Top Military Commander Shows Lawmakers Boat Strike Video – And It’s Worse Than Anyone Expected
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Lawmakers were left stunned and outraged Thursday after viewing video footage of the September 2 “double-tap” strike that killed two survivors of a U.S. airstrike in the Caribbean.
Admiral Frank “Mitch” Bradley met privately with members of the House and Senate to defend the Trump administration’s decision to fire a second missile at two individuals clinging to the wreckage of their destroyed boat. Also present was Gen. Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Before the briefing, military attorneys suggested the second strike might be legally justified if Bradley could show the survivors posed a credible threat to U.S. forces. But lawmakers said the footage made it unmistakably clear that no such threat existed.
“What I saw in that room was one of the most troubling things I’ve seen in my time in public service,” Representative Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told CNN. “You have two individuals [in] clear distress, without any means of locomotion, with a destroyed vessel, [who] were killed by the United States.”
Himes added that, based on his understanding of the Pentagon’s explanation, the survivors were “not in the position to continue their mission in any way.” He noted that Bradley had “confirmed that there had not been a kill them all order, and that there was not an order to grant no quarter,” according to CBS News.
Senator Jack Reed was similarly upset by the classified briefing, telling reporters in a statement that he was “deeply disturbed” by what he saw.
“This briefing confirmed my worst fears about the nature of the Trump Administration’s military activities, and demonstrates exactly why the Senate Armed Services Committee has repeatedly requested—and been denied—fundamental information, documents, and facts about this operation. This must and will be the only beginning of our investigation into this incident,” Reed wrote, adding that the Defense Department must release the “complete, unedited footage” of the airstrike.
Even Republican Senator Rand Paul was incensed by the footage and demanded that it be released. “I think if the public sees images of people clinging to boat debris and being blown up, I think that there is a chance that finally, the public will get interested enough in this to stop this,” he told The Independent reporter Eric Michael Garcia.
He also demanded that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth testify before Congress, and even called out some of his colleagues’ reticence to do anything about the strikes. “I think that Congress, if they had any kind of gumption at all would not be allowed administration to summarily execute people that are suspected of a crime,” he said.
But not everyone that attended the briefing seemed to walk away with the same understanding. Despite the clarified details, Republican Senator Tom Cotton argued that “the first strike, the second strike, and the third and the fourth strike on September 2nd were entirely lawful and needful,” and that the sequential attacks were “exactly what we’d expect our military commanders to do.”
Since early September, the United States has destroyed at least 20 small boats traversing the Caribbean Sea that Trump administration officials have deemed—without an investigation or interdiction—were smuggling drugs. At least 83 people have been killed in the attacks.
The attacks have been condemned by U.S. lawmakers on both sides of the aisle and foreign human advocates alike, including the U.N. human rights chief, who said in October that the strikes “violate international human rights law.” The needless deaths have also pushed congressional Republicans to consider whether Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth should be stripped of his position altogether.
Donald Trump, however, is still backing Hegseth. The president has so far brushed off the widespread anger at his Defense Department pick, telling inquiring reporters Wednesday that “this is war.”
