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The White House on Monday shifted the blame for killing the survivors of a US military strike on an alleged drug smuggling boat from Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and onto the commanding admiral.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Killing survivors of a destroyed vessel is literally an example of a war crime in the US Department of Defence Law of War Manual. \u201cFor example, orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal,\u201d the manual reads<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Press secretary Karoline Leavitt, nevertheless, repeatedly stated that it was legal \u2013 even as she further claimed, as President Donald Trump did on Sunday, that Hegseth was unaware that it had happened.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cOn September 2, Secretary Hegseth authorised Admiral Bradley to conduct these kinetic strikes. Admiral Bradley worked well within his authority and the law, directing the engagement to ensure the boat was destroyed and the threat to the United States of America was eliminated,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n At the time of the attack off the Trinidad coast, Frank Bradley was head of the Joint Special Operations Command.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n According to a Washington Post report<\/a> about the incident, it was he who relayed the order from Hegseth to \u201ckill everybody\u201d by sending Navy SEALs back to the disabled boat to have them kill the two people clinging to the wreckage.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In October, Bradley was promoted to run the US Special Operations Command.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Leavitt referred further questions to the \u201cDepartment of War,\u201d Trump\u2019s nickname for the Pentagon.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n An official there, however, said they could offer no further information beyond Hegseth\u2019s statements in recent days on social media in which he called the Post\u2019s story \u201cfake news\u201d and, more recently, posted a cartoon to justify the killing of alleged smugglers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Officials at US Special Operations Command did not respond to HuffPost queries.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Later on Monday evening, Hegseth posted <\/a>a statement on social media confirming that Bradley, and not he, had ordered the second strike.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI stand by him and the combat decisions he has made \u2014 on the September 2 mission and all others since,\u201d Hegseth wrote.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Three months ago, Trump posted portions of a video of the September 2 assault on his social media platform, bragging that the attack had killed 11 \u201cnarcoterrorists.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n That 11 people were aboard the vessel suggests that it was not, in fact, smuggling drugs, because every unnecessary passenger would decrease the boat\u2019s payload capacity for drugs by, on average, 180 pounds. Most of the other strikes against alleged drug boats have had three or four people aboard.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Trump and his administration\u2019s explanations about the series of strikes against small boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific have been misleading or potentially downright false<\/a> since they started.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Trump has repeatedly claimed that the purpose of the strikes has been to stop the flow of fentanyl into the United States and has at times said that fentanyl had been aboard the destroyed vessels. In fact, the administration has offered no evidence<\/a> that any fentanyl has been on any of the boats, which largely match the profile of vessels used by low-level cocaine smugglers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Trump has further claimed that the boats and their crews had been en route to the United States at the time of the attacks. That is also false. The boats have all been too small to get to the US without repeated refuelling stops and are ill-suited for long ocean passages.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Over the Thanksgiving holiday, Trump added a layer of hypocrisy to his policy of killing smugglers by pardoning a former president of Honduras who had been convicted in a US federal court for his part in directing the smuggling of some 500 tons of cocaine into the United States.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Leavitt on Monday defended that pardon by repeating Trump\u2019s unfounded claim that Juan Orlando Hern\u00e1ndez had been unfairly prosecuted by Trump\u2019s predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cHis court-appointed lawyer was only given three weeks to prepare for trial. He shared that his conviction was lawfare by the leftist party who, quote, struck a deal with the Biden-Harris administration,\u201d she said. \u201cSo the president heard the concerns from many people, as he does, and he\u2019s, of course, within his constitutional authority to sign clemency for whomever he deems worthy of that.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n