group currently stationed in Europe to the Caribbean region amid a massive buildup of US military forces in the region. The Gerald R. Ford strike group and its associated air wing are being sent to “dismantle Transnational Criminal Organizations and counter narco-terrorism,” Pentagon Press Secretary Sean Parnell said in a statement posted on X. The Ford group docked near the harbor of Split, Croatia on October 21. That would leave the ships more than 5,000 miles from the Caribbean, meaning it would take days for the group to be in...

CBS reports an eighth operation in which the US military killed at least two civilians The U.S. military campaign against vessels crewed by civilians allegedly involved in drug trafficking continued Tuesday with a new extrajudicial attack, the eighth reported since September. The novelty this time is that the latest strike took place off the Colombian coast, in the Pacific Ocean, and not, as in previous cases, in the Caribbean Sea. The news was reported Wednesday by CBS, citing two anonymous official sources. Confirmation came shortly thereafter from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who said that the U.S. military had killed two...

The United States announced Sunday another strike against what it called a drug-running boat, this time attacking an alleged Colombian leftist rebel vessel in an apparent expansion of a US military operation off the coasts of South America. Word of the attack from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth came as President Donald Trump said the United States is halting financial aid to Colombia, accusing its president of condoning the production of drugs. This took embattled relations between two longstanding allies to a new low. The United States has had warships deployed in the Caribbean off Venezuela since August and attacked...

A drone attack hit the prosecutor's office in the Mexican border city of Tijuana, a key hub for drug trafficking, authorities said Wednesday without identifying the suspected assailants. Baja California state prosecutor Maria Elena Andrade told reporters that the attack with three explosive-laden drones caused some damage but resulted in no casualties. The prosecutor's office said on Facebook that the attack hit the anti-kidnapping unit of the state attorney general's office. In a social media post, the state attorney general said that "no attack will stop investigative work or commitment to justice."

Four male narco-terrorists aboard the vessel were killed in the strike, and no U.S. forces were harmed in the operation. The strike was conducted in international waters just off the coast of Venezuela while the vessel was transporting substantial amounts of narcotics - headed to America to poison our people. Our intelligence, without a doubt, confirmed that this vessel was trafficking narcotics, the people onboard were narco-terrorists, and they were operating on a known narco-trafficking transit route. These strikes will continue until the attacks on the American people are over!!!!

Trump administration sends memo to Congress declaring 'non-international armed conflict' with drug cartels The Trump administration sent a memo to Congress on Thursday saying that the United States is now "in a non-international armed conflict" with drug cartels, which administration officials have designated as "terrorist organizations." "The President directed these actions consistent with his responsibility to protect Americans and United States interests abroad and in furtherance of United States national security and foreign policy interests, pursuant to his constitutional authority as Commander in Chief and Chief Executive to conduct foreign relations," the memo states. The notification to congressional lawmakers came...