Bipartisan Concern on Capitol Hill Grows Over Alleged Killing of ‘Drug Boat’ Bombing Survivors

The Republican heads of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees say they are committed to investigating the alleged “double-tap” strike on survivors of a bombing in the Caribbean that the Trump administration says were “narco-terrorists.” The order, first reported by the Washington Post and later confirmed by CNN, would likely represent a direction to give “no quarter,” a war crime, according to a group of ex-military lawyers. On Friday, it was reported that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directed the military to kill any survivors of the first strike on an alleged drug-smuggling boat in the Caribbean earlier this year. Since then, several bombings have taken place both in the Caribbean and in the Pacific, according to the Defense Department. That first alleged drug boat — which some experts have said was likely a human smuggling vehicle rather than one being used to ferry drugs — had 11 passengers on board. After the first strike hit, two of the passengers survived. The military then allegedly conducted a second strike to kill those two survivors.Mr. Trump — returning from Florida aboard Air Force One on Sunday — said the administration “will look into” the matter but added, “I wouldn’t have wanted that — not a second strike.” The president also defended Hegseth. “Pete said he did not order the death of those two men,” Trump said. “And I believe him.”Now, Republicans on Capitol Hill say the incident must be investigated. The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Congressman Mike Rogers, the House’s point-person for Defense Department investigations, said in a statement Saturday that there would be “rigorous oversight” of the alleged second strike. The statement was a joint message with the committee’s top Democrat, Congressman Adam Smith. “We take seriously the reports of follow on strikes on boats alleged to be ferrying narcotics in the SOUTHCOM region and are taking bipartisan action to gather a full accounting of the operation in question,” Messrs. Rogers and Smith said Saturday. The leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who are also responsible for oversight of the Pentagon, released a similar statement the day before.“The Committee is aware of recent news reports — and the Department of Defense’s initial response — regarding alleged follow-on strikes on suspected narcotics vessels in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility,” the Republican chairman, Senator Roger Wicker, and the Democratic ranking member, Senator Jack Reed, said Friday. “The Committee has directed inquiries to the Department, and we will be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances,” the senators wrote. A group of ex-military lawyers, known as judge advocates general, or JAGS, are also warning that — if true — Mr. Hegseth’s order likely constitutes a war crime. The Former JAGs Working Group, a collection of former military legal advisors with the Government Accountability Project, argued in a memo released Saturday that the order is akin to a direction to give “no quarter,” which is “clearly illegal under international law.”“If the U.S. military operation is not an armed conflict of any kind, these orders to kill helpless civilians clinging to the wreckage of a vessel our military destroyed would subject everyone from SECDEF down to the individual who pulled the trigger to prosecution under U.S. law for murder,” the former JAGs write. Senator Mark Kelly — a retired Navy captain now under investigation by Mr. Hegseth for a video he and fellow Democrats put out urging service members to ignore illegal orders — offered a similar analysis on Sunday. “I think there needs to be an inspector general investigation,” Mr. Kelly said in an interview with CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “If what has been reported is accurate, I’ve got serious concerns about anybody in that, you know, chain of command stepping over a line that they should never step over.”“We are not Russia. We are not Iraq. We hold ourselves to a very high standard of professionalism,” the Arizona Democrat said. Mr. Hegseth has not explicitly denied that he gave such a direction. In a statement, the defense secretary argues that the military has the right to kill members of drug smuggling groups that have been designated as foreign terrorist organizations. “As we’ve said from the beginning, and in every statement, these highly effective strikes are specifically intended to be ‘lethal, kinetic strikes,’” Mr. Hegseth said in an X post on Friday. “The declared intent is to stop lethal drugs, destroy narco-boats, and kill the narco-terrorists who are poisoning the American people.”

Bipartisan Concern on Capitol Hill Grows Over Alleged Killing of ‘Drug Boat’ Bombing Survivors

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