Transcription
So, we start with our top story, and it continues to be Defense Secretary Pete Hegath continuing to stand by the US military's highly scrutinized September strike on an alleged drug boat. Now, that attack included a follow-up strike, the double tap, that targeted two people who had somehow survived the initial blast. Jonathan Lamir and his colleagues describe it like this.
In the Atlantic, "The suspected drug traffickers, the lone survivors of a US air strike, were sprawled on a tablesized piece of floating wreckage in the Caribbean for more than 40 minutes. They were unarmed, incommunicado, and adrift as they repeatedly attempted to right what remained of their boat. At one point, the men raised their arms and seemed to signal to the US aircraft above, a gesture some who watched the video of the incident interpreted it as a sign of surrender. Then a second explosion finished the men off, leaving only a bloody stain on the surface of the sea. Footage of the two men's desperate final moments made some viewers nauseated, leading one to nearly vomit. It was worse than we had been led to believe," one person told us.
That again is Jonathan Lamir's co-authored piece. And General Hurdling, let's go backward and start with that, that moment right there. As it is written, is that a war crime?
"I, I believe it is. Uh, ma, what you're talking about, uh, is a soda straw look at a couple of individuals on floating, uh, debris. Uh, what you're not seeing is the context of a widening picture that shows they're in the middle of an ocean. Imagine yourself falling off of a cruise ship and being asked to hang on to a piece of wood after you've just been struck, uh, with a, a large kinetic round that has killed nine of your 11, uh, co-pilots on this boat. It doesn't matter what they're doing at that point. They deserve to be picked up, rescued, and perhaps put in jail. Uh, that could be the, the, the approach that someone might use in this situation for a couple of criminals if they are, in fact, uh, harvesting drugs and taking them to another boat. But some of the more detail, some of the additional details that are coming out of this story about the boat heading in a direction that was not toward the United States, the first strike, how they were considered, the time limit between the first strike, the second strike, and then the third and fourth strike, continue to tell me that this was not something that the US military is trained to do, nor should they do. It is, in fact, uh, in my view, a war crime."
So, Jay Johnson, um, as you write in the New York Times, uh, before you were Secretary of Homeland Security, you were general counsel of the Department of Defense, uh, in the first Obama term, overseeing the work of thousands of lawyers that included providing the legal sign-off for lethal counterterrorism operations before they went to the Secretary of Defense and the president for approval. So, I'll back up to 20,000 feet. Does this look like a lawful operation?
"We should release the video. Uh, the, the, the double tap, the second tap is no more classified than the first one. >> And I think Americans will be able to judge for themselves when they look at this thing. Uh, you, you don't have to be the former general counsel of the Department of Defense or a retired general officer to make an assessment. If you see this video of whether or not these are two individuals clinging to life or they somehow, as some in Congress would say, represented some danger. I think Americans should be able to judge for themselves. I also think Congress should hold hearings, public hearings with witnesses under oath to explain September 2nd and to explain this overall effort generally. It is an unauthorized war. Uh, the president has unilaterally declared war in the Caribbean on Venezuela and, uh, cartels, Mexican cartels, uh, without Congress. And, uh, it has the look and feel of extrajudicial killing."
So, John Laame Mer, you have incredible reporting in the Atlantic about this. And what are you hearing um from your sources and from the White House? The president says that, you know, perhaps the video could be out there. Is the video going to see the light of day?
"It's unclear at this point. This would be far from the first time the president would sort of, 'Oh yes, let's do this,' and then there not be follow-through. Uh, we simply don't know yet. That'll be something that'll be a lot of pressure, a lot of pressure this week. Uh, and we're seeing from lawmakers, including some Republicans, say, 'Look, we'd like to get the full picture here. Put the whole video out.' But to this point, that hasn't happened just yet. So, NBC News is reporting that Admiral Frank M. Bradley, the commander who oversaw the attack, told lawmakers that the drugs were not heading to the United States, but instead the boat was traveling towards Surinam and Africa. That contradicts what President Trump said the day of the attack. NBC News also reports Bradley told lawmakers that Hegsth ordered the military to kill all 11 people aboard the boat because they were on an internal list of narco-terrorists whom the US government determined could be lethally targeted. Quote, 'While the survivors were not armed,' Bradley said, 'the mission identified the drugs as the threat to the United States.' Now, MS Now has not independently confirmed that reporting yet. But as NYU law professor Ryan Goodman points out, the existence of a list doesn't negate rules of conflict. Quote, 'World War II Germans may have a list of American soldiers, >> but if they're shipwrecked, killing them is a war crime.'"
Now, over the weekend, Secretary Hegsth defended the US military's decision.
">> From what I understood then and what I understand now, I fully support that strike. I would have made the same call myself. Uh, those who were involved in 20 years of conflict, Iraq and Afghanistan or elsewhere, know that reattacks and restrikes of combatants on the battlefield, uh, happen often. In this particular case, it was well within the authorities of Admiral Bradley, who's an incredible American, an American hero. Uh, and the 22 or 23 strikes since have followed a similar protocol of, uh, of ensuring we meet the criteria. The decision is not at my level anymore. Uh, and then we take the strike. >>"
President Trump said he would have no problem if the full video of the strike is released. When can we see that video? When will you release it?
">> We're reviewing it right now to make sure sources, methods, I mean, it's an ongoing operation. TTPs, we've got operators out there doing this right now. So, whatever we were to decide to release, we'd have to be very responsible about. So, we're reviewing that right now. >>"
So, David Ignatius, a very different story that Admiral Bradley's telling behind closed doors than what we heard publicly. The justification for the strike was that these drugs were heading to the United States. We now know they were not. They were heading to a country in northeast South America, Surinam. We also now, as described to myself and colleagues at the Atlantic, have a better picture of what happened for that double tap. It was a scene where it seemed these two two men were just trying to stay alive and did not appear to pose a threat. Did not appear to have any sort of access to a radio where they could call for reinforcements. Um, what is the latest you're hearing, your sources in the intelligence community, in the military on Capitol Hill, as to where they want to see this go next? Because we did hear Republican Senator Tom Cotton, you know, one of the few lawmakers who has seen this video, describe it in very different ways than we heard from Congressman Himes at the top of the show, who has said this one of the hardest things he's ever watched as an American.
"So, Jonathan, what I hear from retired military and intelligence officers, uh, in particular, uh, is a, a sense of, uh, deep unhappiness about what they're hearing about and what we, we may see the, the details of. Uh, I think, uh, in this, uh, terrible, uh, crisis over the September 2nd shootings, we forget that, uh, the vast majority of American, uh, soldiers and intelligence officers have, have worked hard, especially these last two decades, to follow the rules in the most difficult, uh, armed conflict situations imaginable. And I think it offends a lot of them to see this, uh, essentially dismissive attitude from Secretary Hegsath about the issues that have been raised here. People want to see the laws of war, the rules that commanders have to live by and need to live by to avoid making mistakes, um, drawn clearly here. The only way you can do that is public hearings that lay out what happened and, and make clear, you know, where responsibilities are, where mistakes may have been made. But I, I think, above all, there's a feeling that this crisis could produce greater clarity that this generation of commanders needs. Uh, it could, it could strengthen the hand of, of lawyers in the military who were essentially purged by Pete Hegsath in the first months that he was secretary of defense, uh, so that they have a, a stronger role, their advice, which is needed, uh, can be listened to."
So, General, I'd like to go back to you um and ask, uh, again, in terms of the category of war crime, um, since this boat was not headed to the United States, um, was it, in any capacity, on its way to a place that would, if it could actually propel itself to move from where it was, this piece of the wreckage that they were holding on to, which is, I know we're grasping here to even believe this, but taking the Defense Secretary's words, um, is there any possibility it was on its way to do, to go somewhere to do damage to the United States? Would you consider this combat in the fog of war, to use the Defense Secretary's words?
">> No, no, ma. And no on all of those questions you just asked. Let's put it a little bit of context here. First of all, the continual use of the term 'double tap' is wrong. That's a term that special operators use when there's two successive rounds at a target to eliminate it, uh, and to get rid of someone who is attacking them. This was a restrike with time between the first strike and the second. That gives you time to figure out what you're going to do and clear that so-called fog of war, which is really just as Clauswitz defined fog: confusion, chaos, and, and misunderstanding and miscommunication on the battlefield. Secondly, what I would also say is Secretary Hegsth is basically convening everyone to think he has been in war for 20 years and this is the kind of things that happen in war. It's not. What I'll tell you, having been involved in strikes like this on the ground, the only time you consider a restrike is when the enemy continues to fight and you're continuing to either strike them with artillery or some type of faraway missile. So a restrike like this occurs when you realize the individuals on the ground or in the water are trying to fight back. And the third thing is again, the con, the context of this entire strike, of, of a piece of debris floating around the middle of the Caribbean, uh, where these individuals are not going to go anywhere, which will become clear with the film. I, I'm sure, uh, even though I haven't seen the film, truthfully, uh, no one else has either. We will see exactly what happened and put it in context. There is no way you can justify this kind of a restrike against two individuals who are unarmed, in danger, and they're just floating around the ocean without any methods of communication."