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Moral indignation has been thick in the air on Capitol Hill this week from both Democrats and Republicans following the revelation<\/a> that the U.S. military in early September conducted a secondary missile strike on survivors of an earlier U.S. attack on an alleged drug-smuggling boat in the Caribbean Sea.<\/p>\n In the Sept. 2 incident, which occurred as part of U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s divisive campaign of lethal airstrikes on suspected drug traffickers in waters near Venezuela, a follow-on strike killed two survivors who were clinging to the wreckage of an alleged drug-smuggling boat after an initial strike.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Moral indignation has been thick in the air on Capitol Hill this week from both Democrats and Republicans following the revelation<\/a> that the U.S. military in early September conducted a secondary missile strike on survivors of an earlier U.S. attack on an alleged drug-smuggling boat in the Caribbean Sea.<\/p>\n In the Sept. 2 incident, which occurred as part of U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s divisive campaign of lethal airstrikes on suspected drug traffickers in waters near Venezuela, a follow-on strike killed two survivors who were clinging to the wreckage of an alleged drug-smuggling boat after an initial strike.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s outrageous. I think there\u2019s no justification for it, and it\u2019s against our own military\u2019s code of conduct,\u201d said Republican Sen. Rand Paul when questioned about the double-tap boat strike. \u201cThis is something now that is \u2026 clearly illegal.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to know what happened [in the double strike on the boat] because our allies and partners\u2014many of them are under the perception that we didn\u2019t follow the laws of war, which undermines not just our moral authority but could jeopardize our operational effectiveness as well as the safety of our own military personnel moving forward,\u201d said Republican Sen. Todd Young, a former member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.<\/p>\n Young may have been alluding to the possibility that more countries could halt their intelligence cooperation<\/a> with the United States if they conclude that the Trump administration is not following international rules of war. \u201cThat\u2019s why it\u2019s important that we hold an oversight briefing for all of the world to see that we take these matters seriously,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n Republican Sen. Mike Rounds, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which has oversight responsibility for the military strikes in the Caribbean, said enough lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have raised their concerns to ensure a committee investigation into the Sept. 2 double strike by the Navy\u2019s elite SEAL Team 6.<\/p>\n \u201cMost certainly, there\u2019s enough of us that have expressed concern about getting all the facts,\u201d Rounds said, adding that he wanted the hearing to be classified to enable the Defense Department to share more information with the committee. \u201cI won\u2019t get into what the military rules are, but that\u2019s part of the fact-finding that we will do in terms of when you can make a strike, how you make the strike, and when you should not make a strike.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s not yet clear what the actual consequences will be from all the recent Republican dismay and criticism.<\/p>\n But considering how acquiescent most congressional Republicans have been to nearly a year of Trump\u2019s significant departures from decades of bipartisan foreign-policy agreement, the voicing of dissent by more than a handful of Republican lawmakers is a noteworthy departure.<\/p>\n Questions over Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth\u2019s culpability in the double strike have been at the center of bipartisan scrutiny even as the White House has defended his actions.<\/p>\n During a White House cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Hegseth said he\u2019d watched the first strike take place \u201clive\u201d before moving on to another meeting. \u201cI did not personally see survivors,\u201d Hegseth said<\/a> in response to a reporter\u2019s question. \u201cThat thing was on fire, and it exploded \u2026 you can\u2019t see anything. This is called the fog of war.\u201d<\/p>\n The defense secretary also doubled down<\/a> on his support for the controversial deadly attacks: \u201cWe\u2019ve only just begun striking narco-boats and putting narco-terrorists at the bottom of the ocean.\u201d<\/p>\n Paul, who has co-led multiple unsuccessful Senate votes to constrain the Trump administration\u2019s war powers when it comes to conducting lethal strikes in the Caribbean, was scathing in his criticism of Hegseth: \u201cThere is a question, how can on Sunday Pete Hegseth say: \u2018Absolutely, it did not happen, you guys are all fake news<\/a>,\u2019\u2026 then on Monday, say, \u2018It happened.\u2019 So, there\u2019s only two possibilities: He was either lying on Sunday or was so incompetent that he didn\u2019t know what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly accused Hegseth and Trump of throwing Adm. Frank Bradley, the Special Operations commander who oversaw the strikes, \u201cunder the bus,\u201d adding that the admiral has a \u201cstellar reputation.\u201d<\/p>\n Kelly, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, blamed Trump for creating the permissive legal environment that allowed the double strike to happen. \u201cThis is the kind of thing that happens when you have a president who says, \u2018We\u2019re going to go out and kill people.\u2019 Not what presidents normally say, and when you have an unqualified secretary of defense, a guy who has basically zero qualifications for this job, that runs around on a stage<\/a>, you know, talking about lethality and warrior ethos and killing people, they have set the environment for stuff like this to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n