Footage seen by US senators shows two unarmed, shirtless men struggling to stay afloat before they were killed, sources say
Two men who survived a US airstrike on a suspected drug smuggling boat in the Caribbean clung to the wreckage for an hour before they were killed in a second attack, according a video of the episode shown to senators in Washington.
The men were shirtless, unarmed and carried no visible radio or other communications equipment. They also appeared to have no idea what had just hit them, or that the US military was weighing whether to finish them off, two sources familiar with the recording told Reuters.
The pair desperately tried to turn a severed section of the hull upright before they died. “The video follows them for about an hour as they tried to flip the boat back over. They couldn’t do it,” one source said.
The video of the attack on 2 September was seen by senators behind closed doors on Thursday amid growing concern that the US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, and other officials who ordered the attack may have committed a war crime.
Hang everyone who signed off on this.
Even articles condemning this attack refer to it as a “double-tap” strike, which is really misleading because that insinuates quick succession. An attack followed by a separate attack an hour later is not a double-tap
Huh, I hadn’t thought of that implication but I see what you mean. I guess it’s always been kind of misleading though, because it’s not about the delay between strikes, it’s about shooting a target that’s already been neutralized to try to kill survivors.
Seems like the specific phrase might have orginated from a 2003 order the army gave to troops in Iraq (arc), which would explain the minimizing language (while we’re on the subject - blowing someone up with a missile isn’t exactly a “tap,” either), but then groups like Amnesty International ran with it to talk about how the Bush and Obama and Trump administrations would all drone strike targets a second time to kill medical responders.
Yeah, as far as I know, the real origin of the term is for shooting targets (or people), so you are literally double tapping the trigger. That way, if the first round doesn’t hit (or doesn’t kill), the second will.
The uncertainty piece is key, though. If they fired a missile and werent sure if it hit by the time they launched the second, they could accurately call that a double-tap. That’s what hegseth seems to be trying to push, especially with his reference to “fog of war”.
The moment you know the first shot destroyed the target, it ceases to be a double-tap.
I just don’t like how they are trying to absolve themselves through language they know will be misinterpreted, and then the media just parrots it with no issue.
P.s., to be clear, whether it is a double tap doesn’t change much to me because the first missile was already a war crime.
Is my dns blocking it as an ad, or is there no fucking video in the article?
Have they even presented any evidence whatsoever that there were drugs on these boats?
The media keeps saying “suspected drug boats”, which makes it sound like they actually kind of care who they’re murdering, but I’m not convinced that’s the case. Maybe “imagined drug boats” would be more apt.
The attack began with an airburst munition exploding above the vessel and killing nine crew members. The two men who survived were then visible floating in the water.
So, there were eleven people on this small boat. Why the fuck would you have 11 people on a smuggling boat? No, this is just a random terrorist attack, perpetrated by the notorious terrorist organization know as “the US military”.
So based on the news over the last few days, the folks in charge;
- Ordered an illegal strike of a fishing boat (regardless of whether it had drugs on board, the strike itself is still illegal)
- Watched two people struggle to stay alive for an hour while desperately reaching back to someone they know for SOS
- They decided that SOS call constituted two people still in a fight they had no idea they were in and murdered them for it.
America is a rogue state and has been for decades.
Whether it takes three years or thirty the maga officials responsible for this stuff will be held accountable
I’m not holding my breath.
Murder.
Who was sitting there videoing them as they tried not to drown for an hour?
A fraction of the atrocities we are supporting through the IDF, but good it’s getting reported too.
That would be a drone. It was surveying the boat and used for target guidance and battle damage assessment. The weapons fire would be coming from a separate aircraft.
