WASHINGTON: Lawmakers from both parties said Sunday they support congressional reviews of US military strikes against vessels suspected of smuggling drugs in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, citing a published report that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a verbal order for all crew members to be killed as part of a Sept. 2 attack.<\/p>\n
The lawmakers said they did not know whether last week\u2019s Washington Post report was true, and some Republicans were skeptical, but they said attacking survivors of an initial missile strike poses serious legal concerns.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis rises to the level of a war crime if it\u2019s true,\u201d said Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Virginia<\/p>\n
Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, when asked about a follow-up strike aimed at people no long able to fight, said Congress does not have information that happened. He noted that leaders of the Armed Services Committee in both the House and Senate have opened investigations.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, if that occurred, that would be very serious and I agree that that would be an illegal act,\u201d Turner said.<\/p>\n
Turner said there are concerns in Congress about the attacks on vessels that the Trump administration says are transporting drugs, but the allegations regarding the Sept. 2 attack \u201cis completely outside anything that has been discussed with Congress and there is an ongoing investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n
The comments from lawmakers during news show appearance come as the administration escalates a campaign to combat drug trafficking into the US On Saturday, Republican President Donald Trump said the airspace \u201cabove and surrounding\u201d Venezuela should be considered as \u201cclosed in its entirety,\u201d an assertion that raised more questions about the US pressure on Venezuelan leader Nicol\u00e1s Maduro. Maduro\u2019s government accused Trump of making a \u201ccolonial threat\u201d and seeking to undermine the South American country\u2019s sovereignty.<\/p>\n
After the Post\u2019s report, Hegseth said Friday on X that \u201cfake news is delivering more fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory reporting to discredit our incredible warriors fighting to protect the homeland.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOur current operations in the Caribbean are lawful under both US and international law, with all actions in compliance with the law of armed conflict\u2014 and approved by the best military and civilian lawyers, up and down the chain of command,\u201d Hegseth wrote.<\/p>\n
Republican Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and its top Democrat, Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, said in a joint statement late Friday that the committee \u201cwill be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n
That was followed Saturday with the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Republican Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama, and ranking Democratic member, Washington Rep. Adam Smith, issuing a joint statement saying the panel was committed to \u201cproviding rigorous oversight of the Department of Defense\u2019s military operations in the Caribbean.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe take seriously the reports of follow-on strikes on boats alleged to be ferrying narcotics in the SOUTHCOM region and are taking bipartisan action to gather a full accounting of the operation in question,\u201d Rogers and Smith said, referring to US Southern Command.<\/p>\n
Rep. Don Bacon, R-Nebraska, asked about the Sept. 2 attack, said Hegseth deserves a chance to present his side.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe should get to the truth. I don\u2019t think he would be foolish enough to make this decision to say, kill everybody, kill the survivors because that\u2019s a clear violation of the law of war,\u201d Bacon said. \u201cSo, I\u2019m very suspicious that he would\u2019ve done something like that because it would go against common sense.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kaine and Turner appeared on CBS\u2019 \u201cFace the Nation,\u201d and Bacon was on ABC\u2019s \u201cThis Week.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON: Lawmakers from both parties said Sunday they support congressional reviews of US military strikes against vessels suspected of smuggling drugs in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, citing a published report that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a verbal order for all crew members to be killed as part of a Sept. 2 …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":90393,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-90379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90379"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90394,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90379\/revisions\/90394"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}