Footage seen by US senators shows two unarmed, shirtless men struggling to stay afloat before they were killed, sources say
Two men who survived a US airstrike on a suspected drug smuggling boat in the Caribbean clung to the wreckage for an hour before they were killed in a second attack, according a video of the episode shown to senators in Washington.
The men were shirtless, unarmed and carried no visible radio or other communications equipment. They also appeared to have no idea what had just hit them, or that the US military was weighing whether to finish them off, two sources familiar with the recording told Reuters.
The pair desperately tried to turn a severed section of the hull upright before they died. “The video follows them for about an hour as they tried to flip the boat back over. They couldn’t do it,” one source said.
The video of the attack on 2 September was seen by senators behind closed doors on Thursday amid growing concern that the US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, and other officials who ordered the attack may have committed a war crime.
The Trump administration has argued that the US is at war with drug traffickers and that such strikes are legal under the rules of war, but most legal experts reject that rationale.
I would like to shut that shit down. You are not at war.
Have the “drug runners” struck at any US targets (preferably targets of military significance)? If not, then what I see is one party ruthlessly attacking another party repeatedly. If these were individuals that would be called a serial killer. And for serial killers it’s never been a good defense to say “no no, this is legal, look how many people I’ve liked, I’m clearly at war, and this is legal in war”. That’s idiotic.
Furthermore, WE ARE NOT AT WAR! If you want a war, get Congress to declare war, we have a fucking process for that!
And finally, if this isn’t a war, then it should be more of a policing situation. In no scenario should police fire missiles first and ask questions never. An acceptable way to handle this might be to disable the boat with munitions, and then detain all
fishermannarcos aboard. Bonus, this would allow you to seize all thefishnarcotics in their hold, which would prove you had the moral high ground and aren’t just crazy murders. I mean can you imagine that, if you were just murdering people because you could and making sure to send all evidence and survivers to the bottom of the sea… Man, that would be nuts! People would be all like “who put these psychopaths in charge?!”Hang everyone who signed off on this.
I usually detest capital punishment, but this is so heinous it might actually be justified.
Even articles condemning this attack refer to it as a “double-tap” strike, which is really misleading because that insinuates quick succession. An attack followed by a separate attack an hour later is not a double-tap
Huh, I hadn’t thought of that implication but I see what you mean. I guess it’s always been kind of misleading though, because it’s not about the delay between strikes, it’s about shooting a target that’s already been neutralized to try to kill survivors.
Seems like the specific phrase might have orginated from a 2003 order the army gave to troops in Iraq (arc), which would explain the minimizing language (while we’re on the subject - blowing someone up with a missile isn’t exactly a “tap,” either), but then groups like Amnesty International ran with it to talk about how the Bush and Obama and Trump administrations would all drone strike targets a second time to kill medical responders.
Yeah, as far as I know, the real origin of the term is for shooting targets (or people), so you are literally double tapping the trigger. That way, if the first round doesn’t hit (or doesn’t kill), the second will.
The uncertainty piece is key, though. If they fired a missile and werent sure if it hit by the time they launched the second, they could accurately call that a double-tap. That’s what hegseth seems to be trying to push, especially with his reference to “fog of war”.
The moment you know the first shot destroyed the target, it ceases to be a double-tap.
I just don’t like how they are trying to absolve themselves through language they know will be misinterpreted, and then the media just parrots it with no issue.
P.s., to be clear, whether it is a double tap doesn’t change much to me because the first missile was already a war crime.
Not killing just survivors, a double tap is about killing the people who try to rescue the wounded. It is using the wounded as a trap to lure out anyone willing to help them and kill them too.
I would like a source on that.
To be crass, you double tap an enemy who is wounded as you’re advancing past them so you don’t need to waste time or resources securing or treating them.
If you’re far enough away that they’re wounded and their buddy is rushing over, well, they should’ve done the first rule of care under fire - return fire. Not my fault if they forgot to call time out. That’s not a double tap.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_tap_strike
You seem to be confusing a war crime with a paintball match.
So based on the news over the last few days, the folks in charge;
- Ordered an illegal strike of a fishing boat (regardless of whether it had drugs on board, the strike itself is still illegal)
- Watched two people struggle to stay alive for an hour while desperately reaching back to someone they know for SOS
- They decided that SOS call constituted two people still in a fight they had no idea they were in and murdered them for it.
America is a rogue state and has been for decades.
EDIT: never mind, I’m actually wrong. The survivors didn’t have any ability to call back. They watched two men struggle for almost an hour desperately trying to flip their boat back over TO SURVIVE and decided to murder them. Fucking string them all up
Isn’t leaving victims clinging to their life like this considered torture?
Whether it takes three years or thirty the maga officials responsible for this stuff will be held accountable
Hey, I’m sorry to break it to you, but…
Irreparable damage will be done and nobody is really going to pay. The most you can expect is a patsy to take the fall, and it will probably be some military officer who wasn’t the problem.
Hey buddy, I got a great deal on this bridge for sale.
Fuck off with the hopium. They will suffer precisely zero consequences unless we the People make it happen
Murder.
Who was sitting there videoing them as they tried not to drown for an hour?
A fraction of the atrocities we are supporting through the IDF, but good it’s getting reported too.
That would be a drone. It was surveying the boat and used for target guidance and battle damage assessment. The weapons fire would be coming from a separate aircraft.
But someone assessed they were still a valid target, right? We aren’t quite at the fully autonomous attack craft yet, are we? That would be a convenient excuse, blaming the AI/drone because the humans in charge totally wouldn’t have done that. Totally. Especially knowing it would be found out by the world.
Definitely. There would have been people watching everything in real time and making the decisions about what to do.
Have they even presented any evidence whatsoever that there were drugs on these boats?
The media keeps saying “suspected drug boats”, which makes it sound like they actually kind of care who they’re murdering, but I’m not convinced that’s the case. Maybe “imagined drug boats” would be more apt.
The attack began with an airburst munition exploding above the vessel and killing nine crew members. The two men who survived were then visible floating in the water.
So, there were eleven people on this small boat. Why the fuck would you have 11 people on a smuggling boat? No, this is just a random terrorist attack, perpetrated by the notorious terrorist organization know as “the US military”.
Here’s the thing, if there was drugs on the boat, killing them still isn’t ok. But no, we don’t even “know” if they are telling the truth about the drugs either. We have no idea why they want these people killed. We have to “trust” them… I don’t.
