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.

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[–] 106 points 11 months ago (4 children)

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

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  • [–] 37 points 11 months 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!

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  • [–] 11 points 11 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 213 points 11 months ago (6 children)

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

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  • [–] 19 points 11 months ago (5 children)

    Ah, yes the most upstanding army that didn't comply to illegal orders in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria et al.

    The fuck you guys smoking?

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  • [–] 15 points 11 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 98 points 11 months ago (6 children)

    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

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  • [+] -15 points 11 months ago (5 children)

    I didn't see anything about reading the fan mail...

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  • [–] 9 points 11 months ago* (4 children)

    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....

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  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    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

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  • [–] 12 points 11 months 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.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months 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.

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  • [–] 75 points 11 months 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.

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  • [–] 57 points 11 months ago (7 children)

    I can’t believe it was Joe Biden that flew the plane.

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  • [–] 31 points 11 months ago (5 children)
  • [–] 27 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    Hillary coordinated it all from email!

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  • [–] 52 points 11 months ago (4 children)

    Hey military— see what happens when you obey illegal orders?

    ⤵️🚌

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  • [–] 8 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    I mean, probably nothing. Its not like anyone is going to investigate or prosecute. Trump's just throwing up chaff so he can whine about the press treating him unfairly. "We didn't do it, but if we did it would have been based and cool, and don't think we won't do the thing we didn't do again if we feel like it" is exactly what I'd have expected to hear from a PR flack in the Bush or Reagan Era.

    Hell, I'm pretty sure this is the line Bush Sr used when the US shot down that Iranian passenger airliner. Nobody suffered any kind of consequence for that, either. Hell, the air warfare coordinator on duty received the Navy Commendation Medal after killing a few hundred civilians.

    I bet Trump's Navy Command is going to look like late-stage Brezhnev by the time he's finished passing out pins and ribbons for civilian casualties.

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  • [–] 6 points 11 months ago

    Admiral should've remembered the oldest rule in the military... "shit always rolls downhill." Don't think for a second that your superior will cover for you when something like this happens, even if they gave the order and should also be held accountable.

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  • [–] 44 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    If he ordered it, or complied with the order from above, lock him up. If not, this accusation is yet another confession.

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  • [–] 42 points 11 months 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.

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  • [–] 36 points 11 months ago* (4 children)

    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]

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  • [–] 11 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    warfighters

    I fucking hate the way this LARPer talks about armed forces

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  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago

    What do you expect? The man is a washed-up talk show host and a drunk. He is by no means the only completely unsuitable buffoon in this incompetent, criminal administration.

    Just for comparison: the Secretary of Education, Lisa McMahon, is a former wrestling promoter (Vince McMahon's wife), and the Secretary of Health, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is a conspiracy theorist and anti-vaccination advocate - not to mention the president.

    All of this is so ridiculous that it would be funny if it weren't costing so many lives...

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  • [–] 35 points 11 months ago

    Hmm, I wonder why Admiral Holsey decided to retire when he did. 🤔

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  • [–] 35 points 11 months ago* (2 children)

    Ok... So common sense would read that as: ' it wasn't legal, it's a prime example of a war crime, and Pete may not have explicitly approved of that action, but probably gave a vague order like 'no survivors' , which the admiral took literally, and so it's entirely the admirals fault for not disobeying an unlawful order. '

    All I want for Christmas is a military coup, cold hard justice for the traitors enabling Trump, and emergency elections, monitored by the military, and un observers

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  • [–] 19 points 11 months ago

    Ordering that operations be conducted on the basis that there be "no survivors" is also specifically cited as an example of a war crime by the same manual: "Moreover, it is also prohibited to conduct hostilities on the basis that there shall be no survivors, or to threaten the adversary with the denial of quarter."

    Page 211 https://media.defense.gov/2023/Jul/31/2003271432/-1/-1/0/DOD-LAW-OF-WAR-MANUAL-JUNE-2015-UPDATED-JULY%202023.PDF

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    [–] 70 points 11 months ago (6 children)

    Follow illegal orders, get thrown under the bus.

    Dont follow illegal orders, get thrown under the bus.

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  • [–] 37 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    you know I'm starting to think that maybe they should just deal with the people giving the orders

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  • [–] 33 points 11 months 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

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  • [–] 29 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 18 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 11 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 58 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    So we went from denial, to it happened but it wasn't us...

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  • [–] 29 points 11 months 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.

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  • [–] 23 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    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!"

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  • [–] 16 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    I guess we can add "war criminal" or straight up "murderer" to Trump's list of accomplishments. It's his administration.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Yes, this is literally every president.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago*

    True, but politics is always going to be messy. Even if Bernie Sanders took the office, I'm sure he'd have to make lots of awful decisions. But even though Obama authorized drone strikes, I doubt he ever gave orders to kill everyone, or just arbitrarily struck fishing boats because he got off on it. Maybe Obama is a war criminal, but I think he really did feel bad about it. It's been established that Trump very literally, as in literally literally gets aroused by deporting people.

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  • [+] 29 points 11 months ago (1 child)
  • [–] 13 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Do you want the military to coup d'etat your ass? Because throwing your admiral under a bus boat will make many military leaders think...

    Eh, what am I saying? Please keep throwing them, we all want a coup at this point

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  • [–] 11 points 11 months ago

    This is the whole point of "chain of command". The suckers are at the bottom. This admiral should be grateful that he's not dead in the ditch somewhere like his victims abroad and in the lower ranks.

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  • [–] 29 points 11 months ago (7 children)

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

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  • [–] 33 points 11 months ago (5 children)

    Don't need to be at war to commit "war crimes"

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    There has to be an armed conflict between two or more nations. Otherwise they’re “just” crimes.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago*

    A military court has murder charges it can bring. The recent letter from JAGS Working Group specifies the war crimes and murder separately.

    Edit to add article: Legal Experts Accuse Hegseth of ‘War Crimes, Murder, or Both’ After New Reporting on Boat Strike Order

    Former top military lawyers on Saturday said that new reporting on orders personally given by US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in early September, when the military struck the first of nearly two dozen boats in the Caribbean, suggests Hegseth has committed “war crimes, murder, or both.”

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  • [–] 0 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    of course,the whole concept of war crimes is hilarious.

    Blow up a boat with a missile killing people? OK

    Kill them after you sunk the boat? NOT OK.

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  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    the first one is illegal since we're not at war, they weren't an immediate threat, etc

    the second is super illegal cause it's considered a war crime

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    Exactly. The reason why there's so much heat on this particular incident is simply because there's zero grey area. Like, in general the blowing up "drug boats" stuff is almost certainly a war crime, but it at least falls within the "Lawyers can argue it in court" realms. Whereas killing survivors of a sunken ship is literally the textbook definition of a warcrime in the US military's own manual on this stuff. It is so cut and dried that they use it as an example of a de facto illegal act.

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  • [–] 10 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    This demonstrates another reason why you shouldn't obey clearly illegal orders. If you kill someone on the illegal order of a superior and then they deny having given the order, guess who's gonna hang for it?

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    Nobody, apparently. They think that if they pass the blame enough, most people will forget it ever even happened. They are right.

    Until we start lynching killer cops in the streets, they'll never even think about holding their own accountable. It is only the threat of direct, immediate consequences that will have any effect on the status quo

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  • [–] 17 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Dear America,

    You are disposable to them.

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  • [–] 8 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Kill. Them. All.

    And I don't mean boat.

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago

    I mean did you expect anyone in maga to take responsibility for anything negative?

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    Gotta keep those trains running on time.

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