“The Pentagon used a secret aircraft painted to look like a civilian plane in its first attack on a boat that the Trump administration said was smuggling drugs, killing 11 people last September… The aircraft also carried its munitions inside the fuselage, rather than visibly under its wings,” the New York Times reports.
“The nonmilitary appearance is significant, according to legal specialists, because the administration has argued its lethal boat attacks are lawful — not murders — because President Trump ‘determined’ the United States is in an armed conflict with drug cartels.”
“But the laws of armed conflict forbid combatants from feigning civilian status to fool adversaries into dropping their guard, then attacking and killing them. That is a war crime called ‘perfidy.’”
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