Add Murderer to someone who was accused of rape, excessive drunkenness and Incompetence (Signal Gate). Hegseth was chosen to lead the Department of Defense because he “looked the part”. If the Republican senators truly cared about our country, he would have failed in his nomination hearing by a Huge margin - WaPo Comment
"Service members have a right to disobey unlawful orders and are, in fact, required to do so under U.S. military law and international standards. An order is unlawful if it directs a service member to commit a crime, violates the Constitution, or goes against international human rights law. While disobeying a lawful order is insubordination, disobeying a manifestly unlawful one is not." - Facebook comment
The rules governing combat in a war theater are very well defined by the Geneva Convention. To wit, after an attack- say on a presumed enemy ship - if all are killed except for a few survivors - you cannot execute them in cold blood. The most you are allowed to do is to take them prisoner and hold them for subsequent disposition. This the U.S. criminal regime in power did not do, instead the drunken no -count goon who tries to pass as "defense secretary' ordering all survivors be killed in a recent U.S. military boat strike - ordered by the felon and traitor, Trump.
A live drone feed showed two survivors from the original crew of 11 clinging to the wreckage of their boat after the initial missile attack Sept. 2, The Post reported Friday afternoon. The Special Operations commander overseeing the operation then ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s directive, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation, killing both survivors.
Let us be very clear here: that special operations commander had the DUTY to disregard an unlawful order from Hegseth and didn't do so. He therefore violated understood law. The UCMJ contains several provisions and articles that stipulate that service men and women are liable for a wide variety of rules and regulations, regardless of whether they were ordered by a superior officer. That includes burglary, murder, assault, rape and property destruction. UCMJ's Article 134 is a broad provision that prohibits "all disorders and neglects to the prejudice of good order and discipline in the armed forces, all conduct of a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces, and crimes and offenses not capital," and is punishable in military court.
Article 90, which covers the rules over "Willfully Disobeying Superior Commissioned Officer," explicitly prohibits orders that "without such a valid military purpose, interfere with private rights or personal affairs." They are also bound to follow international agreements to which the U.S. is a signatory. The International Committee of the Red Cross, which protects victims under the rules of the Geneva Convention, also states that armed service members are liable for criminal responsibility "if the subordinate knew that the act ordered was unlawful or should have known because of the manifestly unlawful nature of the act ordered."
I submit that the Special operations commander who complied with Hegseth's order had the duty to recognize it as blatantly unlawful but failed to do so. Indeed, current and former U.S. officials and law-of-war experts have said that the Pentagon’s lethal campaign — which has killed more than 80 people — is unlawful and may expose those most directly involved to prosecution. Despite the blatherings of Dotard and his fellow criminals the alleged traffickers pose no imminent threat of attack against the United States and are not in an “armed conflict” with the U.S., these officials and experts say.
More serious than this, Trump the traitor plans to pardon an ex-Honduran cocaine dealer, actually prosecuted in Trump's 1st term. E.g.
How can you claim righteousness to kill "drug traffickers" in international waters, then turn around and pardon one of the most powerful drug traffickers? It makes a mockery of your claim and reveals it is bogus and the strikes as criminal aggression. As Lawrence O'Donnell put on his Last Word:
"Trump has proved he doesn't care about drug trafficking by pardoning one of the biggest drug traffickers in American history, Juan Orlando Hernandez of Honduras."
In other words, Trump's continued aggression off Venezuela in blowing alleged "narco-terrorists" out of the water and killing dozens is based on pure horse shit. You do not get to do that if you pardon one of the worst traffickers and of cocaine. As Rep. Adam Smith put it, Trump is making a power play and trying to distract from the Epstein files release. But what would you expect of a traitor, a felon and a human fungal maggot?
At least the disclosure of Hegseth's strike on survivors has finally elicited outrage from the Reeps in congress. Yes, they seem to have finally found their balls. Evidently. Republican-led committees in the Senate and the House say they will amplify their scrutiny of the Pentagon after a Washington Post report revealing that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken order to kill all crew members aboard a vessel suspected of smuggling drugs in the Caribbean Sea several weeks ago.
This nearly coincided with a group of former military attorneys who have scrutinized the
Trump administration’s aggression in Latin America. The group released an assessment Saturday outlining relevant
international and domestic laws, and said that regardless of whether the U.S.
is in an armed conflict, conducting law enforcement or other military
operations, the targeting of defenseless people is prohibited.
Specifically - under the Geneva Accords:
"Not only does
international law prohibit targeting these survivors, but it also requires the
attacking force to protect, rescue, and, if applicable, treat them as prisoners
of war. Violations of
these obligations are war crimes, murder, or both. There are no other options.”
Meanwhile, hollow babble from the Joint Special Operations Command claimed that the purpose of the “double-tap”
strike was to sink the boat to avoid any navigation hazard to other vessels,."
To which Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Massachusetts) responded in a statement to The Post:
“The idea that wreckage from one small boat in a vast ocean is a hazard to marine traffic is patently absurd, and killing survivors is blatantly illegal. Mark my words, Americans will be prosecuted for this - either for murder or war crimes."
Aside from Rep. Moulton, historians also giving their inputs have declared the Pentagon in this effort poses a unique threat to American democracy. Long-standing taboos against using the armed forces to further a president’s political machinations have helped ensure that service members obey their civilian leaders — and prevent this powerful institution from being used to suppress Americans’ constitutional rights. Discarding that standard, experts say, risks setting a harmful precedent.
“The best way to stop a politicization death spiral,” said
Peter Feaver, who studies civil-military relations at Duke University, “is to
never start it.”
Which is why Hegseth and Trump both be held accountable, Hegseth by summry dismissal and Trump by impeachment or removal under the 25th amendment.
Lastly, the 6 Dem Senators who circulated a video on the duty to reject illegal orders did not encourage "disobedience" or mutiny. (WSJ, 'Disobeying Military Orders Is Full Of Risk', p. A15, Nov. 28) As per an AP report Sunday, a group of former military lawyers made it clear Sen. Mark Kelly did not violate the Uniform Code of Military Justice. According to the JAG Working Group:
"The video release simply described the law as it pertains to unlawful orders. It did not suborn mutiny or otherwise encourage military service members to disregard or disobey lawful orders issued to them."
Further, the JAG lawyers made it clear uniformed commanders have specific obligations to reject orders that are unlawful. Adding that broad legal precedence also holds that 'just following orders' - colloquially known as the 'Nuremberg defense' used by Nazi war criminals tried at Nuremberg, does not absolve these commanders. Or those who ordered them to commit the war crimes.
Just ask Alfred Rosenberg, one of the Nazis tried at Nuremberg, who bears an unsettling resemblance to Pete Hegseth. (See top photo).
Oh, the choicest bit of baloney to emerge from this whole, sorry incident? Hegseth claiming he just issued the order for the attack, not to kill survivors. Then twisting the tale again - via WH Bimbo Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt to implicate Adm. Frank M. Bradley "as the one who authorized the killing".
In the little brat's words:
"Admiral Bradley had “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.”
Nope, there is no bottom to how low these lying vermin rats will go to protect their sordid narratives and themselves. But I have one sentence to unleash to all of them:
“Tell it all to the Senate Armed Services Oversight hearing, and under oath!
Excerpt:
Today, in the country of Trump, we’re getting a convincing
demonstration of Augustine’s proposition. Justice has been removed and a gang
of criminals are in charge.
They’re certainly acting on a large scale. Their expertise
ranges from ordering war crimes to covering up sex crimes to engaging in all
manner of financial criminality. They’re a diverse bunch, from tough guys
outfitted in combat gear and masks rampaging through the streets of our cities,
to smooth operators in tuxedoes who mingle with ease at state dinners. Their
ranks encompass experienced criminals and newbies. They commit novel crimes and
cover up old ones. Allies who had the misfortune to be caught—or were too
bumbling to succeed—get pardons from the boss.
It’s all a veritable festival of law-scorning; an amazing
smorgasbord of law-breaking. And it turns out that if a president aggressively
shuns any concern for justice and is willing to demonstrate utter contempt for
the law—if he then disables the Department of Justice and the judge advocates
general and almost all other internal checks and mechanisms of
accountability—his gang can get away with a heck of a lot. They don’t even have
to shoot particularly straight.
Almost every serious person agrees with Andrew McCarthy
of National Review and Fox News that, even without the second
firing on the survivors, the three months of military strikes on the boats in
the Caribbean are
either “a war crime under federal law” or more likely simply
“lawless.”
But, McCarthy stresses, even “if we stipulate arguendo that
the administration has a colorable claim that our forces are in an armed
conflict with non-state actors . . . the laws of war do not permit the killing
of combatants who have been rendered hors de combat (out of the
fighting)—including by shipwreck.”
And:
Opinion | Trump, Hegseth and a sickening moral slum of an administration - The Washington Post
Excerpt:
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth seems to be a war criminal.
Without a war. An interesting achievement.
In 1967, novelist Gwyn Griffin published a World War II
novel, “An Operational Necessity,” that 58 years later is again
pertinent. According to the laws of war, survivors of a sunk ship cannot be
attacked. But a German submarine captain, after sinking a French ship, orders
the machine-gunning of the ship’s crew, lest their survival endanger his men by
revealing where his boat is operating. In the book’s dramatic climax, a postwar
tribunal examines the German commander’s moral calculus.
No operational necessity justified Hegseth’s de facto order
to kill two survivors clinging to the wreckage of one of the supposed drug
boats obliterated by U.S. forces near Venezuela. His order was reported by The Post from two sources (“The order was
to kill everybody,” one said), and has not been explicitly denied by Hegseth.
President Donald Trump says Hegseth told him that he (Hegseth) “said he did
not say that.” If Trump is telling the truth about Hegseth, and Hegseth is
telling the truth to Trump, it is strange that (per the Post report) the
commander of the boat-destroying operation said he ordered the attack on the
survivors to comply with Hegseth’s order.
The killing of the survivors by this moral slum of an
administration should nauseate Americans. A nation incapable of shame is
dangerous, not least to itself. As the recent “peace plan” for Ukraine
demonstrated.
And:
by Thom Hartmann | November 30, 2025 - 6:41am | permalink
Shocking as this moment is, none of us should pretend we weren’t warned. When Donald Trump installed Pete Hegseth — a television provocateur whose public record is soaked in belligerence, booze, and culture-war performance — as America’s Defense Secretary, the world could see exactly where it was headed.
Still, nothing prepared us for the Washington Post’s revelation that Hegseth personally ordered U.S. forces to “kill everybody” on a small wooden boat off the coast of Trinidad on September 2.
You’d expect rogue militias or failed–state paramilitaries to speak that way. You don’t expect it from the man running the Pentagon.
What the Post reports is almost too grotesque to absorb.
After the first U.S. missile ripped the boat apart and set it burning, commanders watched on a live drone feed as two survivors clung desperately to the charred wreckage.
by George Cassidy Payne | December 3, 2025 - 5:45am | permalink
Courage is rarely convenient. Sometimes it is condemned. Ask Hugh Clowers Thompson Jr.
On March 16, 1968, Thompson, a young Army helicopter pilot in the 123rd Aviation Battalion of the 23rd Infantry Division, flew over the South Vietnamese village of Sơn Mỹ and witnessed something unimaginable. American soldiers were systematically killing unarmed civilians—women, children, and the elderly. There were no enemy combatants. This was not war. This was a massacre.
Most soldiers either did not see or refused to confront the truth. Thompson did. He acted decisively: He hovered his helicopter between the troops and the villagers; ordered his crew, Glenn Andreotta and Lawrence Colburn, to fire on American soldiers if the killing continued; and personally escorted terrified civilians to safety. He radioed repeated warnings to Task Force Barker headquarters. Eventually, his actions forced command to halt the massacre.
by Steven Harper | December 5, 2025 - 6:11am | permalink
On Friday, November 28, the Washington Post reported that when the US military began attacking small boats in the Caribbean, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had issued a verbal order that it should “kill everybody.”
When the first attack occurred on September 2, the initial missile strike destroyed the boat but left two survivors clinging to the wreckage. To comply with Hegseth’s order, Admiral Frank M. “Mitch” Bradley authorized a second strike that killed them.
If true, it’s a war crime.
Hegseth called the Post‘s reporting “fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory,” claiming that the drug-smuggling operations were “lawful under both US and international law.”
by Amanda Marcotte | December 4, 2025 - 6:30am | permalink
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth really wants you to think he’s a tough guy. The former Fox News host and reported makeup-studio enthusiast is forever bragging out how brave and manly he is, with a length and volume that screams “overcompensation” to anyone actually possessing internal fortitude. With his perfectly coiffed hair and belligerent posture, Hegseth has long made it clear that his idea of “strength” is strictly a matter of showmanship. He eschews the term “soldier” in favor of “warfighter.” He rejects the term “defense” in favor of “lethality.” He even tried to rename the Defense Department the “Department of War,” which is the bureaucratic equivalent of buying an oversized pickup because your wife left you for her spin instructor.
He forced the military’s top brass to sit still for a lecture about the “warrior ethos,” convened for no other apparent reason than Hegseth’s adolescent desire to pretend that he’s Mel Gibson in “Braveheart.” He goes on and on about his imaginary “male standard” or “male-level” fitness ideals, mostly because women don’t fit his image of what “warfighters” look like, which seems entirely drawn from the G.I. Joe figurines he played with as a child. He was pushed out of the Army, quitting of his own accord because of too much perceived wokeness. As defense secretary, he’s been systematically trying to purge all women who have performed their military duties beyond his capablities. Heaven forbid he endure reminders that many female members of the species are stronger and more capable than he could ever imagine being.
by Vijay Prashad | December 1, 2025 - 5:51am | permalink
US President Donald Trump has authorised the USS Gerald R. Ford to enter the Caribbean. It now floats north of Puerto Rico, joining the USS Iwo Jimaand other US navy assets to threaten Venezuela with an attack. Tensions are high in the Caribbean, with various theories floating about regarding the possibility of what seems to be an inevitable assault by the US and regarding the social catastrophe that such an attack will occasion.
CARICOM, the regional body of the Caribbean countries, released a statement affirming its view that the region must be a “zone of peace” and that disputes must be resolved peacefully. Ten former heads of government from Caribbean states published a letter demanding that “our region must never become a pawn in the rivalries of others”.
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