Lawmakers on Capitol Hill were largely divided along party lines in response to the closed-door briefing provided by the senior military officer who approved a controversial follow-up strike that targeted the survivors of a previous one in the Caribbean Sea.
Adm. Mitch Bradley was the commander of Joint Special Operations Command overseeing the Sept. 2 operation, which was the first time U.S. forces targeted a suspected drug smuggling vessel with a kinetic lethal strike in the Caribbean Sea. After the initial strikes, the military carried out additional ones that killed two survivors of the original ones.
There is a significant debate on Capitol Hill about the legality of that additional strike and whether the two purported smugglers were still legitimate combatants worthy of lethal force.
Bradley and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, briefed lawmakers behind closed doors on Thursday.
“The first strike, the second strike, and the third and the fourth strike on Sept. 2, entirely lawful,” Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton (R-AR) told reporters after the Bradley-led briefing on Thursday.
Similarly, Rep. Rick Crawford (R-AR), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said, “It is important for me to state first there is no doubt in my mind about the highly professional manner in which the Department of War conducted, and is conducting, the operations our nation has called them to do to protect the homeland from these dangerous cartels who have for too long poisoned the American people, destabilized and corrupted our neighbors, and torture and killed thousands throughout our hemisphere.”
The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT), gave a much different assessment.
“What I saw in that room was one of the most troubling things I’ve seen in my time in public service,” Himes said. “You have two individuals in clear distress without any means of locomotion, with a destroyed vessel, who were killed by the United States.”
Still, Himes showed support for Bradley and Caine, saying they “did the right thing.”
The top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), said he was “deeply disturbed” by the footage.
“This briefing confirmed my worst fears about the nature of the Trump administration’s military activities and demonstrates exactly why the Senate Armed Services Committee has repeatedly requested, and been denied, fundamental information, documents, and facts about this operation,” Reed said. “This must and will be the only beginning of our investigation into this incident.”
War Secretary Pete Hegseth has defended Bradley’s decision to carry out the follow-up strikes, while acknowledging that he was not aware of it before they took place.
“I watched that first strike live,” Hegseth said during a Cabinet meeting Tuesday. “As you can imagine, at the Department of War, we’ve got a lot of things to do. So I didn’t stick around for the hour and two hours, whatever, where all the sensitive sight exploitation digitally occurs, so I moved on to my next meeting.”
“A couple of hours later, I learned that that commander had made the, which he had the complete authority to do, and by the way, Adm. Bradley made the correct decision to ultimately sink the boat and eliminate the threat,” Hegseth continued.
Trump said last weekend that he would not have wanted a second strike, while he said Wednesday that he was open to allowing for the release of the entire video. He shared a brief video on Sept. 2 announcing that the strike had taken place, but it did not show any additional strikes.
Including the Sept. 2 strikes, the U.S. military has targeted more than 20 vessels it says are carrying drugs intended for the U.S., resulting in the deaths of more than 80 people. The Pentagon has not provided evidence to prove there were drugs on board these vessels.
Many Democrats are calling for additional oversight of these operations. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) called for Hegseth, Bradley, and Adm. Alvin Holsey, the outgoing commander of U.S. Southern Command, to testify in a public hearing on Capitol Hill. Holsey will retire next week, about one year into his three-year term.
The military has its largest buildup of military forces in the Caribbean area in multiple decades.
Trump has teased the possibility of the military carrying out strikes inside Venezuela to target the drug cartels he says are shipping the drugs to the U.S., though doing so would be a significant escalation in the current conflict.
Trump has spoken with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, whom his administration views as an illegitimate leader and a cartel boss. The administration, earlier this year, increased the reward related to providing information leading to his arrest from $25 million to $50 million.
