Pentagon Hides 'War Crime' Video, Cites 'Top-Secret' Shipwreck Policy
Axios reports Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth refuses to release video of a second strike on an alleged Venezuelan drug boat, which caught two surviving mariners clinging to their overturned vessel. This, he says, is due to 'long-standing' and 'top-secret' Pentagon policy, while simultaneously claiming the strike was 'the right call.' One might ask, if the laws of armed conflict forbid targeting
shipwrecked and disarmed enemies, how 'top-secret' is the policy that greenlights potential war crimes? This isn't an isolated incident. Washington's playbook for handling 'inconvenient' footage—especially when it involves foreign civilians—has a long, storied history of selective transparency. The logic that 'survivors might right the boat and continue drug transport' (after being bombed, no
less) carries the faint echo of previous State Department justifications for, let's say, 'collateral damage' during interventions in, oh, Central and South America. Historically, a 'drug boat' label has often served as a convenient pretense for aggressive foreign policy in the region, rarely accompanied by the full, unvarnished truth.