James' World 2

Click the link below the picture

.

The lawmakers’ comments came after top Republicans and Democrats on the two congressional committees overseeing the Pentagon vowed over the weekend to increase their scrutiny of U.S. boat strikes in the Caribbean after the report. Mr. Turner said the article had only sharpened lawmakers’ already grave questions about the operation.

“There are very serious concerns in Congress about the attacks on the so-called drug boats down in the Caribbean and the Pacific, and the legal justification that’s been provided,” he said. “But this is completely outside of anything that’s been discussed with Congress, and there is an ongoing investigation.”

The investigations by both the House and Senate Armed Services Committees are the sharpest scrutiny to date by Congress of Mr. Trump’s escalating military offensive, undertaken without congressional approval or consultation, which he says is aimed at taking out drug traffickers.

They constitute a notable step by Republican lawmakers who have spent much of the year deferring to Mr. Trump and refraining from exercising oversight of his actions.

Senators Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the Republican chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the committee’s top Democrat, said on Friday night that they had “directed inquiries” to the Defense Department.

“We will be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances,” they wrote.

The House Armed Services Committee followed suit on Saturday. In a joint statement, Representatives Mike Rogers, Republican of Alabama and the panel’s chairman, and Adam Smith of Washington, the senior Democrat, said that they were “committed to providing rigorous oversight” of the boat strikes and that they were “taking bipartisan action to gather a full accounting of the operation in question.”

The United States has built up a military presence in the Caribbean meant to put pressure on Venezuela. Trump administration officials have said that they are trying to deter drug smuggling, and that the boat strikes, which have killed more than 80 people since early September, are part of a purported formal armed conflict with drug cartels. But members of Congress have been voicing concerns over the legal justification being used to conduct them.

The Washington Post reported this week that in the first boat attack, on Sept. 2, there had been survivors in the water after the first missile strike, and the military carried out a second one to kill them because of Mr. Hegseth’s orders. The Intercept also reported in September that the military had carried out a follow-up strike to kill the survivors of an initial strike.

In a statement on Friday, Mr. Hegseth denounced The Post’s report. He defended the military’s actions and said officials had been clear in all the operations that the boat strikes were designed to be “lethal, kinetic strikes.”

.

Representative Mike Turner, Republican of Ohio, raised concerns about the recent operations in the Caribbean.Credit…Eric Lee/The New York Times

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________