Even congressional Republicans are asking questions. From Jack Hunter at theamericanconservative.com:
Sen. Rand Paul gets to the moral heart of the Venezuela pressure campaign.
In September, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered a strike on a vessel suspected of carrying drugs from Venezuela.
That strike left two men clinging to a capsized boat. So a second strike was ordered—one that Hegseth says didn’t come from him, and that President Trump says he wouldn’t have ordered—that killed the surviving men.
The legality of any of these strikes is hotly debated. The second strike on the vessel in September in particular has heightened further questions about potential war crimes.
Many in Washington, including some Republicans, are questioning this.
On Wednesday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) had questions: “If they’re armed, show us how they’re armed. If they’re not armed, explain to us why we kill people who are not armed.”
There have been no reports to this writer’s knowledge that the men were armed. The Wall Street Journal reported that military official Admiral Frank “Mitch” Bradley, who purportedly gave the order, believed there were other “enemy” vessels nearby and the surviving men were suspected of communicating with them. In his briefing with lawmakers on Thursday, Bradley reportedly said that the survivors did not appear to have radios or means of communication.
Even if they did have radios, might their top concern have been not drowning and calling for rescue?
What kind of “war” is this, exactly?
Paul wondered the same, “So we usually think of war, we think of those people taking up arms and they may kill our soldiers, so we kill them first, that’s war. But these people, we haven’t been told if they have arms. Two of them they killed in the water, but two of them they scooped up, and did they arrest them for drugs and get drugs that were floating around in the sea? Did they look for arms? No, they just released them and said, go back to your home country, which really wasn’t Venezuela, it was Colombia and Ecuador.”
The Nuremberg movie is coming out with Russell Crowe as Goring.
Only following orders is not a legal defense?
How bout that WWI ace cheating the hangman!