Pentagon names the Caribbean operation 'Southern Spear'; the operation is sinking fishing boats.

The Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, stood in front of a podium on Thursday and formally named the United States military operation that has been sinking small boats in the Caribbean Sea since the second of September. The operation is now called Southern Spear. The branding includes a logo, a press kit, and a coin.

Buddy. They printed the coin first.

Twenty-two boats have been blown up since September second. Eighty-seven people have been killed. The Pentagon’s public position, repeated in slide decks, is that every single one of those boats was carrying drugs and every single one of those people was a “narco-terrorist.” The evidence backing that position is described, by the Pentagon, as classified.

I have been arguing with televisions for thirty years. There is a thing in casino law called due diligence. When the cage suspects a guest of cheating, you do not throw the guest out a window. You take the guest into a back room, you review the tape, you call the gaming commission, and you make a record. The record matters. The record is what makes the difference between security and assault.

The boats had no record. There was no due diligence. The boats were sitting in international water, the boats were in some cases turning back toward shore, and the boats were destroyed from the air with no evidence ever made public that any of the people on them were what the Pentagon said they were. Some of them may have been smugglers. Some of them, by the testimony of relatives, were fishermen. Nobody on the boats can answer the question now, because the people who could answer it were inside the boats.

The Washington Post, the day before the operation got its name, reported that the order on the first strike from Hegseth had been to leave no survivors. SEAL Team Six executed the order. Nine men were initially reported dead. The follow-on strike took the remaining two who had survived the first one.

This is the part where I would normally make a joke. There is no joke here. The operation has a coin. The coin says “Southern Spear.” The coin is what we have so far.

I’m arguing with the television again, but quietly.