Over the last few weeks, everyone in D.C. has been after Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
He was never really well-liked in terms of being Donald Trump’s Pentagon boss, and the controversial second strike on a drug boat in September gave his detractors the excuse they needed to put his head on the chopping block.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is now sticking up for Hegseth, claiming that he saw video footage of the strike, declaring it a righteous action.
Hegseth has removed himself from responsibility for having directly approved the second strike, but he immediately claimed that if he had been in the place of Admiral Frank M. Bradley -- the man who did -- he would have greenlit the operation.
Bradley claimed that when the decision was made for the second strike, Hegseth was already off the video feed, as some time had passed after the initial strike and the decision to make the second one.
Hegseth explained, “A couple hours later [after moving on], I was told, hey, there had to be a reattack, because there were a couple folks who could still be in the fight."
He continued, “Access to radios. There was a linkup point of another potential boat. Drugs were still there. They were actively interacting with them. I said, ‘Roger, sounds good.’”
Thus far, the only people who have seen the aforementioned video footage are members of Congress who are on relevant committees with jurisdiction over such matters.
The controversy now has everyone asking to see it, including Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who has been against these strikes from the outset.
He stated, "I think we need to see all of the video footage, particularly of the second strike from Sept. 2.”
Sen. Paul has been ranting about this from the start, making regular allegations against the administration, calling the strikes illegal, and saying that he believes Trump is starting a war without congressional approval.
Johnson recently announced that he saw the full video, and he believes this was a righteous strike. He stated, "The individuals on that vessel were not helpless castaways. They were drug runners on a capsized drug boat and, by all indications, attempting to recover it so they could continue pushing drugs to kill Americans."
The speaker continued, "What the video shows is that these individuals were there. They were able-bodied, they were not injured, and they were attempting to recover the contents of the boat, which was full of narcotics."
We can only report the information we are given, and thus far, Democrats have made it sound as though the survivors of the initial strike were barely hanging on to the wreckage and asking for help. That is far from the picture Johnson just described. When the first reports came in, I suggested that the litmus test should be how we would react if we were at war and it had been our troops on that wrecked boat.
Initially, I would have agreed that a second strike was uncalled for. Since hearing the reports from people who saw the full video, however, my opinion is starting to change. I would love to see the video for myself, but something tells me that will never happen. So, until then, we have to continue to rely on members of Congress and the few details that trickle out. Unless we see what happened for ourselves, though, I doubt we will ever truly get an honest accounting of how the strike took place.
