Lawmakers with oversight of the Pentagon Sunday voiced concerns about reports that the U.S. military killed two survivors of the Trump administration’s first lethal strike on suspected drug-trafficking boats, saying such a follow-up attack would be illegal if not a war crime.
The Special Operations commander overseeing the Sept. 2 attack ordered the second strike to comply with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s spoken directive “to kill everybody,” The Washington Post reported on Friday, citing two people with direct knowledge of the operation.
Who said what
Hegseth did not deny giving the “kill everybody” order. But in a social media post Friday, he called the Post’s report “fabricated, inflammatory and derogatory,” said the boat attacks were “designed to be ‘lethal, kinetic strikes,’” and insisted America’s “current operations in the Caribbean are lawful under both U.S. and international law.”
Law-of-war experts say Trump’s broader drug boat campaign is “unlawful and may expose those most directly involved to prosecution because the alleged traffickers pose no imminent threat of attack against the United States and are not in an ‘armed conflict’ with the U.S.,” the Post said. But even if traffickers were at war with the U.S., killing survivors of a boat strike amounts to “war crimes, murder or both,” a group of former military lawyers and senior leaders said Saturday. “There are no other options.”
The top Republicans and Democrats on the House and Senate armed services committees said they would ramp up oversight of the boat strikes in light of the new allegations. “Obviously, if that occurred, that would be very serious and I agree that that would be an illegal act,” House Armed Services Committee chair Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said it “rises to the level of a war crime if it’s true.” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) told NBC’s “Meet the Press” he did not think Hegseth “would be foolish enough” to commit such a “clear violation of the law of war.”
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President Donald Trump Sunday night told reporters that his administration “will look into” the matter, but “Pete said he did not order the death of those two men,” and “I believe him, 100%.” Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) said on “Meet the Press” that the Senate Armed Services Committee would “put these people under oath and we’re going to find out what happened.”
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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.
