Dear Commons Community,
The US military carried out a follow-up strike on a suspected drug vessel operating in the Caribbean on September 2 after an initial attack did not kill everyone on board, sources familiar with the matter told CNN.
That September strike was the first in what became a regular series of attacks on alleged drug boats.
While the first strike appeared to disable the boat and cause deaths, the military assessed there were survivors, according to the sources. The second attack killed the remaining crew on board, bringing the total death toll to 11, and sunk the ship.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had ordered the military prior to the operation to kill everyone on board, but it’s not clear if he knew there were survivors prior to the second strike, one of the sources said.
The strike and deaths were announced by President Donald Trump on the day of the attacks, but the administration has never publicly acknowledged killing survivors.
Trump said on Thursday that action on land to stop suspected drug trafficking networks in Venezuela could “start very soon,” amid ongoing questions about the legality of the US military’s campaign around Latin America. Officials have acknowledged not knowing the identities of everyone on board the boats before they are struck, CNN has reported.
“I have been alarmed by the number of vessels that this administration has taken out without a single consultation of Congress,” Democratic Rep. Madeleine Dean told CNN this week. “Just last week, I took a look in a SCIF [sensitive compartmented information facility], because I’m a member of foreign affairs, at some documents around the sinking of these vessels and the murder of the people on those boats. Nowhere in there was there evidence of what was going on.”
People briefed on the “double-tap” strike, said they were concerned that it could violate the law of armed conflict, which prohibits the execution of an enemy combatant who is “hors de combat,” or taken out of the fight due to injury or surrender.
“They’re breaking the law either way,” said Sarah Harrison, a former associate general counsel at the Pentagon who now serves as a senior analyst at the Crisis Group think tank. “They’re killing civilians in the first place, and then if you assume they’re combatants, it’s also unlawful — under the law of armed conflict, if somebody is ‘hors de combat’ and no longer able to fight, then they have to be treated humanely.”
Hegseth in a social media post yesterday continued to defend the strikes on alleged drug boats, writing, “Our current operations in the Caribbean are lawful under both U.S. and international law, with all actions in compliance with the law of armed conflict—and approved by the best military and civilian lawyers, up and down the chain of command.”
“Every trafficker we kill is affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization,” Hegseth said.
The US military was aware that there were survivors in the water following the first strike on September 2 and carried out another to both sink the vessel and kill the remaining crew, the sources said. Pentagon officials told lawmakers in briefings afterward that the second strike was done to sink the boat so it would not pose a threat to navigation, the sources said.
The US military has hit boats multiple times in several instances to sink them, the sources said, but the September 2 strike is the only known instance where the military deliberately killed survivors.
It is not clear why the survivors were not picked up, as they were following another strike in the Caribbean in October. In that instance, the Trump administration rescued two survivors and repatriated them to their home countries.
In a post announcing the September 2 strike on Truth Social, President Donald Trump said that the US military had conducted “a kinetic strike against positively identified Tren de Aragua narcoterrorists in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility.”
The administration has tried to legally justify its strikes on the boats by claiming they are carrying individuals linked to roughly two dozen drug cartels engaged in an armed conflict with the US. The White House has said repeatedly that the administration’s actions “comply fully with the Law of Armed Conflict,” the area of international law that is designed to prevent attacks on civilians.
Many legal experts, however, say the suspected drug traffickers are civilians, not combatants, and that the strikes therefore amount to extrajudicial killings.
Hegseth disgraces our military!
Tony
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