Pete Hegseth Freaks Out When Asked About the Boat Strikes

Hegseth wrote that he took the platoon aside after the briefing and told them: “I will not allow this nonsense to seep into your brains. Men, if you see an enemy that you think is a threat, you engage and destroy the threat. This is a bullshit rule that will get people killed. And I will support you, as will our commander. We are going home, the enemy will not.”

The passage, reported by The Guardian Tuesday’s is one of several examples in Hegseth’s book in which he complains about the rules and regulations governing war in the U.S. military. In another passage, Hegseth complains: “If our warriors are forced to follow rules arbitrarily and asked to sacrifice more lives to make international courts feel better about themselves, aren’t we just better off winning our wars by our own rules?! It doesn’t matter what other countries think.”

Throughout the book, Hegseth repeatedly praises his own commander, Colonel Michael Steele, whom he calls a “certified badass” and who was later reprimanded for allegedly order soldiers in Iraq in 2006 to “kill all military-age men” during a raid.