WaPo: Hegseth Ordered Civilians To Be Murdered, A War Crime
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While Donald Trump and Pete “WhiskeyLeaks” Hegseth threaten Democrats for urging members of the military to follow the law, it sure looks like Secretary Signalgate has been caught breaking it. This time it’s not just shocking sloppiness and negligence from Hegseth but cold-blooded, criminal murder.
A new Washington Post exposé reports that on September 2, after the first Trump/Hegseth military strike on a fishing boat in the Caribbean, two survivors were seen “clinging to a smoldering wreck.”
The Special Operations commander overseeing the Sept. 2 attack — the opening salvo in the Trump administration’s war on suspected drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere — ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions [to kill everybody], two people familiar with the matter said. The two men were blown apart in the water.
The article quoted former military lawyer and former adviser to Special Operations forces Todd Huntley, now director of the national security law program at Georgetown Law. He said that killing any of the civilians “amounts to murder” and that killing boat occupants no longer able to fight “would be a war crime.”
The Trump administration could not look guiltier. Commander Bone Spurs Trump released a redacted video of the attack that left out footage of the killing of the survivors, The Post noted. Trump-loving Jeff Bezos’ WaPo also made a point of saying that protocols were subsequently changed “to emphasize rescuing suspected smugglers if they survived strikes.”
But that does not minimize how damning The Post’s report is. Hegseth told Fox News “We knew exactly who was in that boat… And that was Tren de Aragua.” But in classified briefings to members of Congress, according to the article, Pentagon officials “have not provided any specific names of traffickers or syndicate leaders they have targeted, lawmakers have said, nor have they publicly released further information beyond surveillance videos of the strikes themselves.” Nor has the Pentagon fulfilled a bipartisan request from Congress for unedited footage.
Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton, a Marine Corps veteran who received classified briefings on the matter, told The Post that “killing survivors is blatantly illegal.”
“Mark my words: It may take some time, but Americans will be prosecuted for this, either as a war crime or outright murder,” Moulton said.
As they should be. Until then, and at the very least, Hegseth should be fired. Immediately.