Footage seen by US senators shows two unarmed, shirtless men struggling to stay afloat before they were killed, sources say

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.

  • Cocodapuf@lemmy.world
    2·
    3 hours ago

    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 fisherman narcos aboard. Bonus, this would allow you to seize all the fish narcotics 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?!”