On Capitol Hill, Democrats are still demanding a legal rationale for the Sept. 2 U.S. strike on an alleged narco-trafficking boat in the Caribbean. Administration officials were to give a classified briefing to Congress on Friday, Sept. 5, but it was abruptly rescheduled for Sept. 9, according to a Reuters report.
“There is no way on God’s green earth you can say that whatever was in this boat presented any sort of imminent threat to the United States in a military sense of the word,” Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said. “...Are we going to use the United States military to get into a war with drug traffickers, and what are the consequences of that?” Smith asked at a Rules Committee meeting on an annual defense policy bill.
Over the weekend, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) took sharp exception to a statement that Vice President J.D. Vance had made about the Sept. 2 strike. “Killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military,” Vance wrote in a Saturday morning post on X. In response to Vance’s post, Paul wrote in a post of his own, later on Sept. 6, saying that “JD ‘I don’t give a s—’ Vance says killing people he accuses of a crime is the ‘highest and best use of the military.’”
“Did he ever read To Kill a Mockingbird? Did he ever wonder what might happen if the accused were immediately executed without trial or representation??” the Kentucky senator demanded to know. “What a despicable and thoughtless sentiment it is to glorify killing someone without a trial,” he concluded.
