During a Cabinet meeting last Tuesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth invoked "the fog of war" while discussing the newly controversial September 2 attack that inaugurated President Donald Trump's deadly military campaign against suspected drug boats in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific. The implication was that Adm. Frank M. Bradley, who commanded that SEAL Team 6 operation, ordered a second strike, which blew up two survivors as they clung to the smoldering wreckage, in conditions of uncertainty. Yet Hegseth also said he was convinced Bradley "made the correct decision to ultimately sink the boat and eliminate the threat."
To back up that assessment, Bradley and other Pentagon officials showed lawmakers the full video of the attack, which was executed in the Caribbean near Venezuela, during closed-door briefings on Thursday. Unlike the snippet that Trump and Hegseth posted while bragging about the attack, this video shows what happened after the first missile strike, and it provoked sharply different reactions that broke along partisan lines. Democrats such as Rep. Jim Himes (D–Conn.), the ranking minority member of the House Intelligence Committee, said the video reinforced the impression that the second strike amounted to a war crime. Sen. Tom Cotton (R–Ark.), chairman of Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters he did not see "anything disturbing" in the video, which he said confirmed that the second strike was "highly lawful."
