Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, told soldiers under his command in Iraq to ignore legal advice about when they were permitted to kill enemy combatants under their rules of engagement.
The anecdote is contained in a book Hegseth wrote last year in which he also repeatedly railed against the constraints placed on “American warfighters” by the laws of war and the Geneva conventions.
Hegseth is currently under scrutiny for a 2 September attack on a boat purportedly carrying drugs in the Caribbean, where survivors of a first strike on the vessel were reportedly killed in a second strike following a verbal order from Hegseth to “kill everybody”.
Hegseth has denied giving the order and retained the support of Donald Trump. The US president said Hegseth told him “he did not say that, and I believe him, 100%”. But some US senators have raised the possibility that the US war secretary committed a war crime.
In the book, The War on Warriors, Hegseth relates a story about a legal briefing at the beginning of his service in Iraq, in which he told the men under his command to ignore guidance from a military judge advocate general’s (JAG) attorney’s guidance about the rules of engagement in the conflict.
Any time a government official tells you to ignore legal advice run to your lawyer
That’s why he fired all the military lawyers
Yes, because we all have our own lawyers.
There are many times you can’t afford a lawyer, sometimes without your finances changing it suddenly switches to you not being able to afford not to get one. This is one of those times.
And in that case the advice should be “start looking for a lawyer”.
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Hang him
Publicly
He is at his point a mass murderer. Last I checked, mass murderers still get the death penalty in the US so why make an exception for this drunk shit stain on humanity?
But some US senators have raised the possibility that the US war secretary committed a war crime.
A fairly minor quibble, I suppose, but whatever the hell he calls himself, Hegseth is not the Secretary of War.
It’s SSecretary of War.
I bet when he saw that he did a zieg heil…sorry, I meant big smile.
Is that real?
According to this sign, he is the ssecretary of war.
possibility
Yeah, we know exactly what went down, so that’s not “a possibility”, it’s “proven fact” that this drunk asshole committed war crimes
Nah, Secretary of War is the edgelord title fascist shitheads deserve.
There has to be a war for it to be a ‘war crime’. What this was, was murder.
I hope he’ll eventually be liable for all the illegal orders he asked to willfully ignore one day.
He publicly told all the commanding officers this too. He was encouraging war crimes in his little Nazi douche speech. They’re planning to start annexing territory and committing war crimes. When there’s never been accountability for crimes the executive branch has committed this criminal behavior tends to escalate and multiply. Get ready for America full imperialist and genocide edition.
Are the democrats going to do anything about this because if you just sit on your hands you are just condoning this behaviour.
But democrats have been condoning trump and his lackeys from day 1 so maybe I shouldn’t be surprised
A few Dem office-holders will say things. Maybe a random Dem will file a bill criticizing Hegseth. Other than that, nope, Dems won’t do anything, because doing anything would piss off their bosses, the Republicans.
A strongly worded lett…no, a very strongly worded xhitter post is incoming. And when that mass murderer sees it he’ll be shaking in his boots, I can tell you.
We all know the answer the answer to this is a definitive no.
He’ll make them do bad stuff and then throw them under the bus.
You people do realize that if you don’t follow the Geneva Conventions and the accepted laws and customs of war it makes it far less likely that your enemies will either, right?
Pete hegseth is a fucking douche
‘I will not allow that nonsense to filter into your brains. Men, if you see an enemy who you believe is a threat, you engage and destroy the threat.
Uhh, but I won’t have your back.
Trump must not have known about this, otherwise he never would have put such a reckless psycho in charge
Wait
Hold on
I’ve seen this one before
