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Senate Republicans are divided on their view of the deadly Sept. 2 strikes in the Caribbean as congressional inquiries into the matter mount, with some arguing that subduing suspected drug boats is the right move while others question the legality of the so-called double-tap attacks.
The Senate and House Armed Services committees are gearing up for hearings into the strikes after reports that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, later confirmed by the White House, authorized a second strike to eliminate survivors on a suspected drug boat in the Caribbean.
But there is a growing tension among Republicans over what to do. Some support the desire of Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker, R-Miss., for stringent oversight of the incident, while others see the strikes as part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on drugs flowing into the country.
JOHNSON POINTS TO OBAMA-ERA DRONE PRECEDENT AS CONGRESS PROBES DEADLY CARIBBEAN STRIKE
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth defended the Trump administration’s strikes on alleged drug vessels in the Caribbean Sea on Friday. (Omar Havana/Getty Images)
Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, told Fox News Digital he was “very, very, very supportive of killing drug dealers. I think the more narco-terrorists that we kill, that we save American lives.”
“I’m not concerned about killing people whose intent was to kill Americans at all,” Moreno said.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed that Hegseth gave the green light for the second strike, but noted that it was Adm. Frank Bradley, the head of U.S. Special Operations Command, who ordered and directed it.
That confirmation came after a report from The Washington Post claimed Hegseth had ordered to “kill them all,” which some on the Hill have disputed.
Sen. John Kennedy pauses while speaking to members of the media at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, May 21, 2019. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., said he read the article and charged that there “wasn’t an exact quote from Secretary Hegseth. There was an anonymous source paraphrased what the secretary allegedly said.”
“So, here we’ve got a story in The Washington Post, which is known to hate Trump and Republicans, by a reporter who is citing an anonymous source that supposedly is saying that Hegseth said it before the strike even happened, but they don’t know exactly what he said,” Kennedy said. “That is a waste of your time and mine.”
When pressed about Leavitt’s confirmation of the authorization, Kennedy said, “I don’t care what the White House press secretary said.”
Still, some Republicans want answers to what exactly happened.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., reiterated that he believed that the Senate and House Armed Services committees’ impending probes into the matter was a “natural place” to look at what happened with the strikes, but he stopped short of weighing in on whether a second strike was right or wrong.
“Well, I don’t know the particulars yet, and that’s why we’re gonna have the — we’ll look,” Thune said.
BIPARTISAN SENATORS CALL ON HEGSETH TO RELEASE STRIKE ORDERS ON ALLEGED DRUG BOATS IN CARIBBEAN
Sen. Jack Reed listens during a Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, March 3, 2022. (Tom Williams-Pool/Getty Images)
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said that since the report came out, “We want to get to the facts.”
“Obviously, if there was a direction to take a second shot and kill people, that’s a violation of an ethical, moral or legal code,” Tillis said. “We need to get to the bottom of it. But right now, it could be, I think, was it Oxford that the word of the year is ‘rage bait’? Could be rage bait too. So we want to get to the facts.”
Senate Democrats are demanding a fulsome dive into the incident, and toeing the line of whether what transpired was a war crime.
Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he expected to have a briefing with Bradley this week.
When asked what questions he wanted to be answered, Reed said the top priority was to find out whether the strikes comported with “the law of war and [Uniform Code of Military Justice] and international law.”
“I think one of the easiest ways to begin to dispel the question is to make public the video of the strikes,” Reed said.
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Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., has, time and again this Congress, remained a staunch critic of action taken in Iran and in the Caribbean and moved to curtail the administration’s actions through resolutions that would stymie President Donald Trump’s war powers.
He said lawmakers needed to get to the bottom of “whether a war crime has been committed.”
Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., was cautious not to fully paint the incident as a war crime before getting more facts, adding that he hoped the reports of the strikes were “not accurate.”
“I will say, though you know as somebody who has sunk two ships myself, that folks in the military need to understand, you know, the law of the sea, the Geneva Conventions, what the law says,” Kelly said. “And I’m concerned that if there were, in fact, as reported, you know, survivors clinging to a damaged vessel, that could be, you know, over a line. I hope it’s not the case.”
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