Republicans who have seen the video have insisted this was all lawful. Senator Tom Cotton, for instance, said it showed the two survivors attempting to flip a boat “loaded with drugs bound for the United States.” But if Smith’s account of the video is correct, that’s in doubt: The boat looked incapacitated, and the drugs weren’t in fact visible.
The military officials stressed in the briefing that Hegseth never directly ordered them to “kill them all,” meaning all the people on board, something that was implied by Washington Post reporting and that Hegseth denied to Trump. And they confirmed that Hegseth didn’t give the direct order for the second strike, Smith says.
But they did say that Hegseth’s declared mission was to kill all 11 people, Smith notes. “It was, ‘Destroy the drugs, kill all 11 people on board,’” Smith told me. “It is not that inaccurate to say that the rules of engagement from Hegseth were, ‘Kill all 11 people on that boat.’” And so, by all indications, that second strike appears to have been ordered to comply with Hegseth’s command.
