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Hegseth Refuses to Release Strike Video12/17 06:07
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday the Pentagon
will not publicly release unedited video of a U.S. military strike that killed
two survivors of an initial attack on a boat allegedly carrying cocaine in the
Caribbean, as questions mounted in Congress about the incident and the overall
buildup of U.S. military forces near Venezuela.
President Donald Trump further ramped up the pressure late Tuesday by
announcing a blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers into Venezuela, which has
long relied on oil revenue as the lifeblood of its economy.
Hegseth said members of the Armed Services Committee in the House and Senate
would have an opportunity this week to review the attack video, but did not say
whether all members of Congress would be allowed to see it as well.
"Of course we're not going to release a top secret, full, unedited video of
that to the general public," Hegseth told reporters as he exited a closed-door
briefing with senators.
Trump's Cabinet members overseeing national security were on Capitol Hill on
Tuesday to defend a campaign that has killed at least 95 people in 25 known
strikes on vessels in international waters in the Caribbean and eastern
Pacific. Overall, they defended the campaign as a success, saying it has
prevented drugs from reaching American shores, and they pushed back on concerns
that it is stretching the bounds of lawful warfare.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters the campaign is a
"counter-drug mission" that is "focused on dismantling the infrastructure of
these terrorist organizations that are are operating in our hemisphere,
undermining the security of Americans, killing Americans, poisoning Americans."
Lawmakers have been focused on the Sept. 2 attack on two survivors as they
sift through the rationale for a broader U.S. military buildup in the region.
On the eve of the briefings, the U.S. military said it attacked three more
boats believed to have been smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean,
killing eight people.
Lawmakers left in the dark about Trump's goal with Venezuela
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said Hegseth had come "empty handed"
to the briefing, without a pledge to more broadly release the video of the
Sept. 2 strike.
"If they can't be transparent on this, how can you trust their transparency
on all the other issues swirling about in the Caribbean?" the New York Democrat
said.
Senators on both sides of the aisle said the officials left them in the dark
about Trump's goals when it comes to President Nicols Maduro or sending U.S.
forces directly to the South American nation.
"I want to address the question, is it the goal to take him out? If it's not
the goal to take him out, you're making a mistake," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, a
South Carolina Republican who defended the legality of the campaign and said he
wanted to see Maduro removed from power.
The U.S. has deployed warships, flown fighter jets near Venezuelan airspace
and seized an oil tanker as part of its campaign against Maduro, who has
insisted the real purpose of the U.S. military operations is to force him from
office. Maduro said on a weekly state television show Monday that his
government still does not know the whereabouts of the tanker's crew. He
criticized the United Nations for not speaking out against what he described as
an "act of piracy" against "a private ship carrying Venezuelan oil."
Maduro's government for years has evaded U.S. oil sanctions by smuggling its
crude into global supply chains on a shadow fleet of unflagged tankers.
Trump's Republican administration has not sought any authorization from
Congress for action against Venezuela. The go-it-alone approach, experts say,
has led to problematic military actions, none more so than the strike that
killed two people who had climbed on top of part of a boat that had been
partially destroyed in an initial attack.
"If it's not a war against Venezuela, then we're using armed force against
civilians who are just committing crimes," said John Yoo, a Berkeley Law
professor who helped craft the George W. Bush administration's legal arguments
and justification for aggressive interrogation after the Sept. 11, 2001,
attacks. "Then this question, this worry, becomes really pronounced. You know,
you're shooting civilians. There's no military purpose for it."
Yet for the first several months, Congress received little more than a
trickle of information about why or how the U.S. military was conducting the
operations. At times, lawmakers have learned of strikes from social media after
the Pentagon posted videos of boats bursting into flames.
Hegseth now faces language included in an annual military policy bill that
threatens to withhold a quarter of his travel budget if the Pentagon does not
provide unedited video of the strikes to the House and Senate Committees on
Armed Services.
The demand for release of video footage
For some, the controversy over the footage demonstrates the flawed rationale
behind the entire campaign.
"The American public ought to see it. I think shooting unarmed people
floundering in the water, clinging to wreckage, is not who we are as a people,"
said Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican who has been an outspoken critic of
the campaign.
But senators were told the Trump administration won't release all of the
Sept. 2 attack footage because it would reveal U.S. military practices on
intelligence gathering, said Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
She said the reasoning ignores that the military has already released footage
of the initial attack.
"They just don't want to reveal the part that suggests war crimes," she said.
Some GOP lawmakers are determined to dig into the details of the Sept. 2
attack. Adm. Frank "Mitch" Bradley, who ordered the second strike, was expected
back on Capitol Hill on Wednesday for classified briefings with the Senate and
House Armed Services committees. The committees would also review video of the
Sept. 2 strikes, Hegseth said.
Still, many Republicans emerged from the briefings backing the campaign,
defending their legality and praising the "exquisite intelligence" that is used
to identify targets. House Speaker Mike Johnson called the strike "certainly
appropriate" and "necessary to protect the United States and our interests."
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