Zürcher Nachrichten - White House confirms admiral ordered 2nd strike on alleged drug boat

The legality of the Trump administration's deadly strikes against alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean and Pacific has already been questioned, and reports of the follow-up attack on survivors have triggered further accusations of a possible war crime.

A total of 11 people were killed in the two strikes in early September, the first in a months-long military campaign that has so far left more than 80 dead.

President Donald Trump's administration insists it is effectively at war with alleged "narco-terrorists," and the White House said Admiral Frank Bradley, who currently leads US Special Operations Command, had acted legally and properly in ordering the second strike on the survivors.

Bradley "worked well within his authority and the law directing the engagement to ensure the boat was destroyed and the threat to the United States of America was eliminated," White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told journalists.

Hegseth "authorized Admiral Bradley to conduct these kinetic strikes," she said.

US media reported last week that an initial September 2 strike left alive two people who were killed in a subsequent attack to fulfill Hegseth's orders, but Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell insisted that "this entire narrative was false."

Subsequent strikes that left survivors were followed by search-and-rescue efforts that recovered two people in one case and failed to find another later in October.

- 'Over the line' -

Hegseth has insisted that the strikes -- so far conducted in international waters -- are legal, saying in a recent post on X that the military action is "in compliance with the law of armed conflict -- and approved by the best military and civilian lawyers, up and down the chain of command."

However, the military action on September 2 would appear to run afoul of the Pentagon's own Law of War Manual, which states: "For example, orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal."

Democratic Senators Jacky Rosen and Chris Van Hollen have said the September 2 strikes may be a war crime, while another lawmaker from the party, Senator Mark Kelly, called Monday for Congress to investigate.

"I'm concerned that if there were, in fact, as reported, survivors clinging to a damaged vessel, that that could be over a line," the former fighter pilot and astronaut told a news conference.

Kelly was one of six lawmakers who released a video last month saying "illegal orders" can be refused -- a move that infuriated Trump and sparked a Pentagon probe into the "potentially unlawful comments" by the retired Navy officer.

Trump has deployed the world's biggest aircraft and an array of other military assets to the Caribbean, insisting they are there for counter-narcotics operations.

Regional tensions have flared as a result of the strikes and the military buildup, with Venezuela's leftist leader Nicolas Maduro accusing Washington of using drug trafficking as a pretext for "imposing regime change" in Caracas.

Maduro, whose re-election last year was rejected by Washington as fraudulent, insists there is no drug cultivation in Venezuela, which he says is used as a trafficking route for Colombian cocaine against its will.

P.E.Steiner--NZN