Top general defends ‘double-tap’ strike on drug boat as Democrat calls footage ‘troubling’

The commander of U.S. Special Operations Command told top members of Congress on Thursday that no one issued a “kill them all” order during a pair of military strikes on a suspected drug boat in the Caribbean in September, lawmakers said after a closed-door hearing.

Navy Adm. Frank Bradley, USSOCOM commander, and Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, briefed Republican and Democratic leaders of intelligence and armed forces committees about the Sept. 2 operation, which some have dubbed a “double-tap” missile strike.

Sen. Tom Cotton, Arkansas Republican and chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, told reporters as he left the classified briefing that “Bradley was very clear that he was given no such order, to give no quarter or to kill them all.”

Rep. James Himes of Connecticut, the ranking Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, concurred on that specific detail, which was the key to Democrats’ war crimes claims against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and even potentially President Trump.

“The admiral confirmed that there had not been a ‘kill them all’ order and there was not an order to grant no quarter,” he said after the hearing.

He walked away, saying he had nothing else to add, as a reporter asked whether that meant Mr. Hegseth was exonerated.

Rep. Rick Crawford, Arkansas Republican and chairman of the House intelligence committee, said after the closed-door briefing that he had no problems with the U.S. attack on the suspected drug boat off the coast of Venezuela.

“There is no doubt in my mind about the highly professional manner in which the Department of War conducted, and is conducting, the operations our nation has called them to do — to protect the homeland from these dangerous cartels who have for too long poisoned the American people, destabilized and corrupted our neighbors, and [who] torture and kill thousands throughout our hemisphere,” Mr. Crawford said in a statement.

Despite what he acknowledged about “no quarter” orders, Mr. Hines said the video footage of the missile attack was one of the most “troubling” things he had seen while in Congress.

“Yes, they were carrying drugs, [but] they were not in the position to continue their mission in any way,” Mr. Himes told reporters.

Mr. Crawford said anyone who has carried out highly sophisticated military operations would be no stranger to the complex decision-making process and legal analysis described during the briefing.

“Those who appear ‘troubled’ by videos of military strikes on designated terrorists have clearly never seen the Obama-ordered strikes, or, for that matter, those of any other administration over recent decades,” Mr. Crawford said.

Mr. Himes said the two men on the severely damaged boat were in “clear distress, without any means of locomotion,” when they were killed in the follow-up U.S. strike.

“Any American who sees the video that I saw will see the United States military attacking shipwrecked sailors — bad guys, bad guys, but attacking shipwrecked sailors,” the panel’s top Democrat said.

Regardless of whether the orders came from higher-ups, shooting shipwrecked survivors at sea would be a war crime for those pulling the triggers.

Mr. Crawford said he was “deeply concerned” about public statements that he said were more interested in scoring political points and did not acknowledge the nature of war.

He implied political hypocrisy with an allusion to President Obama’s campaign of drone strikes against Islamist terrorists abroad. Some of the strikes killed civilians or targeted American citizens.

“I call upon them to remember their own silence as our forces conducted identical strikes for years — killing terrorists and destroying military objectives the same as in this strike — and ask themselves why they would seek to attack our forces today,” he said.

Senate Republicans and Democrats were just as divided on the merits of drug boat strikes as their House colleagues.

Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he was “deeply disturbed” by what he saw during the testimony from Adm. Bradley and Gen. Caine. He said the Pentagon has no choice but to release the complete and unedited footage from the Sept. 2 strike, as Mr. Trump has agreed to do.

“This briefing confirmed my worst fears about the nature of the Trump administration’s military activities and demonstrates exactly why the Senate Armed Services Committee has repeatedly requested — and been denied — fundamental information, documents, and facts about this operation,” Mr. Reed said.

The hearing was only the start of the investigation into the incident, Mr. Reed said.

Mr. Cotton said he fully supported the “righteous strikes” on the drug boats. He called them “entirely lawful and needful” and said they were exactly the types of missions U.S. military leaders are expected to execute.

“I didn’t see anything ‘disturbing’ about it. What’s ‘disturbing’ to me is that millions of Americans have died from drugs being run to America by these cartels,” Mr. Cotton said. “After decades of letting it happen, we’re going to take the battle to them.”

He said the operation that led to the strikes wasn’t some squad-level firefight in a cave in Afghanistan — necessarily a series of snap decisions by low-level actors. Here, hundreds of military and civilian personnel inside the Pentagon and at several other bases were closely tracking the operation.

“Everybody was watching. Everybody had seen the intelligence and legal basis leading up to these strikes,” Mr. Cotton said.

The drug cartels have been waging war against the American people for decades, Mr. Cotton said.

“It’s my expectation and my deep hope that these strikes will continue, if necessary, to stop the flow of drugs,” he said. “We should take the fight to these cartels wherever they are operating.”