Former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall on Monday rejected Adm. Frank Bradley’s justification for launching a second attack on a Caribbean ship as two wounded survivors clung to the vessel.
“Under normal circumstances, he would have been court-martialed. He would have been relieved of duty and he would have been court-martialed,” Kendall, who served as a secretary under former President Joe Biden, told MS NOW. “The government is making up logic and justification for what it’s doing, going against all legal history and all precedent, and that’s basically what we’re seeing here.”
Several other former U.S. government and military leaders also called the Double Tap attack a violation of the country’s laws of war manual. Bradley is scheduled to provide a confidential briefing on Thursday to lawmakers who continue to investigate the Trump administration’s attacks in the Caribbean.
“Admiral Bradley reportedly gave an excuse, if you will, for a second engagement. It doesn’t hold up. These men were injured. They were in the water. They were not a threat to anyone. This is another textbook example of a war crime,” Kendall said Monday.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered “everyone on board to be killed” as part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on alleged drug sales and shipments across Latin America, The Washington Post reported.
However, Hegseth said he did not order the second attack.
“You can’t kill survivors who can no longer fight,” John Yoo, a former adviser in the administration of former President George W. Bush, said during an appearance on CNN on Monday. “So, the Admiral is not supposed to obey the orders given by Secretary Heggs. Not even the soldiers who are carrying out the Admiral’s orders are supposed to obey.”
White House press secretary Carolyn Leavitt said Monday that Bradley acted “within the bounds of his authority and the law.”
Levitt claimed the attacks were justified after the drug cartel was deemed a foreign terrorist organization, allowing “lethal strikes under the laws of war.”
Her comments contradicted U.S. war manuals, which state that “an order to fire on a wrecked vessel is manifestly unlawful.”
Legal experts told PBS the deadly attack violated peacetime laws as well as laws governing armed conflict.
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