Yet another 'You Couldn't Make It Up'.

[JBR]

Getting back to the UK not sharing intelligence with the US.  Not sure of the wisdom of doing that.

I agree.  Like it or not, this country is becoming defenceless against a future attacker without the military support of the US, and this applies also to the entire 'Western' world.  This incompetent government seems to want that to happen.

[Michael Rolls]

Perhaps this stupid government's daftest move yet

[Vlad]

A part of a longer post from the other side of the pond, the last paragraph should be of interest 


Good morning! The world's largest aircraft carrier slid into Latin American waters this week like a symbol of everything that's gone wrong with the American psyche, loud, overcompensating, and armed to the teeth. The USS Gerald R. Ford, a floating $13 billion monument to dysfunction, has arrived off Venezuela under the banner of "anti-drug operations." Washington swears it's there to "bolster capacity" against illicit actors, which is Pentagon-speak for "we felt small and needed to flex."
From Caracas, the view looks different. President Nicolás Maduro, who has spent years perfecting the art of dictatorship, suddenly finds himself playing reluctant David to Trump's Goliath at sea. Venezuela's military is on what it calls a "massive" defensive deployment, two hundred thousand troops, militias, missile brigades, and a smattering of Soviet-era hardware wheeled out for nostalgia. No one in Caracas actually saw military activity, but never mind, this is theater. Both sides are acting: Trump pretending it's about narcotics, Maduro pretending it's about sovereignty.

The collateral damage is real. Since September, U.S. forces have bombed twenty boats in international waters, killing seventy-six people, none of whom appear to have been charged with anything. Human-rights observers call it extrajudicial killing; Trump calls it leadership. Russia, always eager to play the moral authority in somebody else's hemisphere, condemned the strikes as "lawless." Which is true, though coming from Moscow it sounds like a mobster lecturing you on ethics.

[klondike]

coming from Moscow it sounds like a mobster lecturing you on ethics.

There's a very good reason for that....

[JBR]

The collateral damage is real. Since September, U.S. forces have bombed twenty boats in international waters, killing seventy-six people, none of whom appear to have been charged with anything. Human-rights observers call it extrajudicial killing; Trump calls it leadership. Russia, always eager to play the moral authority in somebody else's hemisphere, condemned the strikes as "lawless." Which is true, though coming from Moscow it sounds like a mobster lecturing you on ethics.

That is interesting.  Can you expand on that?  Which international waters, and where?