Press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed the apparent war crime was legal even as she said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth knew nothing about it.

The White House on Monday shifted the blame for killing the survivors of a U.S. military strike on an alleged drug smuggling boat from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and onto the commanding admiral.

Killing survivors of a destroyed vessel is literally an example of a war crime in the U.S. Department of Defense Law of War Manual. “For example, orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal,” the manual reads.

Press secretary Karoline Leavitt, nevertheless, repeatedly stated that it was legal – even as she further claimed, as Donald Trump did Sunday, that Hegseth was unaware that it had happened.

  • SaraTonin@lemmy.world
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    8 hours ago

    Can it be a war crime if you’re not actually at war? Seems like it’s just murder.

  • jaybone@lemmy.zip
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    12 hours ago

    Follow illegal orders, get thrown under the bus.

    Dont follow illegal orders, get thrown under the bus.

  • UnspecificGravity@infosec.pub
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    17 hours ago

    Oh look, exactly what Mark Kelly was talking about. Shit rolls down hill guys. Remember that when someone orders you to murder people.

    • massacre@lemmy.world
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      14 hours ago

      The top brass who aren’t full on MAGA, but didn’t leave now have clear proof that they are expendable and will be scapegoated to protect Trump and his croneys. Honestly showing their hand at this stage gives me a lot of hope that any coup won’t happen now and resistance will be strengthened from within. I smell leaks coming!

  • kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world
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    15 hours ago

    As was said elsewhere, the transmitted command will have been recorded. The hard undeniable truth can be provided. Congress just needs to subpoena it, or a soldier with a conscience needs to whistleblow and leak it. Otherwise, we trust the liars’ word and they get away with yet more of what are unquestionably, objectively, war crimes.

    • Instigate@aussie.zone
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      14 hours ago

      The Narcissist’s Prayer:

      That didn’t happen.
      And if it did, it wasn’t that bad.
      And if it was, that’s not a big deal.
      And if it is, that’s not my fault. <— we are here
      And if it was, I didn’t mean it.
      And if I did, you deserved it.

    • ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world
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      17 hours ago

      I think we’re currently in the phase where it’s rapidly undulating between both takes.

      Give it another week and it’ll devolve into “what firing on shipwrecked people? What are you talking about? Lalalala, I can’t hear you!”

  • xxce2AAb@feddit.dk
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    22 hours ago

    And this is one of the many, many good reasons why one does not comply with illegal orders, damn it!

  • DandomRude@lemmy.world
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    17 hours ago

    We also don’t fight with stupid rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country. No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement, just common sense, maximum lethality and authority for warfighters.

    Pete Hegseth [Source]

  • Lushed_Lungfish@lemmy.ca
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    17 hours ago

    As a sailor, I find the whole shoddy affair most disgusting.

    Yes in war (and this was by no means a war) we may seek to kill one another as enemies, but every sailor knows, it is the sea who is the ultimate enemy.

    A human adrift at sea is a pitiful thing. To save them is to save ourselves.

    • regedit@lemmy.zip
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      9 hours ago

      Even in WWII, the German Navy refused Hitler’s illegal orders and outright saved or radioed the location of boats they sunk and survivors in the water, even to the peril of their crew stealth. It pissed Hitler off early in the war.

      • Lushed_Lungfish@lemmy.ca
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        8 hours ago

        Captain Zur See Hans Langsdorff of the Graf Spee was famous for this. It did eventually cost him his ship though he saved the majority of his crew along with any Allied prisoners he had aboard.

        The German submarine fleet, on the other hand, was less inclined to do this primarily due to the nature of the submarine as a weapon. Though there were exceptions.

        • regedit@lemmy.zip
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          8 hours ago

          I’m a huge German UBoat fan. Loved Silent Hunter III and Wolfpack for games and live a few hours south of Chicago!

  • Archangel1313@lemmy.ca
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    20 hours ago

    As they should. But the fact that he chose to follow an obviously illegal order, doesn’t absolve the ones who gave that order. This should in no way, take the heat off Hegseth…or Trump himself.

  • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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    21 hours ago

    Killing survivors of a destroyed vessel is literally an example of a war crime in the U.S. Department of Defense Law of War Manual. “For example, orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal,” the manual reads.

    RTFM

      • Donjuanme@lemmy.world
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        20 hours ago

        That’s like what my understanding of fubar was, face unrecognizable, belay any response.

        Thanks Dad.

        Combined with a pretty bad case of face blindness led me to telling a fellow classmate a professor was “fubar” in public…

        • ジン@quokk.au
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          19 hours ago

          I’m confused—I thought that acronym was ‘fudged up beyond any repair’? I also don’t get ‘belay any response’. Does this mean to ‘remain unresponsive’? The confusion here being that belay means to halt essentially—so the word choice doesn’t make intuitive sense to me.

          If this was all just a setup for the joke, apologies for the technicalities

          • NABDad@lemmy.world
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            19 hours ago

            Your understanding of the term, assuming you replaced “fucked” with “fudged”, is correct. The explanation given by the father was a lie to avoid teaching curse words to a child.

          • xorollo@leminal.space
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            19 hours ago

            I think it works as instructions on how to face Cthulhu. Or maybe explains deer reacting to headlights.

            Edit: I was reading ‘face’ as a verb as in 'to confront", instructing you to face the unrecognizable.

            On the other hand I guess it could be a suggestion that you hide any recognizable facial responses to something.

  • flango@lemmy.eco.br
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    18 hours ago

    First of all, blowing up a boat like is illegal. Even if it was legal you’ll have to prove that the boat contained drugs, but you just blowed your evidences! The guys that survived the attack then would have no charges over them and would be set free. Probably these guys were innocent and the boat was not a drug boat, thus they killed them as a cover up