The editorial board of The Wall Street Journal is calling for Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to testify under oath about the second strike the U.S. military conducted that killed survivors of an initial strike on an alleged drug-trafficking boat in the Caribbean.
“The charge of deliberately killing the defenseless is serious enough to warrant a close look from Congress,” the Journal wrote in an editorial published on Tuesday. “That includes Mr. Hegseth giving an account under oath. The Administration so far seems to think it can ride out the story with ritual denunciations of the media.”
President Trump’s administration is facing intense backlash, including from some Republican lawmakers, over the strikes, which were carried out in September and brought to light by a Washington Post report this week.
The White House has denied the Post’s account that Hegseth issued a verbal order to “kill everybody” on the boat prior to the strikes and has emphasized that Adm. Frank Bradley was the commander who ordered the second deadly strike.
“Our view is that the Commander in Chief deserves legal latitude as part of his constitutional war powers,” the Journal wrote. “But that doesn’t extend to shooting the wounded in violation of U.S. and international rules of war. The Pentagon’s own law of war manual prohibits ‘hostilities on the basis that there shall be no survivors.'”
The Department of Defense has argued the strikes are part of a plan to fight the trafficking of drugs into the United States, while the White House has faced increasing scrutiny over the legality of the ongoing operations, which have killed more than 80 people so far this year.
“The Hegseth story has additional currency because the Administration isn’t explaining its aims in the Caribbean with either voters or Congress. Sens. Roger Wicker and Jack Reed of the Senate Armed Services Committee, have been writing to the Pentagon asking for more details on the legal rationale for its drug-boat strikes. They seem to get mostly a stonewall,” reads the Journal editorial.
It was announced on Tuesday that Bradley will provide a classified briefing on the matter to the senior members of the Senate and House Armed Services committees on Thursday.