Hegseth Led Sept. 2 Boat Attack, Approved Hit on Survivors

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) is reporting that Hegseth was the Target Engagement Authority (TEA) for the Sept. 2 operation, which means he had the authority to approve the use of force and fire upon a target, Joyce Vance wrote in her newsletter Civil Discourse.

Hegseth "seems to be a war criminal." (Photo: U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Alexander C. Kubitza, U.S. Secretary of War Flickr) 

The TEA can also stop the action — for instance, giving an order to hold fire to prevent a war crime from being committed. There is always a specific commander with this responsibility, and the WSJ says that in this case it was the Secretary.

If the reporting is correct, that makes the claim that he was too busy to “stick around” for the first use of lethal force in the Trump administration’s self-proclaimed war on narcoterrorism difficult to believe.

In a recent op-ed titled “Shooting the Wounded on Drug Boats,” the WSJ wrote that “the charge of deliberately killing the defenseless is serious enough to warrant a close look from Congress. That includes Mr. Hegseth giving an account under oath. The Administration so far seems to think it can ride out the story with ritual denunciations of the media.”

Conservative columnist George Will, writing in The Washington Post, did not mince words. Hegseth, he wrote, “seems to be a war criminal.”