'This Was A Murder': Talking Caribbean Boat Strikes on MSNBC (VIDEO)

Chris Hayes invited me on the program to discuss the Trump administration's high-seas war crime. 

Edited by Sam Thielman

NO SOONER HAD WE PUBLISHED "Terror on The High Seas," FOREVER WARS issue 381, than Chris Hayes' gracious producers at MSNBC reached out about an All In segment about what, spoilers, I called a murder on-air.  

As Chris emphasizes in the video above, we're still waiting for the Trump administration to produce a rationale for the right to assassinate civilians aboard a vessel travelling in international waters. That rationale will be nonsense, because no such power exists within the presidency. But it will be a valuable document for the purposes of showing what levers a lawless administration reaches for to justify an illegal act—as well as to see who defers to the farce, whether out of complicity, cowardice or calculation of future utility. It'll surprise no one here that in the video above, I emphasize how ready-made the authorities, operations and institutions of the War on Terror are for such lever-pulling. 

Also, there's one point in this video that I'm going to dwell on for the rest of my life. I've done a lot of TV in my life, but last night, for some reason, I addressed the missing-rationale point by starting to say that when Trump produced one, he would be peeing on our legs and telling us it's raining. But by the time I realized I shouldn't be using this particular expression on television, I had already gone too far down the road of saying it, so I stumbled to say Trump would be doing "something to your leg" and telling you it's raining. I can't explain this. My ten-year old, who was watching, didn't roast me for it when I came home, so perhaps I'm overthinking this. But not as much as I'm going to overthink it.

IT'S FRIDAY, a day we don't usually publish—who wants to read this shit on a Friday, I figure—and this is our third edition of the week, something else we don't normally do. But this time we had a video, and I'm procrastinating on starting my next MAJID KHAN book chapter, so just a couple quick things. 

Baltimore! I'm going to be talking about REIGN OF TERROR, IRON MAN and their applications to the world around us at Red Emma's at noon on Saturday, September 13. That's a free event as part of the Baltimore Book Festival. RSVP here. It would be great if one of you could bring the vinyl of the new End It LP. I will pay you for it on the spot.  [This is how you get six copies of the new End It LP.—Sam]

In an act of open collusion with Andrew Cuomo, Donald Trump may make Eric Adams the next U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia. If RFK Jr. is in charge of the nation's public health, truly anything is possible. As of this writing, we're waiting to find out if the eminently bribable mayor, who cancelled his scheduled Friday public appearance but is now making an "important campaign announcement" late this afternoon, will accept this naked bribe. Meanwhile, The City reports that Adams billed a City Hall rally with local Muslim leaders on Thursday as an "endorsement" and declined to tell that to those leaders, who thought they were honoring the 1500th birthday of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). 

Finally, don't miss Dave Phillips and Matthew Cole reporting for the New York Times on a botched 2019 SEAL Team 6 raid into North Korea that resulted in a Red Squadron team that had landed on a North Korean beach opening fire on a boat of Korean fishermen who had the misfortune of possibly hearing the mini-submarines for the SEALs' extraction below them. A subsequent military investigation during Trump's first term "found that the killing of civilians was justified under the rules of engagement." That tells you the ROE permits the SEALs to kill civilians in the interests of a mission's operational security. Phillips and Cole further report that the SEALs "punctured the boat crew’s lungs with knives to make sure their bodies would sink." I wonder if their families ever recovered their remains, or if the disappearance of their loved ones remains a mystery, concealed behind a distant enemy-state's prerogative.