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More legally defensible than blowing up boats, but that doesn’t make it a good idea or policy.
By MAX BOOT
Washington Post December 15, 2025
The Trump administration strategy of blowing up suspected drug-smuggling boats, already criticized by many legal experts as illegal, became even more controversial after The Post reported that, during the first such strike, U.S. forces had killed survivors clinging to their boat’s wreckage. Congress is now demanding the release of unedited Pentagon footage of the attack — a request that the Trump administration is stonewalling.
Perhaps it’s just a coincidence that the rate of U.S. boat strikes seems to have slowed down: There have been only two such attacks since mid-November. But now the Trump administration has opened another front in its war against the Nicolás Maduro regime: U.S. forces last week seized a large oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, and the administration has vowed to commandeer more tankers.
