Republican and Democratic leaders of the US Senate Armed Services Committee said Friday that the Trump administration has still not provided details of its operations against drug cartels or the legal justification behind them. Since early September, US strikes on alleged drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean and Pacific have killed dozens of people, escalating tensions with Caracas.
In a rare bipartisan move, Republican Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the committee chairman, and Democrat Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the ranking member, issued a joint statement saying they had not received the information they requested about the administration’s strategy. The administration has insisted that those targeted were transporting drugs, but has offered no evidence or explanation as to why the boats were attacked rather than intercepted. President Donald Trump has also ordered a major military buildup in the Caribbean.
The senators said they had asked for “Execute Orders” related to the operations in a September 23 letter, and followed up on October 6 with a request for any written legal opinions justifying the strikes. By Friday, they said, no such documents had been provided. Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson responded that several of the requested documents had been made available for review and that the Department had given its fourth bipartisan briefing on the operations to Senate staff the previous day. Trump, meanwhile, denied on Friday that he was considering strikes inside Venezuela, appearing to contradict his own comments from the previous week amid speculation that Washington may soon expand its anti-drug operations.
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