There is an increasing apprehension among service members that they may be asked to carry out an illegal order, amid reports Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered troops to “kill everybody” in a boat strike in September.
The concerns, reflected in an uptick in calls to the Orders Project — which provides free legal advice to military personnel — come from the likes of staff officers involved in planning the strikes on supposed drug-carrying boats and those in charge of designating those on the vessels as a threat in order to carry out such attacks.
Even as a reported Justice Department classified memo from this summer preemptively argued that U.S. troops involved in the strikes would not be in legal jeopardy, service members appear far more concerned than usual that the U.S. military may be opening them up to legal harm, according to Frank Rosenblatt, president of the National Institute of Military Justice, which runs the Orders Project.
Uh… on this particular war crime I have about twenty years of US history for you and you are not going to like it. To respond to your rhetorical question, the point is cheap and profitable oil contracts to increase shareholder value.
Oh for sure I’m not saying we haven’t been doing the same thing in the Middle East for literal decades at this point. Mosques, weddings, kids, civilians. I guess a double tap on some anonymous drowning civilians, from a nation were aren’t engaged in combat with, who might have had drugs in their boat, and who were disabled and in the water and posed no possible threat, just hits even harder than a lot of the other ridiculous terrible shit we’ve done.
Why would innocent civilians be on a drug boat?
omg so true, changed my mind, blow up anyone anywhere on Earth of whom that question could be asked please.
There is a distinction between what Hegseth did and what Obama did. Not a good one, but maybe it would result in action against Hegseth.
The purpose of Obama’s drone strikes was murder. So if they didn’t get the murder they were looking for, a second strike was necessary. I imagine they announced a terrorist was killed and everybody was happy.
The purpose of Hegseth’s murder was to destroy a drug boat. Once the boat was destroyed, any additional strike goes against the purpose of the mission.
Anyway, I have no confidence anything will come of this, but I am happy it is making waves. Maybe it will enter mainstream news and will force them to quit the strikes.
As someone else pointed out… Its actually the example they use of an illegal order in the DOD manual.
Page 1117 18.3.2.1 https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23892053-dod-law-of-war-manual-june-2015-updated-july-2023/
Needs text alternative.
Images of text break much that text alternatives do not. Losses due to image of text lacking alternative such as link:
Contrary to age & humble appearance, text is an advanced technology that provides all these capabilities absent from images.
Pure image of text right there.
Edit: 👍
I have provided a link instead so users can verify the veracity of my claim.
OMG RTFM Hegseth!
Also, I say Hegseth and we all know Trump is right there, but he’s already thrown him under the bus by saying he never approved of a second strike.
I honestly don’t know how much Trump actually cares about the details. He just wants Maduro out of there and an agreement that his cronies get a big helping of their oil profits.