Some people see the glass as half full while others see it as half empty. Some however see the drug trafficking boat as 79% full of drugs while others prefer to view it as 21% drug degree.
Sen. Rand Paul falls into the latter category and tried to make a compelling argument against taking out drug cartel boats by publishing a Coast Guard letter and arguing that “Coast Guard records show that prior to the reign of “blow-them-to-smithereens” 21 percent of boats stopped off the coast of Venezuela possessed NO drugs!”
Whew. Only 79% of the boats had drugs.
The senator doesn’t show his math but he appears to be using the statement by the Coast Guard that “three of the 14 vessels interdicted near Venezuela had no illicit contraband on board when interdicted, but one of the three violated other U.S. federal criminal statutes.”
That’s a pretty small sample size.
And the sum total of it is that out of 14 vessels, only 3 didn’t have drugs and only 2 weren’t committing crimes.
The whole thing is meaningless anyway because the Coast Guard isn’t carrying out air strikes on boats. The military strikes are coming based on intelligence, not routine intercepts, yet even the routine intercepts are damning as hell.
