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Friday, November 28, 2025

So the humble fishermen were drug dealers after all ...

 


By Monica Showalter

As U.S. military operations continue on the Pacific and Caribbean coasts, taking out drug-smuggling boats, the left has been dining out on the absurd claim that the U.S. Navy's targets are nothing more than fishing boats, filled with humble fishermen.

Like these guys:

I'm not sure why they did this, but the Wall Street Journal decided to interview a few, and well, yes, they are drug dealers.

According to its original report, by longtime Wall Street Journal correspondent Juan Forero:

CALI, Colombia—They see themselves as the cowboys of the drug trade, highly experienced crews that ferry narcotics on small boats across the open seas, running on a mix of bravado, skill and dreams of a massive payday.

Now, designated as terrorists by the Trump administration, they face not only the perils of a capricious sea but the new danger of getting blown out of the water by the U.S. military. The trade’s unofficial motto—“deliver or die”—has never rung so true.

 

Three men who have manned these drug boats, known as “go fasts,” spoke to The Wall Street Journal, describing a once little-known but essential part of the narcotics trade that is now in President Trump’s sights.

They run drug cargoes worth as much as $70 million on the sleek 40-foot-long boats, often built from fiberglass and powered by oversize outboards. These boats are the workhorses for the traffickers along 2,000 miles of Colombian coastline—and hundreds more miles in Ecuador and Venezuela.

In reality, they make big money for their 'hauls' -- much more than they can make with fishing at sea, with payouts of $100,000 a haul, or as much as $10,000 a day for crew members, with pilots probably paid more. The pecking order was identified as pilots at the top; mechanics who keep the boats fueled second; a 'guarantor' who is trusted by both the buying and selling side third (these are drug dealers, after all); and sometimes a navigator bringing up the rear.

Even with the new threats, the incentives remain huge. The pilot said a clean run of two or three tons can mean $100,000 for a day’s work. With that kind of money at stake, he said it wouldn’t be hard to find willing men to keep running the boats, even with the threat of military strikes. 

“The ocean is very big, very big,” said the pilot. “These drug organizations live from trafficking. They will continue to do this. This doesn’t end. This will continue even if the United States continues its bombings.”

The hauls are multi-ton amounts, delivered to confederates in homemade submarines, or boats they meet at sea that head onward to Honduras, Mexico and other intermediate points until the Mexican cartels take it from there. (So Sen. Rand Paul's point about these drug boats not being able to reach the U.S. is nonsense -- drug boats do what they do in relays.)

In this regard, they roughly parallel Colombia's coca farmers who grow what they grow because Colombia's bad or absent roads hamper them from bringing legitimate food crops to market, while drug lords who buy coca for cocaine are experienced at smuggling it through dense jungle undergrowth. So, the farmers make more money farming coca than farming food crops and that's why they grow coca.

Forero writes that they are very methodical in their planning and execution:

Smuggling runs are mapped out weeks ahead, the Colombian navy says, with the cocaine often making its way north in stages. The boat crews try to slip past or outrun whatever Colombia and the U.S. put in front of them: coastal patrol boats to frigates and helicopters farther out. Some crews run the entire route themselves—from Colombia to Honduras or even Mexico—24 hours or more depending on the size of the cargo, the power of the engines and weather conditions. With speed of the essence, they don’t stop for anything; even bathroom breaks are handled as the boat rockets forward.

Which doesn't exactly sound like innocent fishermen randomly being out to see, only to fall prey to the U.S. Navy.

The Navy has technical intelligence that can find and identify these drug-transporting boats simply because the planning provides numerous ways of harvesting intelligence in a way that some rando fisherman not sure where he might be going on a given day wouldn't be able to provide.

The reason why this talking-point rubbish matters is, well, start with this narrative-building here:

This slew of false claims and calls to file charges over the 'fishermen' is pretty much why these toads here made their 'Seditious Six' video calling on U.S. servicemen to stop obeying their commander-in-chief's orders. Notice the use of the term 'don't give up the ship':

Now it's getting out that President Trump has been telling the truth all along -- that the drug boats are out there, the U.S. Navy is out there looking to take out drug boats, and none of this has anything to do with the left's romantic notions of 'fishermen.'

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/11/so_the_humble_fishermen_were_drug_dealers_after_all.html

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