Rachel Hurley RachelandtheCity.com
Under the laws of war, you never attack anyone who is hors de combat: shipwrecked, wounded, defenseless, or already in your power. But on September 2, Pete Hegseth gave an order to do exactly that.
The DOD Law of War Manual is explicit about this. Section 5.9 states that persons placed hors de combat may not be made the object of attack, and it specifically includes persons incapacitated by shipwreck. The Manual continues: “Persons who have been incapacitated by shipwreck are in a helpless state, and it would be dishonorable and inhumane to make them the object of attack.”
This isn’t some obscure legal theory. The ban on no quarter - the rule that you don’t kill people who can’t fight back - is the bedrock of lawful command. Every officer is trained on it. The Lieber Code prescribed the death penalty for violating it back in 1863.
Here’s what happened off the coast of Trinidad back in September. The U.S. military struck a “suspected” drug boat. The first missile killed nine of the eleven people aboard. Two survivors were left clinging to burning wreckage in the water.
Admiral Frank “Mitch” Bradley, then head of Joint Special Operations Command, watched them on the drone feed. He ordered a second strike. Those two men were blown apart.
According to the Washington Post, which broke this story on Friday, Hegseth’s spoken directive to forces was clear: “kill everybody.”
Multiple military lawyers are calling this murder. This not hyperbole. Actual murder under military law.
The Senate Armed Services Committee announced a bipartisan investigation yesterday. Republican Roger Wicker joining Democrat Jack Reed matters because Wicker doesn’t typically break with Trump. This is serious enough that even the GOP chairman who leads the committee is worried about where this goes.
But here’s the thing that I haven’t see anyone put together yet. This isn’t just about one illegal order. It’s about what happened next.
Six weeks after those strikes, Hegseth kicked the entire Pentagon press corps out of the building. In mid-October, he demanded that correspondents sign a new policy requiring them to not obtain or use any unauthorized information - even if it’s unclassified.
Nearly every major outlet refused to sign. The Associated Press, Reuters, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, CNN, NPR, Fox News. About 40 to 50 journalists walked out together at the 4 p.m. deadline on October 15, carrying boxes, chairs, books, and old photos from workspaces some had occupied for two decades. Hegseth responded to their statements on social media with a hand-wave emoji - showing his clear arrested development.
The only outlet that signed the new policy? One America News Network. And now Hegseth is hosting meet-and-greets this week for right-wing outlets and influencers who’ve never regularly covered the Pentagon before - Gateway Pundit, Post Millennial, Human Events, National Pulse, and far-right activist Laura Loomer. You know, the great journalistic minds of our time.
And, for the first time since the Eisenhower administration, no major U.S. television network or publication has a permanent presence in the Pentagon.
Then October, Trump retroactively declared the United States in armed conflict with drug cartels. While we’re all just thinking that he’s just being his imbecile self, what he was actually doing was helping Hesgseth cover his tracks.
Look at the timeline. September: the illegal strikes start. October: Trump tires to legally justify the killings after the fact. October: the press corps gets expelled from the building. October: Admiral Alvin Holsey, the four-star who oversaw U.S. Southern Command and that September strike, announces his early retirement after raising concerns about the mission in a tense meeting with Hegseth. November: Hegseth launches investigations into six Democratic lawmakers for reminding troops they can refuse illegal orders. November: the Washington Post breaks the “kill everybody” story anyway.
That looks pretty suspicious to me and it’s textbook authoritarian behavior. Do the illegal thing. Remove the people who can report on it. Push out the military leaders who object. Then investigate anyone who reminds people it was illegal in the first place.
Those six lawmakers - the “Seditious Six” as Hegseth branded them - all have military or intelligence backgrounds. Senators Mark Kelly and Elissa Slotkin, Representatives Jason Crow, Chris Deluzio, Chrissy Houlahan, and Maggie Goodlander. They released a 90-second video last week with a simple message: “Our laws are clear. You can refuse illegal orders. You must refuse illegal orders.”
They didn’t cite specific examples. They didn’t need to. Everyone knew exactly what they were talking about.
Trump called it “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” Hegseth said their video was “despicable, reckless, and false.” The Pentagon announced it would investigate Kelly, a retired Navy captain, for potential recall to active duty and court-martial. The FBI is now seeking interviews with all six lawmakers.
Think about that for a second.
They might court-martial a sitting U.S. senator for reminding troops about their legal obligation to refuse illegal orders, while the Defense Secretary who actually gave an illegal order gets a Senate investigation that will probably lead nowhere - and he’s conducting that investigation with no independent press in the building to watch what happens.
Bradley tried to justify the second strike by arguing the survivors were still legitimate targets because they could theoretically call other traffickers for help - but that’s wrong.
The DOD Manual is crystal clear: incapacitated survivors may not be targeted unless they commit a hostile act or attempt to escape. Men clinging to burning wreckage aren’t doing either. They’re shipwrecked. That puts them off limits.
Admiral Bradley had a legal duty to refuse Hegseth’s order. Section 18.22.4 of the DOD Manual requires officers “to refuse to comply with clearly illegal orders to commit violations of the law of war.” The prohibition on targeting disabled combatants is so clear there’s no gray area here.
He ordered the second strike anyway.
Now here’s what makes this whole situation darker than just one war crime.
Trump’s memo declaring the United States in armed conflict with drug cartels went to Congress in October. The boat strike happened in September. He built the legal framework retroactively. That’s not how war works. That’s not how law works. That’s how coverups work.
The confidential memo claims drug cartels are “unlawful combatants” who wage “armed attacks” against America by selling drugs. Under this logic, anyone on a boat the intelligence community “assesses” might be affiliated with a cartel becomes a legitimate military target. No trial. No evidence. No survivors required.
They’ve killed over 80 people across at least 23 boats using this framework. The Pentagon has refused to provide Congress with evidence that any of these boats actually carried drugs. They’ve refused to specify which cartels we’re supposedly at war with. They’ve refused to explain how they determine who’s “sufficiently connected” to a cartel to warrant being blown up in international waters.
It looks to me like Hegseth just decided he wanted to play WAR one day and started indiscriminately attacking boats.
And now there’s no Pentagon press corps in the building to even ask questions. Just OANN and Laura Loomer.
Venezuela isn’t even a major cocaine source - it’s a transit hub. According to current and former law enforcement officials, most cocaine moving through the Caribbean is heading to Europe, not the United States. But the administration designated Venezuela’s Cartel de los Soles as a terrorist organization anyway, which conveniently makes anyone on a boat anywhere near Venezuela fair game under this new framework.
The legal theory here is borrowed directly from the Bush administration’s war on terror. Declare a conflict. Designate terrorists. Kill enemy combatants without trial. But even that framework required congressional authorization after 9/11. Trump just sent a confidential memo to Congress and started blowing people up.
Former military lawyer Todd Huntley told the Post these strikes “amount to murder.” The law of armed conflict requires that targets pose an immediate military threat. Selling drugs, even deadly ones, is not an armed attack. A boat in the Caribbean carrying cocaine to Europe is not attacking America.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio was more direct about the actual strategy when asked about
legal authority for the strikes. “Interdiction doesn’t work,” he said. “What will stop them is when you blow them up, when you get rid of them.”
That’s the whole game. They’re not trying to stop drugs. They’re establishing precedent for extrajudicial killings anywhere in the Western Hemisphere under the pretext of counternarcotics operations. Today it’s alleged drug boats in international waters. Tomorrow it’s anyone the administration claims is connected to a cartel, which could mean literally anyone in certain parts of Latin America.
Here’s the twisted legal logic. The Office of Legal Counsel reportedly blessed the drug boat campaign by saying the law of armed conflict governs these strikes. But if the law of armed conflict governs, then killing shipwrecked survivors is explicitly illegal under that same law. The OLC can’t have it both ways. Either armed conflict rules apply and this was murder, or armed conflict rules don’t apply and all the strikes are illegal.
Even a completely loyal Office of Legal Counsel can’t justify this retroactively. The legal framework they already established forbids exactly what happened on that boat.
Admiral Holsey understood this. That’s why he raised concerns about authorizing strikes without warning or interdiction. That’s why the meeting with Hegseth got tense. That’s why a decorated 37-year Navy veteran announced his retirement just over a year into what’s normally a three-year command. Combatant commanders don’t walk away in the middle of major military operations unless something is fundamentally wrong.
Senator Jack Reed called Holsey’s unexpected departure “troubling” and said it “sends an alarming signal of instability within the chain of command.” Retired Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery was more direct: “We’re conducting extremely unusual operations in Southern Command right now that a reasonable person could disagree with the legality of.”
But when Holsey objected, he got pushed out. When the Pentagon press corps tried to report on it, they got kicked out of the building. When Bradley executed shipwrecked survivors, he kept his command. When six lawmakers reminded troops about their legal obligations, they got investigated by the FBI and threatened with death by the president.
The system now works like this: giving illegal orders gets you protected by retroactive legal memos, reminding troops about illegal orders gets you investigated for sedition, and trying to report on illegal orders gets you expelled from the building.
Trump is already talking about taking military action on land in Venezuela “very soon.” The USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier is parked in the Caribbean with up to 5,000 troops. Rubio keeps saying Trump “wants to wage war” on Venezuelan drug traffickers. They’re not preparing for more boat strikes.
They’re building toward ground operations. And they’re doing it without independent press coverage from inside the Pentagon to scrutinize what’s happening.
The “Seditious Six” were right. Service members can refuse illegal orders. They must refuse illegal orders. That’s not sedition - that’s basic military law that’s been on the books since 1863. And the American public has a right to know when their Defense Secretary violates those laws, which is exactly why Hegseth kicked out every independent journalist who might tell them.
Senator Mark Kelly put it simply: “If this is meant to intimidate me and other members of Congress from doing our jobs and holding this administration accountable, it won’t work.”
But here’s what everyone’s missing while they debate whether Hegseth’s exact words were “kill everybody” or something more professionally phrased. Trump already made the order legal. He did it quietly, retroactively, without congressional approval, and with no press corps in the building to watch it happen. The Senate investigation into Hegseth will probably go nowhere because Trump’s memo already declared everyone involved exempt from prosecution.
The only accountability mechanism left is the pardon power. Trump can immunize everyone involved in these strikes. He probably will.
That’s how this story ends. Not with accountability for war crimes, but with presidential clemency for illegal killings that were covered up by expelling the press and defended by investigating the lawmakers who dared to remind American troops that they have a choice when given illegal orders.
If that doesn’t scare you more than one defense secretary’s bloodlust, you’re not paying attention to how power actually works.
And I can hear my comments already…
“So what about The Hague? Could Hegseth actually face the International Criminal Court?”
Technically, yes. The boat strike happened off the coast of Trinidad, which is a member state of the Rome Statute. The ICC can exercise jurisdiction over war crimes committed on the territory of member states, even when the perpetrators are citizens of non-member countries like the United States.
That’s how international law works - if you commit crimes in someone else’s territory, you’re subject to their jurisdiction.
But here’s reality.
The United States is not a party to the Rome Statute and never will be. Trump just imposed new sanctions on the ICC in February. The American Service Members Protection Act, passed back in 2002, strictly limits U.S. cooperation with the court and authorizes the president to use “all means necessary” to free any American detained by the ICC. Critics literally call it “The Hague Invasion Act.”
The ICC operates on something called “complementarity” - it only acts when national courts are unwilling or unable to genuinely prosecute. So if the Senate investigation leads to charges, or if military justice pursues this, the ICC steps back. But if Trump pardons everyone and the U.S. does nothing? That’s when the ICC says a country is “unwilling” to prosecute.
The problem is enforcement. The ICC has no police force. It relies on member states to arrest people under ICC warrants. The U.S. would never hand over Hegseth. No country with U.S. military bases or that depends on American aid would dare arrest him either. Just look at how Netanyahu traveled freely despite ICC warrants - powerful countries protect their people.
So theoretically, Hegseth could be indicted by The Hague. Sure.
But practically, even if he was prosecuted, he’d just never travel to any of the 125 ICC member states. He’d be confined to the United States and a handful of allied countries that wouldn’t arrest him. That’s not exactly justice, but I guess it’s more than nothing. At least it would be a permanent record that what he did was a war crime under international law, even if American power makes him untouchable.
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