And for an encore: 11 people on a boat that is trafficking drugs? Think about that for a second. If you're a drugs smuggler what are you going to do with 11 people on your boat. That's easily 600 Kg more payload which has a street value of something ridiculous. And there is no way in hell that that boat would make it to the USA. That's way to far for a powerboat like that. They're great for short and very fast hops, not for 1000+ miles across open water. So there is a very good chance that 11 innocents just got murdered for no reason whatsoever other than that they happened to be on a boat.

But I don't even care: bombing boats with civilians is an act of war. This is the sort of thing that will beget a response. Just like threatening to invade Canada, Panama or Greenland begets a response. At the end of all this the USA will realize that it is large, but not larger than the rest of the world. Killing indiscriminately and bullying are all immature acts of overgrown toddlers that want to use their toys. You can't justify that by pointing to some pieces of paper, or lack thereof.

You can't just hand wave the due process issues away since the boat was in international waters. Rayiner's whole presumption is legally wrong as well.

We're not at war with Venezuela, and even if we were, we have laws against murder via the war crimes act (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2441 - (d)(1)(D)). And surprise surprise, the law qualifies that it only applies to those taking no part in the hostilities - which you'd need some sort of due process to justify. There's no statutory requirement for "big D" Due Process, but due process also has common usage meaning that was ignored here.

You can tell how legally dubious the action was by the lawyer Marco Rubio's mealy-mouthed rationale explaining that Trump ordered the attack, that he was given the option to capture or kill and he chose to kill them. Everyone who knows better is distancing themselves from the decision chain of the attack since only the President is protected via the Supreme Court's recently invented official acts privilege.

Edit; Rand Paul gets it: https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lxxrrcb2bg2u ,this isn't complicated.