White House Backs Hegseth, Confirms Second Boat Strike

Republican Representative from Florida Carlos Gimenez says that he doesn't think that any strike on drug boats can be illegal because the operators are 'foreign terrorists that are killing American citizens.' Gimenez said he is not second guessing the order from a 'decorated admiral' to launch a second strike on a drug boat to kill two men who survived the initial strike.

Key US lawmakers will question Admiral Frank Bradley this week on his role in ordering a second strike against a suspected drug-trafficking boat in the Caribbean Sea, reportedly to kill survivors seen clinging to the wreckage of their boat.

Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he and the panel’s Republican chairman, Roger Wicker, will meet with Bradley on Thursday as part of their inquiry into the September strikes. Bradley will also meet with House Armed Services Committee leaders, said Representative Adam Smith, that panel’s senior Democrat.

The push to question the commander of the operation signals unease spreading through Congress over allegations the military may have committed a war crime in the second strike.

The Washington Post reported Friday that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth demanded the operation kill everyone on board, leading Bradley to fire the second strike. That report intensified accusations that the US was illegally using the military to target alleged drug smugglers off the coast of South America.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he wasn’t watching when a top US admiral ordered a second strike on an alleged drug-running boat on Sept. 2, further distancing himself from an attack that has drawn bipartisan scrutiny and prompted accusations of possible war crimes.

Speaking at a Cabinet meeting alongside President Donald Trump, Hegseth said he watched the first strike live but then had other meetings to attend and only learned of the full sequence of events a “couple of hours later.” He voiced support for Admiral Frank Bradley, the commander who ordered the second strike, calling his decisions the right call “to ultimately sink the boat and eliminate the threat.”

“As you can imagine, at the Department of War, we got a lot of things to do, so I didn’t stick around for the hour and two hours, whatever, where all the sensitive site exploitation digitally occurs,” he said.

The remarks were Hegseth’s most detailed yet in the days since he and the Trump administration came under scrutiny and bipartisan criticism for the Sept. 2 attack following a Washington Post report that he’d given a spoken order to kill everybody onboard the vessel.

The Post said Hegseth’s order led Bradley to order a second strike once it became clear that there were survivors from the initial attack. That move could amount to a war crime because of laws preventing attacks on survivors who pose no immediate threat.

The White House, the Pentagon and Hegseth have pushed back against the Post reporting. Trump said on Sunday that Hegseth told him he had never given an order to kill everyone on the boat. Of any confusion or criticism of the attack, Hegseth said “this is called the fog of war.”

“This is what you and the press don’t understand,” Hegseth said as Trump looked on. “You sit in your air conditioned offices, you’re up on Capitol Hill, and you nitpick.”

Both Democrats and Republicans have criticized the administration’s handling of the attack and called the second strike illegal. Senator Thom Tillis, a Republican whose vote was key to Hegseth’s narrow confirmation in January, called the second strike “a violation of ethical, moral and legal code.”

“If the facts play out the way they are currently being reported, then somebody needs to get the hell out of Washington, whoever it is, the person who made the decision,” Tillis added.

Despite that pressure, Hegseth’s position appeared safe, at least for the time being, with Trump continuing to praise his defense secretary after a series of controversies.

Trump called Hegseth a “smart guy” after he shared details of a pending attack on Houthi militants in Yemen in two chats on Signal, an unsecured online platform.

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