Soldiers Have ‘Duty To Refuse’ Hegseth’s Order To Commit War Crimes, by Moon of Alabama

The killing of two alleged criminals that survived a U.S. bombing of their boat is a black-letter war crime. From Moon of Alabama at moonofalabama.org:

My post on Trump’s war on Venezuela two days ago mentioned a Washington Post report (archived) about a war crime directly ordered by U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth:

The longer the U.S. surveillance aircraft followed the boat, the more confident intelligence analysts watching from command centers became that the 11 people on board were ferrying drugs.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. “The order was to kill everybody,” one of them said.

A missile screamed off the Trinidad coast, striking the vessel and igniting a blaze from bow to stern. For minutes, commanders watched the boat burning on a live drone feed. As the smoke cleared, they got a jolt: Two survivors were clinging to the smoldering wreck.

The Special Operations commander overseeing the Sept. 2 attack — the opening salvo in the Trump administration’s war on suspected drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere — ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions, two people familiar with the matter said. The two men were blown apart in the water.

The Intercept had previously reported (archived) the second strike the U.S. military had launched against survivors:

People on board the boat off the coast of Venezuela that the U.S. military destroyed last Tuesday were said to have survived an initial strike, according to two American officials familiar with the matter. They were then killed shortly after in a follow-up attack.

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3 responses to “Soldiers Have ‘Duty To Refuse’ Hegseth’s Order To Commit War Crimes, by Moon of Alabama

  1. Only once did German U-boats gun down survivors despite the order from der Fuhrer.

    That scene in Das Boot of the tanker crew is hellish.

  2. “Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder.” Percy Bysshe Shelley

  3. no problemo, peeple in amerika want to let the sharks get them next time. sounds cost effective to me.

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