USN Incident Reports on Truman’s Deployment Cite Preventable Errors

Issues in training, communication, and judgment were cited in the reports on the incidents during the USS Harry S. Truman 2024-2025 deployment (USN file photo)

Published Dec 4, 2025 6:12 PM by The Maritime Executive

The United States Navy released four independent reports on the key incidents that happened while the carrier Harry S. Truman and its Carrier Strike Group were deployed to the Red Sea region, including a nearly calamitous collision and the loss of multi-million-dollar fighter jets. While saying, it is fully committed to learning from the incident, they also cited the high pressure and adversity during the high-intensity deployment, which was one of the most intense for the Navy in recent years.

The Truman and its carrier group were repeatedly targeted by the Houthis with missiles and drones. The Navy emphasized the overall success of the deployment between September 2024 and May 2025, while admitting human error, bad judgment, systems issues, and fatigue contributed to the incidents. It says the focus of each investigation was the underlying procedural issues and compliance, as well as how the crews were reacting to adversity.

“The Navy is committed to being a learning organization,” said Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jim Kilby in the official statement on the release. “These investigations reinforce the need to continue investing in our people to ensure we deliver battle-ready forces to operational commanders.”

Key among the incidents was the February 12, 2025, collision between the carrier and a commercial vessel near the Suez Canal. What was portrayed as a minor “fender bender” appeared to come far closer to a major casualty. The investigating officer notes that if the timing or angle had changed even slightly, it could have been catastrophic.

Captain Dave Snowden had left the bridge of the carrier to get some rest, but left orders to call him if vessels got within 1,000 feet. The report says the carrier was traveling at speeds of 19 knots, much faster than ordered, and that the officer of the deck failed to act or alert others, including the captain, as vessels came close to the carrier. The bridge team on the carrier misjudged the direction of a turn by the merchant vessel and only summoned the captain back to the bridge when the merchant ship was 500 yards away.

The first impact was a gash 20 feet long and 7 feet wide on the hull, followed by a 15-foot gash in the structure. It damaged the aviation parachute equipment shop, which was manned by eight sailors when the impact happened, as well as unnamed storage rooms. The impact the report determined came within 100 feet of the space where the sailors were working and only yards away from a compartment where 120 sailors were sleeping. The commander of the carrier strike group noted that if it had been 100 feet forward, the impact would have pierced the sleeping compartment.

The commanding officer of the Truman was relieved shortly after the incident “due to a loss of confidence in his ability to command.”

 

Some of the collision damage which came far closer than reported to the sailors onboard (USN)

 

The reports are equally hard on the “friendly fire” incident in which the USS Gettysburg shot down an F/A-18F Super Hornet and fired at a second fighter jet in December 2024. It cites a lack of training and integration between the Gettysburg and the Carrier Strike Group. They point to a lack of “forceful backup” on the cruiser, and a lack of cohesion in the group, leading to a misidentification of the two planes. 

The report highlights culpability “up and down” the chain of command, saying people did not recognize or speak up about concerns and were too reliant on technology instead of judgment. It says they had “low situational awareness,” and concludes the decision to engage was “neither reasonable nor prudent.” They said it was incorrect across the “totality” of the information available to the crew.

While the “friendly fire” incident came early in the engagement, another F/A-18E Super Hornet and a tow tractor were lost overboard in April, late in the deployment. The carrier took evasive maneuvers due to an incoming ballistic missile in the Red Sea. While saying they were within standard operating procedures, the report also cites insufficient communication between the bridge, flight deck control, and hangar bay control. They also cite a failure with the aircraft bake system.

The last incident was another loss of an F/A-18F Super Hornet. It is blamed on the failure of an arresting wire on the Truman. However, they found inadequate maintenance practices, low manning levels, limited knowledge, and insufficient training were each contributing factors to the incident.

The reports emphasize the “high operational tempo and combat conditions” as contributing to a strained environment. During a briefing, Navy officials say they had learned from these high-profile incidents and pointed to the Office of Warfighting Advantage, which is tasked to make improvements in training and procedures, learning from the mishaps during the deployment.

Harry S. Truman and the strike group returned to its home port in Virginia at the end of May 2025 after one of the most demanding deployments for the Navy. The ship has only received interim repairs to make it watertight after the collision, and in August was back underway for two weeks. The Navy reports complete repair of the damage is scheduled during the ship’s upcoming Refueling and Complex Overhaul at HII-Newport News, which was due to begin after her final underway in October.

 

Fearless frogs feast on deadly hornets

Kobe University

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image: 

Kobe University ecologist SUGIURA Shinji discovered that the black-spotted pond frog seems to be unharmed and undaunted by venomous stings from hornets such as the Asian giant hornet, the largest in the world.

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Credit: Shinji Sugiura, Ecosphere 2025 (DOI 10.1002/ecs2.70457)

A remarkable resistance to venom has been discovered in a frog that feasts on hornets despite their deadly stingers. This frog could potentially serve as a model organism for studies on mechanisms underlying venom tolerance.

While just the sight of a hornet’s stinger is enough to fill many of us with dread, some animals, such as some birds, spiders and frogs, are known to prey on adult hornets. The venom injected by their stingers can cause sharp, intense pain as well as local tissue damage and systemic effects such as destruction of red blood cells and cardiac dysfunction, which may even be fatal. But whether the animals that hunt hornets are able to tolerate the venomous stings, or just manage to avoid them, has remained unclear. “Although stomach-content studies had shown that pond frogs sometimes eat hornets, no experimental work had ever examined how this occurs,” says Kobe University ecologist SUGIURA Shinji.

To test whether frogs avoid or tolerate these potentially deadly hornet stings, Sugiura presented individual adult pond frogs with workers of three hornet species, Vespa simillima, V. analis, and V. mandarinia, under laboratory conditions. Each frog was used only once, and was matched to fit the size of their prospective hornet prey, with larger frogs preferentially matched with Asian giant hornet (V. mandarinia) prey. 

In the journal Ecosphere, Sugiura submits striking evidence that adult pond frogs actively attacked workers of the three hornet species. What’s more, he also reports that 93%, 87%, and 79% of frogs ultimately consumed V. simillima, V. analis, and V. mandarinia, respectively, despite being stung into the mouth or even into the eyes. “While a mouse of similar size can die from a single sting, the frogs showed no noticeable harm even after being stung repeatedly. This extraordinary level of resistance to powerful venom makes the discovery both unique and exciting,” says Sugiura. 

Previous studies have suggested that pain and lethality of venomous stings are not necessarily correlated, with some stinging bees, wasps and ants delivering extremely painful, non-lethal stings while others cause little pain despite high lethality. This could mean that the frogs in this study have developed a double tolerance to these stings, which has enabled them to successfully prey on hornet workers.

 “This raises an important question for future work,” he adds, “namely whether pond frogs have physiological mechanisms such as physical barriers or proteins that block the pain and toxicity of hornet venom, or whether hornet toxins have simply not evolved to be effective in amphibians, which rarely attack hornet colonies.” These frogs could, therefore, also serve as valuable model organisms for studying the physiological mechanisms underlying venom tolerance and pain resistance in vertebrates moving forward.

This research was funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science KAKENHI (grants JP23K18027 and JP24K02099).

Kobe University is a national university with roots dating back to the Kobe Higher Commercial School founded in 1902. It is now one of Japan’s leading comprehensive research universities with over 16,000 students and over 1,700 faculty in 11 faculties and schools and 15 graduate schools. Combining the social and natural sciences to cultivate leaders with an interdisciplinary perspective, Kobe University creates knowledge and fosters innovation to address society’s challenges.

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Journal

Ecosphere

DOI

10.1002/ecs2.70457 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Pond frog as a predator of hornet workers: High tolerance to venomous stings

Article Publication Date

4-Dec-2025

The venomous stinger of an Asian giant hornet (Vespa mandarinia). The venom injected by this stinger can cause sharp, intense pain as well as local tissue damage and systemic effects such as destruction of red blood cells and cardiac dysfunction, which may even be fatal.

Credit

Shinji Sugiura, Ecosphere 2025 (DOI 10.1002/ecs2.70457)

The black-spotted pond frog shows remarkable tolerance to venomous stings from an Asian giant hornet. The stings caused no visible harm and the frog behaved normally after predation. Close-up views of the hornet’s stinger embedded in the frog’s mouth are shown in the circular insets in (C) and (D).

Almost all frogs in the study attacked the hornets, and although the hornets stung the frogs repeatedly, 93%, 87%, and 79% of frogs ultimately consumed Vespa simillima, V. analis, and V. mandarinia, respectively.

Credit

Shinji Sugiura, Ecosphere 2025 (DOI 10.1002/ecs2.70457)

Asian hornet explosion leaves Alsace beekeepers fighting for their hives

Beekeepers in eastern France are racing to contain an explosion in numbers of Asian hornets since 2023 that is devastating hives.


Issued on: 16/11/2025 - RFI

The Asian hornet is one of the best-known invasive alien species in Europe. 

AFP - ELAINE THOMPSON


Armed with thermal-imaging binoculars, beekeepers in Alsace have taken to tracking insects with forensic zeal.

Their target is the Asian hornet, an invasive predator whose numbers have surged across the region over the past two years, wreaking havoc on local bee populations.

“For me, nest-hunting has become part of the job. If I want to keep beekeeping, I don’t have a choice,” says Mathieu Diffort, who runs around 100 hives in the rural Sundgau, near the Swiss border.

Diffort and his business partner, Philippe Sieffert of the Api&Co bee and enviromantal protection company, spend much of their season in the painstaking business of locating and destroying hornet nests.

France's beekeepers count cost of devastating year as honey production plummets

Public reports

The yellow-legged hornet first arrived in France in 2004, but only reached the Haut-Rhin in 2023. It is now firmly entrenched, warns Sean Durkin, the local representative of the Bee Health Defence Group (GDSA), which is scrambling to contain the spread.

Between 15 and 20 nests were reported in the department in 2023, then around 100 the following year, and “this year we will exceed 400,” he said. The number of hives attacked or decimated has soared.

GDSA volunteers are stepping up their communication efforts, urging the public to report any nests they spot in the wild via the website lefrelon.com.

When a nest is reported, a specialist is dispatched to destroy it using a drone, a basket or a pole.

On a November morning, Diffort’s target is perched at the top of an oak tree, 25 metres above the ground. Dressed in thick protective clothing, he uses a telescopic pole to inject organic insecticide powder into the enormous oval concretion.

'Bees starving' in disastrous year for French honey

Public health issue

Local authorities “must set aside a budget” for this kind of intervention, because “the phenomenon is set to grow,” says Olivier Pflieger, deputy mayor of Hirtzbach.

“It’s a problem for beekeeping, but also for public health,” he added. His sister died last year from allergic shock after being stung by a hornet.

In Hirtzbach, a nest was spotted by a former forest ranger. “I had walked past it 20 times and hadn’t seen it,” says Marion Federspiel. One of her six hives, located around 200 metres away, was completely destroyed.

Some colonies can settle in abandoned barns, where she worries no one will notice them.

Diffort first tries to time the insects’ movements, then after being captured with bait, a hornet is marked with a coloured pen and released. The time it takes to return allows him to estimate the distance to its nest. Repeated at least three times, the method can yield a fairly precise location.

Another tactic is to scan the treetops with thermal-imaging binoculars, which help him spot nests from afar thanks to the heat – of around 30 degrees – they emit.

France warns against influx of Japanese beetles that can decimate ecosystems

‘We have to live with it'

He is also testing a high-tech approach: attaching a tiny transmitter to the back of a hornet, anaesthetised with CO², so he can track its movements using a rake antenna connected to a smartphone.

The challenge is to find the nest in under three hours, before the transmitter’s battery runs out.

For now, the method is still unreliable and, crucially, expensive – especially as the transmitter can’t always be retrieved.

In this costly and time-consuming endeavour, Diffort admits he feels “a little lonely” and would welcome more funding for research. He stresses that the future of beekeeping and biodiversity is at stake, as well as food security, since bees are vital for pollination.

“We’re working with bits of string, with derisory resources,” Durkin says. The Asian hornet “can’t be eradicated now, so we have to live with it – and try to limit its proliferation as much as possible".

(with newswires)

 

Report: USS Ford's Pilots are Studying Up on Venezuelan Air Defenses

USS Gerald R. Ford (bottom center) with destroyer escorts and a B-52 flyover, Nov. 13 (USN)

Published Nov 14, 2025 11:31 PM by The Maritime Executive

As the carrier USS Gerald R. Ford nears the Caribbean, her air wing's pilots are studying up on the capabilities of Venezuela's air defense network, according to the Washington Post. Talks in the White House continued Friday on whether or not to strike land targets in Venezuela, and President Donald Trump told reporters that afternoon that he had made a decision. "I've already made up my mind. I can't tell you what it will be," Trump told EFE. 

Staffers have presented Trump with multiple strike options, and there are plenty of methods to choose from. Along with USS Ford, the U.S. Navy assets in the region include cruisers USS Lake Erie and USS Gettysburg, destroyers USS Gravely, Mahan, Bainbridge, Winston S. Churchill and Stockdale, and three amphibs with embarked elements of the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit. At least one U.S. attack submarine is likely in the area as well. According to CSIS' calculations, the U.S. Navy now has nearly 300,000 tonnes (displacement) worth of vessels in the Caribbean - a post-Cold War record.

Together, this task force carries a relatively deep magazine of Tomahawk cruise missiles, often favored for a limited strike. Ford carries four squadrons of F/A-18 Super Hornet strike fighters, the standard tool for extended U.S. Navy airstrike campaigns, along with a squadron of E/A-18 Growler electronic attack aircraft for suppression of enemy air defenses. 

Talks in the White House have also included the possibility of special operations missions, the Post reported. Such a foray would likely be limited in scope: the forces currently arrayed in the region are less than what would be expected for a full-scale invasion of a country of Venezuela's size. The invasion of much-smaller Panama in 1989 required 20,000 U.S. troops; at present, the task force has one Marine Expeditionary Unit, which typically totals about 2,200 Marines.

"The long-range firepower available to the United States in the Caribbean is now comparable to levels used in past campaigns of limited scope and duration. There are two likely target sets for such strikes - the cartel facilities and the Maduro regime - with some overlap," assessed CSIS.

Boat strikes continue

In the meantime, the administration continues its campaign of airstrikes on suspected drug smuggling boats. The number has risen to 20 attacks and 80 fatalities as of November 10, and the effort continues. After well-publicized concerns about the legality of the strikes, details about the Justice Department's authorizing brief have begun to emerge in the press. The Wall Street Journal reports that the department's justification for the attacks is based in part on the premise that the boats contain fentanyl, the shipment is intended for the United States market, and that fentanyl constitutes a "chemical weapons threat" that must be intercepted. 

In more than a decade of in-person interdictions in the Caribbean, the U.S. Coast Guard has never reported a discovery of fentanyl aboard a smuggling vessel in the Caribbean or Eastern Pacific - only cocaine, with occasional quantities of marijuana. The overwhelming majority of fentanyl sold in the U.S. is manufactured in Mexico and smuggled over the southern land border.

The Justice Department's brief is intended to convey immunity to U.S. servicemembers who are involved in the operation, but some have begun reaching out for independent legal advice. If the attacks are viewed internationally as unlawful killings of civilians - a position taken by the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, among others - then servicemembers involved in the activity could be prosecuted overseas, experts warn. 

"If a service member relies on [Department of Justice] immunity, that doesn't mean that a state may not prosecute them for any crimes they commit, or if they travel to another country. If there are allegations that they have committed atrocity crimes, then other countries . . . could invoke their own universal jurisdiction and put them before the national courts of another country," president of the National Institute of Military Justice Lt. Col. Frank Rosenblatt (ret'd, U.S. Army) told PBS.

 

Emergency Statement: Leading British Voices Speak Out Against a Trump-Led War on Venezuela

7th November 2025Leave a Commenton Emergency Statement: Leading British Voices Speak Out Against a Trump-Led War on Venezuela

“We reject this dangerous escalation and call on all who stand for peace to say clearly: No to Trump’s war on Venezuela.”

By Labour Outlook

With Donald Trump increasingly threatening military attacks on Venezuela, a new emergency statement has been launched — backed by leading MPs, writers, trade unionists, and peace campaigners in Britain.

The statement has already been endorsed by MPs Jeremy Corbyn and Richard Burgon; trade union general secretaries Daniel Kebede (NEU), Maryam Eslamdoust (TSSA), and Gawain Little (GFTU); writers Tariq Ali and Victoria Brittain; Labour NEC member Jess Barnard; and Britain’s leading anti-war organisations, CND and the Stop the War Coalition, among others.

Initiated by the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign, it has also won the backing of a wide range of organisations in solidarity with Latin America.

Signatures from across the labour, peace, and progressive movements are being added all the time, and a fuller list of supporters will be released in the coming days.

Read the published statement in full below and add your name here.

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EMERGENCY STATEMENT: NO TO TRUMP’S WAR ON VENEZUELA

We are deeply alarmed by the growing threat of a Trump-led war on Venezuela.
In recent weeks, a huge US naval fleet — including warships, bombers, and thousands of troops — has been deployed to the Caribbean, off Venezuela’s coast.

Trump has publicly confirmed that he has authorised the CIA to conduct covert operations in Venezuela. Already, U.S. strikes on Venezuelan small boats — under the pretext of a so-called “war on drugs” — have killed dozens of civilians. Now, Trump has ominously warned that “the land is going to be next.”

This military escalation is part of a long history of US interference in Latin America, where so-called “regime change” operations have caused immense suffering and lasting harm.

There are deep fears that US military intervention in Venezuela could be the first step in a wider regional escalation under Trump’s leadership. Leaders across Latin America have already voiced strong opposition to this military build-up and any foreign intervention.

We reject this dangerous escalation and call on all who stand for peace to say clearly: No to Trump’s war on Venezuela.

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• You can add your name to the Emergency Statement: No to Trump’s War on Venezuela here.
• Signatures from across the labour, peace, and progressive movements are being added all the time, with a wider list of supporters to be released in the coming days.
• If you support Labour Outlook’s work amplifying the voices of left movements and struggles here and internationally, please consider becoming a supporter on Patreon.

Type your email…

Emergency Statement: No to Trump’s War on Venezuela

Jeremy Corbyn – No War with Venezuela

5th November 2025Leave a Commenton Jeremy Corbyn – No War with Venezuela

“We must continue to speak up for international law, for self-determination and for human rights for all.”

Jeremy Corbyn MP on the military escalation towards Venezuela.

The United States is mobilising the largest military build-up in the Caribbean in decades. As I write, at least 10,000 US soldiers – on board 10 warships – are patrolling the southern Caribbean coast. That includes a nuclear submarine, several destroyers and a missile cruiser. 

Already, at least seven small boats – accused of transporting drugs – have been bombed. More than thirty people on board have been killed. Donald Trump has authorised the CIA to conduct covert operations inside Venezuela. Now, the US administration is threatening direct military action, accusing President Maduro of leading an organised crime gang. 

We should call these operations what they are: extrajudicial killings. The US has not yet provided any information about the people on board the ships, let alone any evidence that they were transporting drugs. Indeed, it is well known that most of the cocaine does not come from Venezuela on small boats, but from major commercial shipments via the Pacific. 

This is before we have even tested the bogus assumption that, even if these ships were carrying drugs, military action would be the right thing to do. “Every one of those boats is responsible for the death of 25,000 American people, and the destruction of families all over our country”, Trump has said. What utter nonsense. The US administration knows that the War on Drugs has been a total and utter failure. There are several causes of skyrocketing drug use in the United States: poverty, exploitation and money laundering for starters. If the United States wanted to reduce drug consumption, it would start with any of these factors, rather than with extrajudicial killings of people on small boats from Venezuela.

The real reason for this military escalation is clear: regime change. This is not about drugs. This is about the United States reasserting power in its (imperially named) ‘backyard’. It is no coincidence that this action is being taken at a time when countries in Latin and South America are looking increasingly toward BRICS trading partners, particularly China. Military intervention is just one part of a concerted assault on multipolarity. That assault also includes aggressive tariffs on Brazil and sanctions on Cuba, Nicaragua and indeed Venezuela. 

It is telling that Trump’s messianic motivations in Latin America do not extend to Argentina, where a right-wing President has plunged the nation into an unprecedented economic crisis characterised by falling employment, soaring poverty and endless corruption scandals. According to Trump, Venezuela warrants military intervention, Argentina deserves a bail-out.

Any US-supported regime change would lead to a spiral of conflict, misery and violence. Indeed, the instability would likely generate the perfect conditions for the very drug-trafficking the US purports to oppose. A war with Venezuela would be catastrophic for the Venezuelan people, and indeed for the wider region if it is dragged into a regional conflict. That explains why Colombia, Brazil and Barbados have already come out in fierce opposition to US military intervention. The US presence has already had a catastrophic impact, remember, for the unidentified occupants on board the boats that have been destroyed. 

Of course, war is beneficial for some, not least those who are well aware that Venezuela sits on the world’s largest oil reserves. Regime change in Venezuela has been a project of US imperialism ever since Hugo Chavez became president in 1999 and sought to redirect oil revenues away from Venezuela’s elites and toward the people. 

From Vietnam to Iraq, history has taught us that US military intervention only leads to death and destruction. There will be many in our media happy to cheer on war overseas. They will not be the ones to suffer the lasting consequences. 

That’s why we urge the UK government to join the global effort to avoid military intervention and to stand up to US intimidation, interference and imperialism. We must continue to speak up for international law, for self-determination and for human rights for all. I’m not interested in bombs. I’m interested in peace. Say no to a US war on Venezuela!

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• You can follow Jeremy Corbyn on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
• This article was originally published on Stop The War’s website on 3 November 2025.
• If you support Labour Outlook’s work amplifying the voices of left movements and struggles here and internationally, please consider becoming a supporter on Patreon.

POSTMODERN GUNBOAT DIPLOMACY

US announces ‘Southern Spear’ mission amid naval buildup in Latin America


US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday announced “Operation SOUTHERN SPEAR” to target “narco-terrorists", as regional tensions rose over a US naval buildup in Latin American waters. Hegseth gave no details on the mission or how it differs from existing military operations.


Issued on: 14/11/2025
By: FRANCE 24

The US strikes have now destroyed at least 20 vessels so far – 19 boats and a semi-submersible. © Handout/US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth's X Account/AFP

US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Thursday a military operation to "remove narco-terrorists", amid growing concerns that a US naval build-up in Latin American waters could presage land strikes and a wider conflict.

"Today, I'm announcing Operation SOUTHERN SPEAR," Hegseth posted on X. "This mission defends our Homeland, removes narco-terrorists from our Hemisphere, and secures our Homeland from the drugs that are killing our people."

The post gave no details of what the operation would entail or how it might differ from military actions already being undertaken.

President Donald Trump's administration is conducting a military campaign in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, deploying naval and air forces for what it calls an anti-drugs offensive.

Venezuela: Tensions rise as US sends world's largest aircraft carrier © France 24
01:09

US forces have carried out strikes on about 20 vessels in international waters in the region since early September, killing at least 76 people, according to US figures.

Asked for clarification on the precise nature of Operation Southern Spear, a Pentagon spokesperson simply referred inquiries back to Hegseth's post on X.

CBS News on Wednesday cited multiple sources as saying senior military officials had presented Trump with updated options for potential operations in Venezuela, including strikes on land.

Venezuela announced Tuesday what it called a major, nationwide military deployment to counter the growing US naval presence off its coast – including a newly arrived US aircraft carrier strike group in the region.

Caracas fears the deployment, which also includes F-35 stealth warplanes sent to Puerto Rico and six US Navy ships in the Caribbean, is a regime change plot in disguise.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

Report: U.S. Military Destroys 20th Suspected Drug Boat

File image: the Pentagon's 15th boat strike (Pete Hegseth / X)

Published Nov 13, 2025 11:37 PM by The Maritime Executive

 

The U.S. military has killed another four suspects in its new airstrike campaign against suspected smuggling boats off Latin America, according to CBS and the New York Times. The strike is the 20th in the series, and brings the total number of deceased to 80 people. 

Pentagon officials confirmed the attack to both outlets, but a formal announcement of the action is still pending, reportedly because top officials are awaiting video footage.

The attacks are controversial in legal circles, both for its compliance with American law and for compliance with international human rights law, and have attracted scrutiny. "The US must halt such attacks and take all measures necessary to prevent the extrajudicial killing of people aboard these boats, whatever the criminal conduct alleged against them," said UN High Commissioner on Human Rights Volker Turk last week. 

Colombia has ceased sharing intelligence with U.S. forces over its concerns about the strikes, and the United Kingdom has decided to stop reporting the movements of suspicious boats in the Caribbean to the U.S.-led counternarcotics consortium, Joint Interagency Task Force West. The family of one of the deceased, Colombian fisherman Alejandro Carranza, has promised to sue the administration in U.S. courts for wrongful death; they have already retained an American attorney.

Out of 20 strikes, only two survivors have been rescued, one Colombian and one Ecuadorian national. Both have been repatriated, and the Ecuadorian national has been released without charges because of lack of evidence. 

The Pentagon has pledged that the attacks will continue. In addition, it is building up a substantial task force near Venezuela's coast, consistent with a large-scale military action. Sources within the department have told CBS that while no decision has been made to move ahead, the president has been briefed on possible strike options, to include attacks on land targets. The carrier USS Gerald R. Ford is now approaching the staging area, bringing four squadrons of F/A-18 Super Hornet strike fighters and three additional destroyers - enough capacity to consider a sustained air campaign. 

Secret DOJ memo justifying Trump's lethal

boat strikes hinges on his own words: report

Robert Davis
November 13, 2025 

RAW STORY

U.S. President Donald Trump salutes during a Veterans Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, U.S., November 11, 2025. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

The Justice Department authored a secret memo saying it is relying on President Donald Trump's own words to justify the lethal boat strikes that have been carried out in international waters, according to a new report.

The New York Times reported on Thursday that the memo was written by the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel, and is about 40 pages long. The report indicates that it "contradicts" experts in several ways, like suggesting the strikes are in response to an armed conflict.

About 80 people have been killed in the strikes, although the Trump administration has provided little evidence justifying the attacks.

"The memo, which was completed in late summer, is said to open with a lengthy recitation of claims submitted by the White House, including that drug cartels are intentionally trying to kill Americans and destabilize the Western Hemisphere," the report reads in part. "The groups are presented not as unscrupulous businesses trying to profit from drug trafficking, but as terrorists who sell narcotics as a means of financing violence."

"Based on such claims, the memo states that Mr. Trump has legitimate authority to determine that the United States and its allies are legally in a formal state of armed conflict with 'narco-terrorist' drug cartels, according to the people who have read the document," it adds. "The rest of the memo’s reasoning is based on that premise."

Read the entire report by clicking here.

‘No More Endless Wars,’ Maduro Says to American People, Calling for ‘Peace’ in Face of Trump Threats

“No more unjust wars. No more Libya. No more Afghanistan. Long live peace,” said the president of Venezuela.


Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro waves to supporters during a demonstration on Youth Day in Caracas, Venezuela on November 13, 2025.

(Photo by Pedro Mattey/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Jon Queally
Nov 14, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

Just as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced new branding for the US military campaign in Latin America, now known as “Operation Souther Spear,” the president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, on Thursday offered a message of peace directly to the people of the United States as he warned against further conflict.

In an exchange with a CNN correspondent during a rally for the nation’s youth in Caracas, Maduro urged President Donald Trump not to prolong the region’s military engagement. Asked if he had a message for the people of the United States, Maduro said in Spanish: “To unite for the peace of the continent. No more endless wars. No more unjust wars. No more Libya. No more Afghanistan.”

‘They’re Going to Be, Like, Dead’: Trump Says Land Strikes on Venezuela Are Next



UN Experts Decry Trump Warmongering Against Venezuela as ‘Extremely Dangerous Escalation’

Asked if he had anything to say directly to Trump, Maduro replied in English: “Yes peace, yes peace.”

Hegseth’s rebranding of operations in Latin America, which has included a series of extrajudicial murders against alleged drug runners both in the Caribbean and in the Pacific, also arrived on Thursday.

He said that attacks on boats, which have now claimed the lives of at least 80 people, are part of President Donald Trump’s targeting of “narco-terrorists.” However, the administration has produced no evidence proving the allegations against these individuals nor shared with the American people the legal basis for the extrajudicial killings that deprive victims of due process.

With a significant military buildup that includes the world’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R.Ford, fears have grown that Trump is considering a wider military attack on targets inside Venezuelan territory, despite having no congressional authorization for such use of force against a nation with which the US is not at war.

CBS News reports that Trump has been briefed on possible military “options” for an assault on Venezuela, while anti-war voices continue to warn against any such moves.

“Regime Change” in Venezuela Is a Euphemism for U.S.-Inflicted Carnage and Chaos

by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies / November 11th, 2025

For decades, Washington has sold the world a deadly lie: that “regime change” brings freedom, that U.S. bombs and blockades can somehow deliver democracy. But every country that has lived through this euphemism knows the truth—it instead brings death, dismemberment, and despair. Now that the same playbook is being dusted off for Venezuela, the parallels with Iraq and other U.S. interventions are an ominous warning of what could follow.

As a U.S. armada gathers off Venezuela, a U.S. special operations aviation unit aboard one of the warships has been flying helicopter patrols along the coast. This is the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR) — the “Nightstalkers” — the same unit that, in U.S.-occupied Iraq, worked with the Wolf Brigade, the most feared Interior Ministry death squad.

Western media portray the 160th SOAR as an elite helicopter force for covert missions. But in 2005, an officer in the regiment blogged about joint operations with the Wolf Brigade as they swept Baghdad detaining civilians. On November 10, 2005, he described a “battalion-sized joint operation” in southern Baghdad and boasted, “As we passed vehicle after vehicle full of blindfolded detainees, my face stretched into a long wolfish smile.”

Many people seized by the Wolf Brigade and other U.S.-trained Special Police Commandos were never seen again; others turned up in mass graves or morgues, often far from where they’d been taken. Bodies of people detained in Baghdad were found in mass graves near Badra, 70 miles away — but that was well within the combat range of the Nightstalkers’ MH-47 Chinook helicopters.

This was how the Bush–Cheney administration responded to Iraqi resistance to an illegal invasion: catastrophic assaults on Fallujah and Najaf, followed by the training and unleashing of death squads to terrorize civilians and ethnically cleanse Baghdad. The UN reported over 34,000 civilians killed in 2006 alone, and epidemiological studies estimate roughly a million Iraqis died overall.

Iraq has never fully recovered—and the U.S. never reaped the spoils it sought. The exiles Washington installed to rule Iraq stole at least $150 billion from its oil revenues, but the Iraqi parliament rejected U.S.-backed efforts to grant shares of the oil industry to Western companies. Today, Iraq’s largest trading partners are China, India, the UAE, and Turkey—not the United States.

The neocon dream of “regime change” has a long, bloody history, its methods ranging from coups to full-scale invasions. But “regime change” is a euphemism: the word “change” implies improvement. A more honest term would be “government removal”—or simply the destruction of a country or society.

A coup usually involves less immediate violence than a full-scale invasion, but they pose the same question: who or what replaces the ousted government? Time after time, U.S.-backed coups and invasions have installed rulers who enrich themselves through embezzlement, corruption, or drug trafficking—while making life worse for ordinary people.

These so-called “military solutions” rarely resolve problems, real or imaginary, as their proponents promise. They more often leave countries plagued by decades of division, instability, and suffering.

Kosovo was carved out of Serbia by an illegal US-led war in 1999, but it is still not recognized by many nations and remains one of the poorest countries in Europe. The main U.S. ally in the war, Hashim Thaçi, now sits in a cell at the Hague, charged with horrific crimes committed under cover of NATO’s bombing.

In Afghanistan, after 20 years of bloody war and occupation, the United States was eventually defeated by the Taliban—the very force it had invaded the country to remove.

In Haiti, the CIA and U.S. Marines toppled the popular democratic government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004, plunging the country into an ongoing crisis of corruption, gang rule, and despair that continues to this day.

In 2006, the U.S. militarily supported an Ethiopian invasion of Somalia to install a new government—an intervention that gave rise to Al Shabab, an Islamic resistance group that still controls large swaths of the country. U.S. AFRICOM has conducted 89 airstrikes in Al Shabab-held territory in 2025 alone.

In Honduras, the military removed its president, Mel Zelaya, in a coup in 2009, and the U.S. supported an election to replace him. The U.S.-backed president Juan Orlando Hernandez turned Honduras into a narco-state, fueling mass emigration—until Xiomara Castro, Zelaya’s wife, was elected to lead a new progressive government in 2021.

Libya, a country with vast oil wealth, has never recovered from the U.S. and allied invasion in 2011, which led to years of militia rule, the return of slave markets, the destabilizing of neighboring countries and a 45% reduction in oil exports.

Also in 2011, the U.S. and its allies escalated a protest movement in Syria into an armed rebellion and civil war. That spawned ISIS, which in turn led to the U.S.-led massacres that destroyed Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria in 2017. Turkish-backed, Al Qaeda-linked rebels finally seized the capital in 2024 and formed a transitional government, but Israel, Turkey, and the U.S. still militarily occupy other parts of the country.

The U.S.-backed overthrow of Ukraine’s elected government in 2014 brought in a pro-Western leadership that only half the population recognized as a legitimate government. That drove Crimea and Donbas to secede and put Ukraine on a collision course with Russia, setting the stage for the Russian invasion in 2022 and the wider, still-escalating conflict between NATO and Russia.

In 2015, when the Ansar Allah (Houthi) movement assumed power in Yemen after the resignation of a U.S.-backed transitional government, the U.S. joined a Saudi-led air war and blockade that caused a humanitarian crisis and killed hundreds of thousands of Yemenis—yet did not defeat the Houthis.

That brings us to Venezuela. Ever since Hugo Chavez was elected in 1998, the U.S. has been trying to overthrow the government. There was the failed 2002 coup; crippling unilateral economic sanctions; the farcical recognition of Juan Guaido as a wannabe president; and the 2020 “Bay of Piglets” mercenary fiasco.

But even if “regime change” in Venezuela were achievable, it would still be illegal under the UN Charter. U.S. presidents are not emperors, and leaders of other sovereign nations do not serve “at the emperor’s pleasure” as if Latin America were still a continent of colonial outposts.

In Venezuela today, Trump’s opening shots—attacks on small civilian boats in the Caribbean—have been condemned as flagrantly illegal, even by U.S. senators who routinely support America’s illegal wars.

Yet Trump still claims to be “ending the era of endless wars.” His most loyal supporters insist he means it—and that he was sabotaged in his first term by the “deep state.” This time, he has surrounded himself with loyalists and sacked National Security Council staffers he identified as neocons or warhawks, but he has still not ended America’s wars.

Alongside Trump’s piracy in the Caribbean, he is a full partner in Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the bombing of  Iran. He has maintained the global empire of U.S. military bases and deployments, and supercharged the U.S. war machine with a trillion dollar war chest—draining desperately needed resources out of a looted domestic economy.

Trump’s appointment of Marco Rubio as Secretary of State and National Security Advisor was an incendiary choice for Latin America, given Rubio’s open hostility to Cuba and Venezuela.

Brazilian President Lula made that clear when he met Trump in Malaysia at the ASEAN conference, saying: “There will be no advances in negotiations with the United States if Marco Rubio is part of the team. He opposes our allies in Venezuela, Cuba, and Argentina.” At Lula’s insistence, Rubio was excluded from talks over U.S. investments in Brazil’s rare earth metals industry, the world’s second largest after China’s.

Cuba-bashing may have served Rubio well in domestic politics, but as Secretary of State it renders him incapable of responsibly managing U.S. relations with the rest of the world. Trump will have to decide whether to pursue constructive engagement with Latin America or let Rubio corner him into new conflicts with our neighbors. Rubio’s threats of sanctions against countries that welcome Cuban doctors are already alienating governments across the globe.

Trump’s manufactured crisis with Venezuela exposes the deep contradictions at the heart of his foreign policy: his disastrous choice of advisers; his conflicting ambitions to be both a war leader and a peacemaker; his worship of the military; and his surrender to the same war machine that ensnares every American president.

If there is one lesson from the long history of U.S. interventions, it’s that “regime change” doesn’t bring democracy or stability. As the United States threatens Venezuela with the same arrogance that has wrecked so many other countries, this is the moment to end this cycle of imperial U.S. violence once and for all.

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Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies are the authors of War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, published by OR Books, November 2022.  Medea Benjamin is the cofounder of CODEPINK for PEACE, and the author of several books, including Inside Iran:  The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Nicolas J.S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher for CODEPINK and the author of Blood on our Hands:  The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq. Read other articles by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies.