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US Democrats on Sunday pushed the Trump administration to release video of a second strike on an alleged drug boat incapacitated in the Caribbean, continuing to escalate pressure on the Pentagon amid accusations the attack was unlawful.
Eleven people died in the 2 September attack, including two men killed in a follow-up strike as they reportedly clung to wreckage for an hour. That killing has been met with intense scrutiny and accusations of war crimes after the Washington Post reported defense secretary Pete Hegseth gave an order to “kill them all”. Adm Frank Bradley of the US navy, who oversaw the attack, told lawmakers on Thursday there was no such order – and the Pentagon has defended the legality of the attack.
Experts have said the defense is legally shaky.
“If the Pentagon and our defense secretary are so proud of what they’re doing, let the American people see that video,” Adam Schiff, a Democratic senator from California, said during an interview on Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press.
“Let the American people see two people standing on a capsized boat, or sitting on a capsized boat, and deliberately killed and decide for themselves whether they’re proud of what the country is doing. I can’t imagine people would be proud of that.”
Donald Trump has said he has no problem releasing the video. But, despite the president’s statement, Hegseth did not commit to doing so on Saturday.
“We’re reviewing the process, and we’ll see,” he said on Saturday, adding that the Pentagon wanted to ensure sensitive information was not compromised.
Representative Jim Himes of Connecticut had previously said the video was “one of the most troubling scenes I’ve ever seen in my time in public service”.
“You have two individuals in clear distress without any means of locomotion – with a destroyed vessel – who were killed by the United States,” said Himes, who is the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee.
Representative Adam Smith of Washington state, the ranking Democrat on the House armed services committee, said on Sunday it was “pretty clear they don’t want to release this video”.
“They don’t want people to see it because it’s very, very difficult to justify,” he said during an interview on Sunday on ABC’s This Week.
“When [the survivors] were finally taken out, they weren’t trying to flip the boat over. The boat was clearly incapacitated. A tiny portion of it remained, capsized – the bow of the boat. They had no communications device. Certainly, they were unarmed.”
Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican who chairs the Senate intelligence committee, said he personally did not oppose releasing the video.
“It’s not gruesome. I didn’t find it distressing or disturbing. It looks like any number of dozens of strikes we’ve seen on Jeeps and pickup trucks in the Middle East over the years,” he said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “I would trust Secretary Hegseth and his team to make the decision about whether they can declassify and release the video. But again, there’s nothing remarkable on that video in my opinion.”
Cotton also defended the legality of the strike, disputing that the two men killed in the second strike were helpless.
“It doesn’t really matter what they were doing,” he said. “They were on that boat. That boat was still a valid target. They were not in a state of distress on a plank of wood in the ocean like subsequent survivors were,” he said.
