Washington — Washington (AFP) – President Donald Trump Top Cabinet officials who oversee national security are expected to return to Capitol Hill on Tuesday as questions grow about the rapid escalation of U.S. military force and deadly boat strikes in international waters near Venezuela.
defense minister Pete HegsethMinister of Foreign Affairs Marco Rubio Others are scheduled to brief members of the House and Senate amid congressional investigations Military strike in September It led to the deaths of two survivors of the initial attack on a boat allegedly carrying cocaine in the Caribbean. Lawmakers have been examining the Sept. 2 attack as they examine the rationale for a broader U.S. military buildup in the region that increasingly appears directed at Venezuela. On the eve of the briefing, the US military said so late Monday He attacked three other boats He is believed to have been smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific, killing eight people.
“We have thousands of troops and our largest aircraft carrier in the Caribbean — but there is no explanation for what Trump is trying to accomplish,” said Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York.
The closed sessions come as the United States builds warships and fighter jets fly close to Venezuelan airspace. Seizing an oil tanker As part of I carried her Against the Venezuelan president Nicolas MaduroWho insisted that the real goal of US military operations was to force him from office. The Republican Trump administration has not requested any authorization from Congress to take action against Venezuela. But lawmakers who object to military incursions are pushing war powers resolutions toward a potential vote this week.
All of this raises sharp questions that Hegseth and others will be pressed to answer. Experts say the administration’s go-it-alone approach, without Congress, has led to problematic military actions, none more so than in a strike that killed two people who climbed to the top of part of a boat that was partially destroyed in an initial attack.
“If the war is not against Venezuela, we are just using armed force against civilians who are committing crimes,” said John Yu, a law professor at Berkeley who helped craft the George W. Bush administration’s legal arguments for aggressive interrogation after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. “Then this question, this concern, becomes really clear. You know, you’re shooting civilians. There’s no military purpose to it.”
However, for the first several months, Congress received little information about why or how the U.S. military was waging a campaign that exacerbated the problem. Destroying more than 20 boats At least 95 people were killed. At times, lawmakers learned of strikes from social media after the Pentagon posted videos of boats catching fire.
Congress is now demanding — including in language included in the annual military policy bill — that the Pentagon release video of that initial process to lawmakers.
For some, the footage has become a case model illustrating the flawed rationale behind the entire campaign.
“The American public needs to see this,” said Sen. Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky who has been an outspoken critic of the campaign. “I think shooting defenseless people floundering in the water, clinging to debris, does not represent who we are as a people.” He added, “You can’t say you’re at war and say, ‘We’re not going to give any kind of due process to anyone and blow up people without any kind of proof.'”
Hegseth told lawmakers Last week he was still deciding whether or not to release the footage.
However, there are also several prominent Republicans who support the campaign. Senator Jim Risch, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, last week called the attacks “completely legal, 100% legal under US law and international law.” He claimed that many Americans were killed He was saved by ensuring that the drugs did not reach the United States
But as lawmakers delved into the details of the Sept. 2 attack, inconsistencies emerged in the Trump administration’s explanation of the attack, which the Pentagon initially tried to dismiss as a “completely false” account.
Trump has argued That the raid that killed the survivors was justified because people were trying to turn the boat over. Several GOP lawmakers also made that argument, saying it showed the two survivors were trying to stay in the fight, rather than surrender.
However, Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley, who ordered the second strike while commanding the Special Forces soldiers who were carrying it out, acknowledged in private briefings on Capitol Hill last week that although the two people tried to turn the boat around, they were unlikely to succeed. That’s according to several people who were present at the briefings or aware of them and spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss them.
Bradley told deputies that the two people climbed on top of the overturned boat, did not make any radio or phone calls for support and were waving. The Navy admiral consulted with a military lawyer, then ordered a second strike because he believed the drugs were in the boat’s hull and the mission was to make sure they were destroyed.
Experts say the strike appears to conflict with the Pentagon strike Manual on the laws of warwhich states that “orders to fire upon shipwrecked persons would be patently unlawful.”
“The boat was damaged, the boat capsized, and the power to the boat went out,” said Michael Schmitt, a former Air Force lawyer and professor emeritus at the U.S. Naval War College. “I don’t really care if there’s another boat coming to rescue them. They’ve drowned.”
The argument at the heart of Trump’s campaign — that drugs destined for the United States amount to an attack on American lives — has led lawmakers to try to analyze whether laws have been violated and, more broadly, what Trump’s goals are with Venezuela.
Along with Hegseth and Rubio’s briefings on Tuesday, Bradley is also expected to appear in classified briefings with the Senate and House Armed Services committees on Wednesday.
Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina, said he wanted to “really understand what the action was, what intelligence they were acting on, whether or not they were following the laws of war and the laws of the sea.”