[This article first appeared at Common Dreams on December 4, 2025.]
On Friday, November 28, the Washington Post reported that when the U.S. 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 U.S. and international law.”
Then the doubletalk began.
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The Belly of the Beast 