Pentagon Pete in Legal Peril Over ‘Kill Them All’ Orders: A follow-up missile allegedly killed survivors of a U.S. strike on a drug boat.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/pentagon-pete-in-legal-peril-over-kill-them-all-orders/

28 comments

  1. Various snippets: EDITED to add:

    *Here is the non paywalled article:* [https://archive.is/20251128210929/https://www.thedailybeast.com/pentagon-pete-in-legal-peril-over-kill-them-all-orders/](https://archive.is/20251128210929/https://www.thedailybeast.com/pentagon-pete-in-legal-peril-over-kill-them-all-orders/)

    * Former military lawyer Todd Huntley, director of the national security law program at Georgetown Law, said a decision to kill all the boat’s helpless passengers “would in essence be an order to show no quarter, which would be a war crime.”
    * He told the Post that killing any of the people on the boat “amounts to murder.”
    * Chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said the “entire narrative is completely false.”
    * He added: “Ongoing operations to dismantle narcoterrorism and to protect the Homeland from deadly drugs have been a resounding success.”
    * “They’re breaking the law either way,” Sarah Harrison, a former associate general counsel at the Pentagon, told CNN.
    * “They’re killing civilians in the first place, and then if you assume they’re combatants, it’s also unlawful—under the law of armed conflict, if somebody is ‘hors de combat’ and no longer able to fight, then they have to be treated humanely.”
    * The U.K. has stopped sharing intelligence about the movements of suspected drug traffickers in the Caribbean because it believes the U.S. military action is illegal.

  3. He should be sent to the Hague seeing as he committed a war crime 

  6. They haven’t proven it was a drug boat. Stop fucking calling it a drug boat.

  7. Well, yeah. The entire justification they’re using for these killings is illegal.

  8. Service members better smarten up and realize that it is their duty to disobey illegal orders and it doesn’t get any more illegal than following the order to kill survivors, not only is it against US law it’s also against international law and the Genova convention.

  9. This is what happens when you put a racist drunk FOX pundit in charge of the military.

  10. In an ideal world, Whiskey Pete gets detained on his next European junket by a country with a better grasp of international law.

  11. I’m sure Rich people all over the US are still getting their cocaine

  12. Honestly, if even military law experts are calling it murder, then this isn’t some ‘fog of war’ excuse anymore…it’s straight up accountability time. You can’t preach rule of law globally while ignoring it at home. If commanders can just order follow-up strikes on survivors with Zero consequence, what message does that send?

  13. *Rule 47. Attacking persons who are recognized as hors de combat is prohibited. A person hors de combat is:*

    *(a) anyone who is in the power of an adverse party;*

    **(b) anyone who is defenceless because of unconsciousness, shipwreck, wounds or sickness; or**

    *(c) anyone who clearly expresses an intention to surrender;
    provided he or she abstains from any hostile act and does not attempt to escape*

    https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule47

  14. Whiskey Dick Peter is not in ‘peril’. Who’s going to stop him? The orange shit heel?

  16. This is probably the reason for warning from Senator Kelly et al to not obey illegal orders.

  17. Doubletapping civilians that have not been convicted of any crimes is by itself a crime against humanity 

  18. I hate drug gangs, but this is fucking piracy, murder, and crimes against humanity. We literally hung people for this back in the day. There are laws, and our government is acting like the biggest fucking criminal on the high seas. I live abroad, so maybe I shouldn’t speak out of turn, but the fact that we Americans are not literally revolting in the streets with fucking machine guns right now is fucking unbelievable. For a country which encouraged other people to do this in their own tyrranical nations for eighty years, and then to turn around and say that we are not going to do that ourselves is the the biggest fucking hypocrisy I have ever seen. Ever. It is fucking astounding. Every American should be fucking ashamed. I sure the fuck am.

  19. And MAGA wonders why soldiers have to be reminded not to follow illegal orders.

  20. this would also on its face be an illegal order, meaning everyone involved would be responsible.

    that being said, the idea that drugs are somehow arms and these people are combatants is also absurd.

  21. War Crimes. But we’re not even at war, so is it just mass murder?

  23. If democrats aren’t standing up and screaming for this goon to get fired and charged with everything, wtf are we doing?

  24. What “legal peril” & from who?! They own the DOJ & decide what the laws are as they go along.

  27. Don’t we talked about “illegal military orders” lately? Well..

  28. This was reported at the time it happened and I’ve been dwelling on it ever since. It’s nice of the media to catch up. 11 humans on a “drug smuggling” boat blown up by the U.S. military, survivors executed as they bob around in the ocean… this is why the Admiral in charge of U.S. Southern Command left his job. An entire career leading to this one posting, and shortly after earning it he walks away. I admire him doing so, however members of the military need to accept that this is not enough. They have been trained not to speak out, but those were different days. This boat would traditionally be stopped and the passengers arrested, but now the executive branch demands executions AND the U.S. chain of command just complies. I don’t think America appreciates how the rest of us view them. Her reputation will take a generation to recover.

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