US Senator Adam Schiff Demands Accountability For Caribbean Boat Strikes

WASHINGTON, DC – United States Democratic Senator, Adam Schiff,  is calling on President Donald Trump to dismiss his Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for his involvement in boat strikes in the Caribbean Sea and the killing of survivors.

Fatal US military strikes on vessels allegedly carrying drugs (File Photo)In addition, Schiff says Hegesth should be fired for the national security breaches that endangered the US military through his use of the social media platform, Signal, to discuss sensitive national security information.

“[Hegseth] should be fired over this killing of these survivors at sea, and he should be fired for endangering our pilots,” said Schiff on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, where he reiterated that the unauthorised and illegal boat strikes in the Caribbean Sea are “dragging the United States closer to war with Venezuela.

“That Inspector General report made it clear that his actions in using this commercial app to Signal military strike plans ahead of those strikes endangered our pilots. It also endangered the success of the mission. That is more than enough reason to get rid of him.

“That kind of dangerous incompetence puts everyone at risk. His claim of exoneration is based on the fact that he has the authority to declassify information, and he is deeming it declassified because he went through this reckless step of texting it out on Signal to a journalist and family members and others.

“But the threat to our service members and to the mission remained whatever you call it. That material was classified before he sent it out, and I think it was classified when he did. So, there needs to be some accountability, or other people are going to be put in harm’s way,” Schiff said.

He called on the Trump administration to publicly release the full video of the second attack on survivors of the suspected drug-trafficking boat in the Caribbean Sea in early September, stating that he and his colleagues will call for a War Powers Resolution to force a debate and vote in the US Congress that would block the use of US forces in hostilities against or within Venezuela, if Trump should follow through on his threat to strike Venezuela on land “very soon.”

Schiff stressed that the US military continued strikes on suspected drug vessels in the Caribbean Sea are “unauthorised and illegal.

“They’re unlawful. They’re unconstitutional, and killing two people who are shipwrecked at sea is also morally repugnant.”

Schiff said, while he agrees that the US “should do everything lawfully” to stop the scourge of drugs coming into the country, the boat strikes are “not at all lawful or constitutional.

“And, frankly, if the Pentagon and our defense secretary is so proud of what they’re doing, let the American people see that video. Let the American people see two people standing on a capsized boat or sitting on a capsized boat and deliberately killed and decide for themselves whether they’re proud of what the country is doing. I can’t imagine people will be proud of that.”

Schiff said the manual on the law of war “makes it explicit that killing people who are shipwrecked is illegal, is a violation of law. They’re a form of extrajudicial killing.

“These boats are not invading the United States in an armed assault. They are thousands of miles away. Some of them, maybe even this vessel —if reports are accurate — wasn’t even heading to the United States.

““And for us to be engaged in this kind of unauthorized campaign of extrajudicial killing couldn’t be, I think, a more clear violation of the law.”

The US lawmaker said the American people don’t want to go to war with Venezuela.

Schiff predicted that more legislators may support the third War Powers Resolution that he plans to introduce soon, as more legislators are able to view footage of the boat strikes in the Caribbean Sea.

Senators Tim Kaaine and Rand Paul had joined Schiff in introducing the previous two resolutions in the Republican-controlled Senate.

“One of the reasons that we began introducing these resolutions is we wanted to protect our troops who might be put in harm’s way, but we also wanted to protect them, not just from physical harm, but from legal harm,” Schiff said.

In his appearance on ABC TV’s “This Week” on Sunday, Congressman Adam Smith, the top-ranking Democrat on the House of Representatives’ Armed Services Committee, said that surveillance video of the US military strikes on the alleged narco-trafficking boat in the Caribbean Sea, contradicts descriptions by Hegseth and other Republicans.

“When they [the survivors] were finally taken out, they weren’t trying to flip the boat over. The boat was clearly incapacitated. A tiny portion of it remained, capsized, the bow of the boat. They had no communications device. Certainly, they were unarmed.

“Any claim that the drugs had somehow survived that attack is hard, hard to really square with what we saw,” he added, describing the video as “deeply disturbing.”

Caribbean-American American Democratic Congresswoman Yvette D. Clarke has condemned what she described as the Trump administration’s “unauthorised” military strikes on alleged drug boats off the coast of Venezuela and in the Caribbean Sea.

“Since September, the Trump administration has carried out a series of unauthorized military strikes off the coast of Venezuela, across the Caribbean, and the Eastern Pacific,” Clarke, the daughter of Jamaican immigrants, who represents the 9th Congressional District in Brooklyn, New York, told the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC).

“These operations have resulted in more than 80 deaths across 20 separate strikes—actions undertaken without congressional authorization, in clear violation of our Constitution.

“This ‘kill first and ask questions never’ approach is not only unlawful but fundamentally un-American,” added the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus.