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Conservative legal commentator Andy McCarthy torpedoed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s response to the blockbuster report which stated the secretary ordered the killing of everyone on board a suspected drug boat in the Caribbean in September.
In a scathing National Review column published late Saturday, McCarthy — who also serves as a Fox News contributor — made clear that he believes the events, as laid out in the Washington Post report, are patently illegal.
“If this happened as described in the Post report, it was, at best, a war crime under federal law,” McCarthy wrote. “I say ‘at best’ because, as regular readers know, I believe the attacks on these suspected drug boats — without congressional authorization, under circumstances in which the boat operators pose no military threat to the United States, and given that narcotics trafficking is defined in federal law as a crime rather than as terrorist activity, much less an act of war — are lawless and therefore that the killings are not legitimate under the law or armed conflict.”
The Post reported that a second strike was ordered to take out two survivors who were clinging for life to the damaged ship. McCarthy said that giving the administration the benefit of the doubt wouldn’t change his view of that reported second strike.
“Even if you buy the untenable claim that they are combatants, it is a war crime to intentionally kill combatants who have been rendered unable to fight,” McCarthy wrote. “It is not permitted, under the laws and customs of honorable warfare, to order that no quarter be given — to apply lethal force to those who surrender or who are injured, shipwrecked, or otherwise unable to fight.”
Hegseth, on X Friday, delivered a lengthy rebuttal to the Post report. But McCarthy notes that Hegseth “doesn’t actually rebut any assertion in the report.” McCarthy highlighted Hegseth saying, “As we’ve said from the beginning, and in every statement, these highly effective strikes are specifically intended to be ‘lethal, kinetic strikes. The declared intent is to stop lethal drugs, destroy narco-boats, and kill the narco-terrorists who are poisoning the American people.”
“Neither Hegseth’s statement nor the explanation attributed to [operation commander Admiral Frank M. ‘Mitch’] Bradley… makes legal sense,” McCarthy wrote.
He added, “This is a very serious matter. The administration’s defense can’t be that ‘we killed them because our plan is to use lethal force.””
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