Caribbean crimes scandal: US military concerned about illegal orders.
The Hill website wrote: Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky on Tuesday strongly criticized Hegsett for defending himself in a second military raid on survivors of the initial September raid on a boat allegedly carrying drugs.
The criticism came in response to the US Defense Secretary’s denial of the reports, calling them “fake and false.”
The US senator told reporters in Congress that Hegsett was either “lying to us” about his knowledge of the raid or was incompetent.
Paul added: The Secretary of Defense said he had no knowledge of the attack, that there was no such attack, and that this news was fake. It did not happen. The next day, he said from the White House podium that it did happen.
In an interview with CNN, the US senator stated that he was referring to Hegsett’s message on social media on Friday, in which he described the Washington Post report as “fake, fabricated, inflammatory, and offensive.” At the same time, he did not publicly deny all the details.
US President Donald Trump took these statements from his Secretary of Defense as a denial, telling reporters: Hegsett stated that there was no such attack, that this attack was not his work, and that he had no knowledge of it.
The US senator stated that, in his opinion, Hegsett lied to the American people.
In recent days, the US Secretary of Defense has tried to distance himself from what was a hasty decision to order a second attack on a boat on September 2 during operations in the Caribbean. The attack targeted a boat that was said to be carrying 11 people carrying drugs.
Concerns among U.S. troops about being asked to carry out illegal orders have grown as reports emerged of Hegsett’s role in ordering soldiers to kill “everyone on the boat.”
The U.S. military’s concerns are reflected in a project called the Orders Project, which provides free legal services to soldiers. While the U.S. Justice Department maintains that soldiers involved in carrying out orders to attack are not at risk of legal action, U.S. troops are increasingly concerned about the legal consequences of carrying out orders, according to Frank Rosenblatt, director of the National Institute of Military Justice, which oversees the project.