Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said Tuesday, Dec. 2, that he “did not personally see survivors” before a deadly second strike on what he claimed, with no proof whatsoever, was a boat carrying drugs in the Caribbean on Sept. 2. “I had to go to another meeting and had no time to continue watching,” he told the press.
It was a complete turnaround from a day earlier when both he and his boss, President Donald Trump, vigorously defended the strike. Trump said he has the power to kill anyone who threatens the security of the United States. “They will all end up dead at the bottom of the sea, D-E-A-D, dead,” he said.
Hegseth had said policy was to ignore the Pentagon manual that forbids strikes against unarmed people even in times of warfare. “We have no time for stupid things like that,” he said.
The new claims that they did not personally see or order the attacks seem to leave U.S. Navy Admiral Frank Bradley, who directly ordered the deadly attacks, holding the bag. He has been told by Trump to testify about what happened before Congress. In any case, regardless of what he was told to do, Bradley, like any other member of the military, was duty bound not to follow what he knows was an illegal order.
Hegseth’s reaction to the storm of controversy around his actions seemingly twists and turns in different directions each day. On Tuesday, he sought to distance himself from the murders; on Monday, he and Trump boasted of their authority to kill anyone; while last week, the military chief said the killings didn’t happen at all.
On Nov. 28, Hegseth called the initial Washington Post report that the survivors had been killed in a second strike on his orders “fake news.” He accused the Post of “fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory reporting.”
No evidence
According to drug trafficking experts, the vessel involved was a small one, far too small to make it to the United States with a cargo like fentanyl, which Trump claims it was carrying. In addition, the route of fentanyl into the U.S. runs mostly via paths through Mexico and other countries, not through Caribbean islands, and Venezuela is not known to produce fentanyl.
The first bombing attack on the boat ended with two people still alive, clinging for life to the hull of the boat. Then came the order for a second strike which left them dead. Hegseth bragged only a day before his Dec. 2 disclaimer that he had told the military it was acceptable to “kill them all,” leaving no one alive after the strike.
A growing number of lawmakers are saying that a possible reason for killing everyone on the boats, which have resulted in at least 82 deaths so far, is that the administration wants no one left alive who can challenge their story that the vessels are carrying illegal drugs.
The second strike that killed the survivors took place as the burning vessel was sinking. Even if the initial attack had been considered a legitimate one under the law, correct protocol would be to rescue, not kill, the survivors and seize the drugs allegedly on board.
Killing everyone and sinking the boats makes it impossible to ascertain the truth about what the administration is really doing: stirring up a campaign of terror and deflecting from its utter economic failures on the domestic front as it plans for further illegal activity, including an attack on oil-rich Venezuela.
Dodging responsibility
The turnabout by Trump and Hegseth reflects their understanding that they are in violation of both U.S and international law. Even if what is going on is an actual “war,” as they claim, then the extrajudicial killings are war crimes. If there is no actual war, then they are simply murder.
A so-called “war on drugs,” “war on crime,” or “war on poverty” are not actual wars authorizing a president to do as he pleases. By law, wars are still something that must be declared by Congress.
During a cabinet meeting at the White House Tuesday, Hegseth attributed the strike to the “fog of war” that sets in during armed conflict. Perhaps his and Trump’s lack of understanding of U.S. and international law can be attributed to fog affecting their thought processes but not to “fog of war” resulting from a non-existent war.
It was at that same cabinet meeting that the White House said it was Adm. Bradley who authorized the second strike. There are reports that Bradley is lawyering up in expectation that he will be thrown under the bus by Trump. In any case, his biggest problem may be the fact that he carried out an illegal order.
Hegseth told the press that he really did not see anything during the first strike. “I did not personally see survivors,” Hegseth said of the first strike. “That thing [the boat] was on fire and it exploded…you can’t see anything.”
Reflecting an apparent Trump decision to now blame everything on Bradley, Hegseth said he learned about the admiral’s “correct decision” to sink the boat “a couple of hours later.”
Trump also defended Bradley but distanced himself from the decision to strike the vessel a second time, saying that “we didn’t know about” the follow-on strike. “And I can say this: I want those boats taken out,” Trump added.
Calls for investigation
The Senate Armed Services Committee said it will conduct “vigorous oversight” to find out the details of what happened and who gave what orders. Had they been conducting any “oversight” at all before now, however, the strikes may not have happened.
It is notable that it is not just Democratic lawmakers coming out against the killings. Some Republicans are joining them, especially those fearful of their re-election prospects next year.
Another problem, however, is that the Pentagon itself has not investigated something it is clearly required to examine—charges of murder and potential war crimes.
Adm. Bradley—who was commander of the U.S. military’s Joint Special Operations Command at the time of the strike—is expected to appear on Capitol Hill this week. He is now overall commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, having been promoted a month after the Sept. 2 strike.
It appears that the illegal boat strikes are only the beginning of a much larger operation by the U.S. military in the Caribbean and Latin America aimed at destabilizing and ultimately overthrowing the government of Venezuela. Every day since the attack, the U.S. military presence in the region has grown. On Tuesday, Trump doubled down and repeated his threat that the U.S will soon “start doing these strikes on land.”
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