Tomlinson next referred to a Washington Post report that Hegseth ordered, Kill them all, even the survivors of the first strike. Is anybody here from The Washington Post? I don't know where you get your sources, but they suck. Hegseth continued, Of course not! Anybody that has been in this situation room, or has been in the war room there, the secretary's office, know you don't walk in and say, Kill them all ' It's patently ridiculous. It's meant to create a cartoon of me.
The paper reported that US forces hit the targeted boat once, then hit it again the second strike killing two survivors clinging to the wreckage. According to the Post, the defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, had issued a verbal command to kill them all. Now that incident is under congressional scrutiny, with even some Republicans uneasy about what appears to be a clearcut case of a war crime.
Amid growing tensions between Washington and Caracas, the US has gathered its largest military presence in the Caribbean since the 1989 invasion of Panama. Donald Trump's administration has steadily increased pressure on Venezuela's leader, Nicolas Maduro, accusing him of running the Cartel of the Suns drug-trafficking organization, and placing a $50m bounty on his head. The US leader has been opaque about his intentions and Trump says he is keeping all options on the table from a military intervention to a negotiated exit for Maduro.
Monday, on social media, President Donald Trump announced that he had murdered three people—"three male terrorists killed in action" was how he put it. By "terrorists," the president meant nothing more than that he claimed the three people were smuggling drugs; by "in action," he meant that they were traveling in a boat in the Caribbean when a U.S. military aircraft hunted them down and killed them.
