On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the Pentagon would not publicly release the unedited video of a second U.S. military strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean, telling reporters that doing so would violate “longstanding Department of War policy.”
Hegseth made the announcement amid bipartisan calls from lawmakers to release more information about the September boat attack, the legality of which has come under question after U.S. forces carried out an additional strike to kill two survivors who were clinging to wreckage.
Although the administration has framed its missile strikes in the Caribbean as part of a war on drug trafficking, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles told Vanity Fair in a new profile, also published on Tuesday, that Donald Trump intends to “keep on blowing boats up” until Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro “cries uncle.”
On “The Weeknight,” Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona blasted the administration’s actions in the region, saying they were not about stopping the flow of drugs into America but were instead part of a “regime change movement.”
“Look at the amount of people they’re using, the amount of manpower, staff, the amount of aircraft carriers, platforms, to go after maybe $10,000 boats,” Gallego said. “It makes zero sense. This is a whole movement largely led by Marco Rubio to topple Venezuela.”
The Marine Corps veteran, who served in combat in Iraq, told MS NOW that officials inside the administration are using the strikes on alleged drug boats “to create a justification for us to be in a war.”
“There’s no justification for what they’re doing now,” Gallego continued. “Again, drug dealers are bad. You know, there are lots of ways to deal with this. Execution without trial is not one of them. But more importantly, what they’re trying to do is they’re trying to get us into a war.”
Gallego compared the administration’s actions in the Caribbean to those of the U.S. military before the Iraq War. “I’m a baby of an illegal war,” he said. “I went to war in Iraq, a war that should never have happened, that was illegal, that was fabricated — fabricated by people that wanted war to happen.”
“This is happening again,” Gallego warned. “This is the Iraq War 2.0, with a South American flavor to it.” The Arizona Democrat said he would do everything in his power to stop the administration from dragging America into another conflict, noting that he had introduced a war powers resolution, which, if passed, would invoke a 60-day deadline for Congress to authorize the deployment of military resources to Venezuela. Gallego said the legislation would go up for a vote in January, and he called on his Republican colleagues in the Senate to join Democrats and “hold these guys accountable.” “The forefathers did not ever assume, or didn’t assume, that you would have cowards, full cowards, that are coming out of the Republican Party,” he said. “That’s what’s happening right now.” Gallego said that if Republicans joined along with Democrats, “we could stop this.” You can watch Gallego’s full interview in the clip at the top of the page.
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW. Recommended
