A bipartisan group of Congressional lawmakers are reportedly not only supporting congressional reviews of the report that the US military killed two survivors of the Trump Administration’s first Caribbean boat bombing. On Sunday, three said that the Administration would have committed a illegal act, probably war crimes, if The Washington Post report that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth directed the unit to kill everyone is accurate.
“Obviously if that occurred [as the Post reported], that would be very serious, and I agree that that would be an illegal act,” Representative Mike Turner, Republican of Ohio and a former chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said on “Face the Nation” on CBS.
Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, said on CBS that if the report was accurate, the attack “rises to the level of a war crime.” And on CNN, when asked if he believed a second strike to kill survivors constituted a war crime, Senator Mark Kelly, Democrat of Arizona, answered, “It seems to” …
“There are very serious concerns in Congress about the attacks on the so-called drug boats down in the Caribbean and the Pacific, and the legal justification that’s been provided,” [Rep. Turner] said. “But this is completely outside of anything that’s been discussed with Congress, and there is an ongoing investigation.”
“[E]ven if you buy the untenable claim that they are combatants, it is a war crime to intentionally kill combatants who have been rendered unable to fight,” Andrew C. McCarthy, senior fellow at National Review Institute, wrote Saturday.
[I]f an arguable combatant has been rendered hors de combat [unable to fight], targeting him with lethal force cannot be rationalized, as [Admiral Frank M. “Mitch” Bradley] is said to have done, by theorizing that it was possible, at some future point, that the combatant could get help and be able to contribute once again to enemy operations.
The 1949 Geneva Conventions were ratified by the United States. Consequently, Common Article 3 (CA3) of the convention binds our government. CA3 prohibits “violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds,” of “persons taking no active part in hostilities” (emphasis added). According to CA3, persons taking no active part in hostilities include “those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause” …
I don’t mean to be melodramatic (especially because, as I’ve discussed with Rich on the podcast, President Trump is undoubtedly going to pardon any administration officials in potential legal jeopardy), but the penalty for a war crimes violation is life imprisonment, or death, if the criminal act results in death…
[U]nder prior policy, the boat would have been interdicted, the drugs seized, and the operators transferred to federal court for prosecution and hefty sentences. Under the Trump administration’s policy, if the operators survive our missiles, they get to go back home and rejoin the drug trade. But put that aside. The point is that, if the administration’s intent to apply lethal force were a defense to killing shipwrecked suspected drug traffickers, the policy wouldn’t have been changed [after September 2]. It was changed because Hegseth knows he can’t justify killing boat operators who survive attacks; and he sends them home rather than detaining them as enemy combatants because, similarly, there is no actual armed conflict, so there is no basis to detain them as enemy combatants.
Although the Post reported on Friday that it took a second bombing to kill everyone, The Intercept had reported in September that it required multiple strikes.
It’s not just independent media keeping this story alive over the weekend. Traditional news organizations are as well — print and television — even though there are no new facts to discuss: only implications assuming the Post story is accurate. And their lawyers would have made sure of that.
This is not going away, despite Trump’s commutation that led to the Wednesday release of David Gentile, 59, who ran a $1.6 billion scheme that defrauded thousands of victims. He had served less than two weeks of a seven-year sentence.
That’s on top of his indefensible promise to pardon ex-President of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández. In March 2024, Hernández was found guilty of conspiring to smuggle hundreds of tons of cocaine into the US. He was sentenced to 45 years in prison. This promised pardon illustrates clearly that the Caribbean bombs have nothing to do with drugs being smuggled into the US but are, instead, a diversion and, perhaps, a prequel to an attack on Venezuela.
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Feature image: Wikimedia Commons
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