Operation Southern Spear

It doesn't turn every suspected member into some kind of battlefield target.

Department of War's own inspector general drew the distinction in its report on Operation Southern Spear.

An FDO designation supports a lot of the immigration restrictions and criminal material support liability.

It gives huge treasury authorities support.

They can block property, transactions, go after liquid assets, all that stuff.

So in that report, Operation Southern Spear, it states that the U.S. Department of State and the Treasury designations have no bearing on Department of War operations unless there's a completely separate military designation and authority operation.

you know applies and comes with it so um this is not an argument for or against a particular strike it's just a requirement to identify the authority actually being used i'm out of gatorade i needed to purchase a larger bottle this is a tiny one and now i'm just not quenched as much as i should be i'm quenchless Let's go to Peru.

Fujimori announced that the country would join the Shield of Americas.

One of the things that...

So for, for Operation Southern Spear, which ended in early August, and they transitioned to Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere, which is gonna be a much larger version of what we've witnessed that will include land, sea, and air strikes, a definite military expansion into, uh, Latin America and Central America.

That's what the, the Operation Southern Spear was really an entrée to, and I think that's really important.

Mm-hmm.

That's where this narrative and that's where the scrutiny needs to go.

That's-

September 2nd, 2025

... was Operation Southern Spear.

And it's just the association with kidnapping presidents, the association with mass murder.

I think Operation Southern Spear needs to be mentioned.

It's just insane to me that this is going on.

We're just murdering people.

It's perfectly fine.

Yeah.

Yeah, but it's just extraordinary that the International Criminal Court, which is something that was, to be clear, put together by the United States in the later 20th century, even though we never signed on to it, is currently prosecuting the Philippines president for doing exactly what Operation Southern Spear is, which is indiscriminate murder of suspected drug criminals.

There's a couple, I think there's four reasons, potentially, why the U.S. military and Donald Trump administration could plausibly be doing this.

And Trump blowing up fishing boats has changed exactly nothing in the drug markets.

Since 2025, the US has killed nearly 200 people as part of Operation Southern Spear, a campaign to bomb fishing boats in the Caribbean.

Human rights organizations have called it illegal and a murder spree.

President Donald Trump claimed that these bombings contributed to a 97% reduction in drugs trafficked to the U.S. by sea.

He has made good on that promise.

With the U.S. invasion of Venezuela, the oil blockade of Cuba, the Shield of the Americas initiative, and the boat strikes, the administration labeled those strikes Operation Southern Spear.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth joined Fox News Live to gush about the boat strike.

So we've got assets in the air, assets in the water, assets on ships, because this is a deadly serious mission for us.

...

but blown up at sea, on this first anniversary of the beginning of what the US has called Operation Southern Spear.

That's right.

Thanks for having me, Amy and Angele.

Um, they're posting...

The only reason we even know that these killings are happening is because they post the videos.

So during Operation Southern Spear, which ended in August, um, we know that there's been more than 60 boat strikes, and they killed 221 people at least.

Those are the ones they've told us about.

And we've also seen some boat strikes that aren't explicitly part of this campaign, right? So what should we make of recent reporting that back in January and March, there were several unattributed strikes near the Galapagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador against three different fishing, three different boats? For these, no one has claimed responsibility, which is in stark contrast, I think, to the publicly claimed campaign that Southcom regularly announces that we have been talking about that I described in the lay down at the top.

So what do we know or what more would you want to know about those actions? Who is responsible for them, whether they're related to Operation Southern Spear? And then after discussing that, if you can tell us what Similarly, as Jeff just done, what do you think the sort of salient legal questions are that arise?

Well, I mean, the bottom line is something very squirrely is going on with these three maritime incidents off the Galapagos Island.

There was an incident in January involving an attack upon a ship.

I think, of course, there is so much attention on the genocide in Gaza, as there should be, on the U.S. aggression on Iran.

But I think that actually connecting the dots and realizing that both Operation Southern Spear and the same profiteers of the extrajudicial bombing campaign, which will now be completing a year next week, are the same American defense contractors who are operating in Gaza.

And they have very similar political and class interests.

So, yeah, certainly it's been a little bit terrifying.

Has there been any evidence provided by the Department of Defense, Pete Hegseth, anybody involved into that effect?

No.

So, yes, next week marks a full year of Operation Southern Spear.

Those are the that's a death toll.