In assessing the performance of Peter Hegseth, the insidious boob who insists on being addressed as the Secretary of War for these United States, Sen. Rand Paul determined that the man responsible for blasting boats out of the water in the Caribbean and South Pacific over the past few months is either “lying to us’’ or an “incompetent.’’
With all due respect to the Bowling Green Republican, one of the few lawmakers in his party willing to deviate from GOP orthodoxy as spelled out by President-cum-Dictator Donald J. Trump, those two depictions are not mutually exclusive. Hegseth is proving himself to be both a liar and incompetent who, if incoming reports are accurate, could find himself accused of war crimes for the nation’s ongoing aggression against narcoterrorism, a military operation undertaken without congressional consent.
The months long initiative to destroy boats suspected of transporting illicit drugs that might or might not be destined for American shores isn’t the only legally questionable scheme on the administration’s agenda that has attracted Paul’s ire. The dedicated libertarian recently signed on to a War Powers Resolution that would prohibit the nation from launching attacks against Venezuela proper – a possibility Trump has indicated remains under consideration.
“The American people do not want to be dragged into endless war with Venezuela without public debate or a vote,” Paul said in a statement. “We ought to defend what the Constitution demands: deliberation before war.”
What’s going on in the waters around Venezuela — and, perhaps soon, on its terra firma – is a mess of Trump and Hegseth’s making. Convinced that the South American country is diabolically involved in flooding American streets with various narcotics, and with an animus toward that country’s leader, Nicolas Moduro, the administration is taking things into its own hands with little regard for legality or constitutional requirements.
The Trump administration has, beginning on Sept. 2, engaged in what it has characterized as an “armed conflict’’ with drug cartels operating around Venezuela. The Lord of Mar-a-Lago claims Maduro is involved in drug trafficking, terrorism and other vile activities. As a result, the U.S. military is bombing boats in international waters that it suspects of carrying illicit drugs that could wind up being distributed in this country.
Thus far, the military has destroyed 21 boats, killing 83 individuals. The legality of this operation has been questioned from the outset, especially since the Department of Defense under Hegseth has refused to divulge any of the intelligence that went into identifying what it determined to be drug boats, for lack of a better term.
So boats are being destroyed and individuals killed by the United States without any due process based on unknown assessments. Hegseth claims those killed were “unlawful combatants’’ and insists the administration maintains the authority to engage in lethal strikes without judicial review.
As if the circumstances behind this operation weren’t bizarre enough, a complication has arisen. In that initial Sept. 2 strike led by SEAL Team 6, a boat suspected of carrying drugs was hit with a U.S. missile in the Caribbean Sea. Soon thereafter it was determined that two individuals survived the attack and were clinging to the side of the shipwreck. A rescue operation was not undertaken. Instead, the two died when a Special Operations commander in Ft. Bragg N.C., Adm. Frank M. Bradley, ordered a second attack.
That follow-up, according to The Washington Post, citing sources, was carried out to comply with an oral order delivered by Hegseth to “kill everybody.’’ Hegseth has denied delivering such an order and Bradley, during a closed-door session with lawmakers on Thursday, denied receiving the dictate. But the matter remains under revidew and questions remain about the second strike.
Issuing an order to draw no quarter, as it is refenced, is considered a war crime under international law. Writing in the New York Times, Michael Waldman, president and chief executive at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, said that “any order to ‘kill everybody,’ however conveyed, would be a black-and-white violation of the law.’’
“Extrajudicial killing of drug traffickers or other criminals would be considered murder,’’ Waldman wrote. “Even if the United States was at war with “narcoterrorists,” as Mr. Trump claims, military law specifically prohibits conducting ‘hostilities on the basis that there shall be no survivors.’”
Waldman isn’t alone in that assessment. Dozens of experts in military law have expressed similar concerns. Sen. Roger Wicker, R-GA, chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has joined with Sen. Jack Reed, D-RI, in calling for an investigation of the incident.
For his part, Hegseth is playing the part of the poor, put-upon soul. He initially said there was no second strike, characterizing the report as “fake news.’’ The White House then issued a statement asserting that Hegseth had authorized Bradley, the Special Ops commander overseeing the attack, “to conduct these kinetic strikes.’’ But he was unaware at the time that a second strike was undertaken that led to the deaths.
Regardless, Paul isn’t buying what the Pentagon under Hegseth is trying to sell. And it appears Hegseth and the White House are trying to shift any blame to Bradley.
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Paul, who voted to confirm Hegseth as Secretary of Defense, said, “In this sense, it looks to me like they’re trying to pin the blame on somebody else and not them. There’s a very distinct statement [that] was said on Sunday.
“Secretary Hegseth has said he had no knowledge of this and it did not happen. It was “fake news.” It didn’t happen. “And then the next day, from the podium at the White House, they’re saying it did happen. So either he was lying to us on Sunday or he’s incompetent and didn’t know what had happened. Do we think there’s any chance that on Sunday, the secretary of the defense did not know there had been a second strike?”
Paul is and has remained a critic of the nation’s military interventionist policies. The campaign against Venezuela and the narcoterrorists is ill advised.
“Branding individuals as ‘narco-terrorists’ without proof just to open the door to lethal force is not a legitimate policy — it’s a dangerous fantasy,” Paul told Bloomberg News. “It bypasses due process, shreds constitutional limits, and pushes America toward another unnecessary foreign war. Our national security decisions must be grounded in facts and governed by law, not political theatrics. Anything less endangers our values and our troops.’’
In a White House Cabinet pockmarked with nitwits, lickspittles, hangers-on and loopy-loops, Hegseth might just have the bottom of the barrel all to himself. He was unqualified for the position of Secretary of Defense from the get-go, survived only when Vice President JD Vance broke the tie for his confirmation and almost immediately showed he was a buffoon holding down a vital job.
Now he might be leading a war against Venezuela.