Breaking: Second Strike Video: What the Senators Who Saw it Say is On The Video

Post briefing comments from Dem and GOP Senators

Now we are getting somewhere.

In a closed door hearing, Top members of the House and Senate Intel and Armed Services committees got closed-door briefings with Adm. Frank Bradley and Gen. Dan Caine and watched the unedited video of the September 2 strike and the second “follow-up” strike. The senators came out and offered their description and assessment of what they saw. Following is a full quick reaction report.

Core visual elements that multiple people now agree on:

• The first strike hits the suspected drug boat; there is fire/smoke and the vessel is disabled or capsized.

• At least two survivors are visible after the first strike:

  • Shirtless

  • Clinging to a capsized / destroyed boat

  • With no visible propulsion and “no means of locomotion,” per Jim Himes.

• There is then a second strike that kills those two survivors.

Different lawmakers describe the survivors slightly differently:

• Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT):

  Says the video shows “two individuals in clear distress, without any means of locomotion, with a destroyed vessel, who are killed by the United States,” calling it “one of the most troubling things I’ve seen in my time in public service.”

• Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA):

  Describes “two shirtless people clinging to the bow of a capsized and inoperable boat, drifting in the water — until the missiles come and kill them.”

• Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI):

  Says the briefing “confirmed my worst fears” and calls the video “deeply disturbing,” demanding its full public release along with the legal opinion that supposedly justifies the strike.

• Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR):

  Offers the most detailed pro-strike description: says the video shows two people in the water “trying to flip their boat back over and continue on their mission,” with smoke still hanging over the scene — and that this, in his view, justified a second missile.

• CBS / Reuters sourcing:

  One source tells CBS the survivors appeared to be trying to climb back onto the boat before the second hit. Reuters says the video shows survivors in “visible distress” being killed in the follow-up strike; DoD officials briefed Congress that they still viewed the men as “legitimate targets.”

So: everyone agrees on the basic facts — two survivors on a disabled boat are visible and then killed by a second strike. The split is purely over interpretation:

• Rs: They were “trying to flip the boat back over” and continue the mission, so they remained legitimate combatants.

• Ds: They were shipwrecked, powerless, and clearly hors de combat — making them protected under the law of armed conflict and human rights law.

Legally, this is all happening against the backdrop of the DoD Law of War Manual’s explicit prohibition on killing shipwrecked survivors, and the Former JAG Working Group’s statement that both the order and execution, if accurately reported, amount to war crimes or murder.

And against this, the emerging government defense of the action — claiming that they did not meet the definition of “shipwrecked” or “hors de combat” and instead were still a threat, attempting to “continue their mission.”

How the Defenders Are Spinning It

As noted above, Tom Cotton, who chairs Senate Intelligence and has been one of the administration’s staunchest defenders on this, gave by far the friendliest description of the video after today’s briefing:

• He said the imagery shows two people in the water “trying to flip their boat back over and continue on their mission,” with smoke still hanging over the scene.

• On that basis, he argued, the second missile that killed them was lawful: they weren’t helpless shipwrecked sailors, they were still actively trying to “continue” the drug-smuggling mission.

House Intelligence Chair Rick Crawford echoed this line, likening the Caribbean boat strikes to years of drone campaign strikes on “designated terrorists” under both parties and calling the whole operation “highly professional.”

It’s the same story the administration has been building for the last 72 hours:

• These men weren’t just survivors; they were “narco-terrorists.”

• The wreck and the cargo were still a “threat” because another cartel boat might come.

• The second strike, therefore, was a tough but lawful act of “threat elimination” — not an execution.

That narrative leans hard on two things:

1. A Justice Department memo and White House designations that try to treat certain cartels as enemy combatants in an “armed conflict.”

2. A claim (briefed to lawmakers) that U.S. forces intercepted radio communications from one survivor to cartel associates — the supposed basis for treating the wreck and cargo as an ongoing threat, not a closed event.

On that theory, the survivors are still “legitimate targets,” not because they’re firing weapons, but because they are allegedly trying to revive the mission and call for help.

How the Skeptics Are Seeing It

Democrats who saw the same footage are telling a very different story.

• Himes: “Two individuals in clear distress, without any means of locomotion … killed by the United States.”

• Reed: The briefing “confirmed my worst fears” and the Pentagon “has no choice” but to release the full video.

• Adam Smith: Order for the mission was “destroy the drugs, kill the 11 people on the boat,” and the second strike shows two shirtless men clinging to a capsized, inoperable vessel when they are hit.

Their legal concern has two layers:

1. Even if you accept the administration’s “armed conflict with narco-terrorists” framing, the law of armed conflict and the Pentagon’s own Law of War Manual are explicit:

   • Shipwrecked survivors are protected.

   • You do not get to kill people in the water who are no longer capable of fighting, unless they are actively engaging in hostile acts.

   • The Manual’s own example of a clearly illegal order is: “fire upon the shipwrecked.”

2. If you reject the idea that this is a “war” at all, and treat it as a law-enforcement-style interdiction in peacetime, then the second strike looks like exactly what human-rights lawyers are calling it:

   • extrajudicial killing,

   • or in plain English, murder.

That’s why you’re now hearing phrases like “war crime” and “murder” from former JAGs and law-of-war experts, and why both Reed and Smith are pushing so hard to get the full video and the legal memo out in public view.

What Today’s Briefings Really Changed

Today didn’t settle the debate; it sharpened it.

Now, after members have watched the unedited feed, there’s much less factual wiggle room:

• Yes, there was a second strike.

• Yes, there were visible survivors between the first and second strikes.

• Yes, they were clearly in distress, on or alongside a destroyed/capsized boat.

• Yes, that second strike killed them.

The fight has moved to interpretation:

• One camp (Cotton, Crawford, the White House) is going to lean as hard as possible on “continuing mission,” “threat,” “narco-terrorists,” and “intercepted comms” to argue that the survivors remained lawful targets.

• The other camp (Himes, Reed, Smith, most legal experts) is going to keep pointing at the raw imagery and the Law of War Manual and say: whatever you call them, the men in that video look like shipwrecked survivors, and killing them is precisely what the law forbids.

And hovering over all of this is the original Washington Post reporting:

• That before any of this happened, Hegseth gave a pre-operation “kill everybody” directive;

• That Bradley told people on the line he was ordering the follow-up strike to fulfill that directive.

Today’s briefings don’t resolve that upstream dispute. But they do make one thing very clear:

If you watch a video of two shirtless men clinging to a capsized boat with no means of movement, and then watch a second missile hit and kill them, you cannot pretend the law here is some obscure gray zone.

You either believe that’s what war — or “counter-narco-terrorism” — now allows the United States to do.

Or you believe it’s exactly the kind of act our own law, our own manual, and our own historical prosecutions say we are never supposed to commit.

The footage now exists in the minds of a few dozen lawmakers. The next fight is whether the rest of us get to see it — and whether the people who ordered that second strike will ever be forced to account for what it shows.

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