Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth doubled down on deadly US air strikes against alleged drug-running boats off the Venezuelan coast, saying he would have made the same call as the admiral who ordered survivors to be killed.
The nearly two dozen strikes on boats in the Caribbean and Pacific have come under bipartisan scrutiny, but recent reports that a September strike included a second one to kill two survivors clinging to wreckage at sea have prompted accusations of possible war crimes.
“From what I understood then and what I understand now, I fully support that strike,” Hegseth said on Saturday. “I would have made the same call myself.”
His remarks during and after a speech at the Reagan Defence Forum in Simi Valley, California, went a step further than his comments at the White House earlier in the week, when he appeared to lay responsibility on Admiral Frank Bradley, who ordered the second strike on the same boat.
Hegseth praised the policy of sinking boats and killing alleged drug-runners whom the Trump administration considers enemy combatants and not criminals. That policy has led to serious debate in Congress and among legal experts about whether it is legal, and whether the boats are actually headed for the US.
“The days in which these narco-terrorists, designated terror organisations, operate freely in our hemisphere are over,” Hegseth said. “These narco-terrorists are the al-Qaeda of our hemisphere.”
Democratic lawmakers who saw video of the attack called it disturbing and demanded the full footage. US President Donald Trump has said he would allow the video to be released publicly after it was shown to members of Congress.