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Notes -
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/white-house-admiral-approved-second-strike-boat-venezuela-was-well-within-legal-2025-12-01/
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/some-us-republicans-want-answers-venezuela-strikes-despite-trump-2025-12-01/
Aaand (after previously denying it?) the White House confirms that a second strike killed survivors of an initial strike on an alleged drug smuggling boat. (Hegseth is joking about it) It even seems the purpose of the second strike was solely to leave no survivors.
Curious that the targeted smuggling boats have large crews, rather than conserving space and weight capacity for drugs...
Anyone have a read on whether or not there are still "Trump is the anti-war President" true believers and, if so, how those people are trying to square the circle?
The stupider this becomes, the more likely it seems that this conflict is a result of Trump's fixation with spoils of war and that he actually thinks we can literally just "take the oil."
Your own source says, "President Donald Trump, who is holding a meeting about Venezuela with his national security team later in the day, said on Sunday that he would not have wanted a second strike on the boat." So I'm not sure why your follow up questions are on Trump.
The Washington Post story is, "The Washington Post had reported that a second strike was ordered to take out two survivors from the initial strike and to comply with an order by Hegseth that everyone be killed."
Sean Parnell (Assistant to the SECWAR, Chief Pentagon Spokesman & Senior Advisor ) said, "We told the Washington Post that this entire narrative was false yesterday."
You seem to be implying that Leavitt's comment contradicts this:
"Secretary Hegseth authorized Admiral Bradley to conduct these kinetic strikes. Admiral Bradley worked well within his authority and the law directing the engagement to ensure the boat was destroyed and the threat to the United States of America was eliminated," Leavitt said.
However, Leavitt's statement is not the Washington Post story. It actually contradicts it by placing the emphasis on the destruction of the boat, not the killing of the two survivors of the first attack.
Yes. This is a case that really looks bad -- it looks not only like the US killed some shipwrecked survivors of an attack (which is generally considered perfidious, right?), but that Hegseth not only authorized it but lied about it, not just to the press but to his boss. If that's so, he should resign.
However, the press is so unreliable that it's quite possible this isn't the case, and e.g. even if they're telling the literal truth, the second strike was not to kill survivors but to destroy a drug boat after a first attack failed to do so.
I am very far from an expert in this topic, but perfidy is stuff like attacking while under a flag of surrender or parlay, or the use of protected symbols for that purpose. Double-tapping survivors of an attack might be a violation in other ways, such as violating the concept of hors de combat, but that gets a lot more complicated; even attempting to escape can leave a combatant as 'in', and being incapacitated does not mean that you act as a human shield for other nearby legitimate military targets.
That's separate from whether it's good: it's possible for something to be a war crime and tots not a big deal (eg, the famous Doom health pack examples), and it's possible for something to not be a war crime and still show a significant moral lapse.
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