It shouldn’t be a surprise that the day after The Washington Post broke the story of a second strike designed to kill survivors of a US attack on a Caribbean boat, President Donald Trump asserted that the airspace around Venezuela should be “closed in its entirety.”
After the smoke cleared from the initial September 2 Caribbean attack, according to the Post, drone cameras revealed two survivors (of 11) clinging to wreakage.
[Then-Joint Special Operations Command chief U.S. Navy Admiral Frank “Mitch” Bradley who was] 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, two people familiar with the matter said. The two men were blown apart in the water.
Hegseth’s order, which has not been previously reported, adds another dimension to the campaign against suspected drug traffickers. Some current and former U.S. officials and law-of-war experts have said that the Pentagon’s lethal campaign — which has killed more than 80 people to date — is unlawful and may expose those most directly involved to future prosecution.
The alleged traffickers pose no imminent threat of attack against the United States and are not, as the Trump administration has tried to argue, in an “armed conflict” with the U.S., these officials and experts say. Because there is no legitimate war between the two sides, killing any of the men in the boats “amounts to murder,” said Todd Huntley, a former military lawyer who advised Special Operations forces for seven years at the height of the U.S. counterterrorism campaign.
U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), chair of the Armed Services Committee, is alarmed, suggesting a further fraction between Trump and Congressional Republicans.
“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,” Wicker said in a statement with U.S. Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee. “The Committee has directed inquiries to the Department, and we will be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances.”
From Harvard Law School professor Jack Goldsmith:
[T]here can be no conceivable legal justification for what the Washington Post reported earlier today: That U.S. Special Operations Forces killed the survivors of a first strike on a drug boat off the coast of Trinidad who, in the Post’s words, “were clinging to the smoldering wreck.”
He points out that Section 5.4.7 of the DOD Law of War Manual clearly states, “It is forbidden to declare that no quarter will be given.”
In short, if the Post’s facts are correct, it appears that Special Operations Forces committed murder when the “two men were blown apart in the water,” as the Post put it…
Hegseth has emphasized that he wants to restore the “warrior ethos” in the U.S. military. In the hours after the story, he signaled generic support for the boat strike campaign and chest-thumped that “We have only just begun to kill narco-terrorists.”
Hegseth issued a non-denial denial.
Remember, six weeks ago, the U.S. Navy commander Admiral Alvin Holsey, who supervised military strikes in the Caribbean Sea, abruptly resigned, with no details other than a post from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Twitter/X. Media treated the story as a nothing burger.
Also, as Joyce Vance and Jay Kuo pointed out in a video chat, the UK stopped sharing intelligence about Caribbean drug traffic three weeks after that resignation.
The timing of Trump’s vague statement about the Venezuelan airspace on TruthSocial seems to be an attempted distraction from the alarming report from the Post but it could be simply an escalation of his threatened Venezuelan military campaign. Regardless, it is also bears investigating by Congress.
Known for gnawing at complex questions like a terrier with a bone. Digital evangelist, writer, teacher. Transplanted Southerner; teach newbies to ride motorcycles. @kegill (Twitter and Mastodon.social); wiredpen.com