The lethal strike on a boat in the Caribbean on Tuesday was a criminal attack on civilians, according to a high-ranking Pentagon official who spoke to the Intercept on the condition of anonymity.

The Trump administration paved the way for the attack, he said, by firing the top legal authorities of the Army and the Air Force earlier this year.

“The U.S. is now directly targeting civilians. Drug traffickers may be criminals but they aren’t combatants,” the Department of Defense official said. “When Trump fired the military’s top lawyers the rest saw the writing on the wall, and instead of being a critical firebreak they are now a rubber stamp complicit in this crime.”

President Donald Trump claimed that the attack was aimed “against positively identified Tren de Aragua Narcoterrorists,

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