Powerful Republicans reject Pentagon Pete’s ‘kill’ order

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s alleged order to “kill” everyone aboard a suspected Venezuelan drug boat will face intense scrutiny by the Republican-led Senate Armed Services Committee.

SASC Chairman Sen. Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican, and SASC member Sen. Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat, issued a joint statement pledging a “vigorous investigation” into the facts surrounding the Sept. 2 drug boat strike in which the U.S. killed all aboard a suspected drug vessel, then killed another with a missile attack.

“The committee is aware of recent news reports – and the Department of Defense’s initial response – to alleged follow-on strikes on suspected drug vessels in the SOUTHCOM area of ​​responsibility,” the statement read.

“The committee has directed the department to investigate, and we will conduct a rigorous investigation to determine the facts surrounding these circumstances.”

On Friday, the Washington Post reported that on September 2, Pete Hegseth ordered the US military to kill everyone on a boat suspected of carrying drugs off the coast of Trinidad.

A missile hit the ship, killing nine of the eleven on board. When the special operations commander overseeing the attack realized there were two survivors in the water, he followed Hegseth’s order by firing a second shot, killing the remaining survivors.

The order could amount to a war crime — and therefore punishable by fines, imprisonment, or death, according to the U.S. definition of war crimes that applies to U.S. civilians and members of the armed services.

Todd Huntley, a former military lawyer, told the Post that the attack “amounts to murder” because Venezuela and the US are not in armed conflict.

An order to kill everyone on board “would in essence be an order to show no quarter, which would be a war crime,” he said.

Hegseth, 45, dismissed the report as “fake news,” telling X, “As usual, fake news is providing more fabricated, inflammatory and defamatory reporting to discredit our incredible warriors fighting to defend the homeland.”

He also defended the legality of the attack, saying that “every smuggler we kill is affiliated with a designated terrorist organization” and, “Our current actions in the Caribbean, including all actions in compliance with the laws of armed conflict, are legal under United States and international law and approved by the best military and civilian lawyers, from the top of the command and the bottom.”

Sean Parnell, a Pentagon spokesman and senior adviser, said Friday, “We told the Washington Post yesterday that this whole story was false. These people just make anonymously sourced stories out of whole cloth. Fake news is the enemy of the people.”

Protocol for future drug boat attacks was changed after the September 2 attack, and the military was instructed to detain survivors.

Although the attacks have sparked bipartisan frustration, it’s unclear what the Senate Armed Services Committee might do if Hegseth’s strike was illegal.

In the weeks after the attack, President Trump, 79, tried to retroactively insulate those responsible from legal consequences by informing Congress that the US was in a “non-international armed conflict” with “designated terrorist organizations” and that those who killed suspected drug traffickers would therefore be exempt from criminal prosecution.

“This is one of the problems with the law of armed conflict – the state is the judge, jury and executioner of the use of force,” Huntley said.