{"id":45763,"date":"2025-12-25T16:21:37","date_gmt":"2025-12-26T00:21:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=45763"},"modified":"2025-12-25T16:21:38","modified_gmt":"2025-12-26T00:21:38","slug":"before-executing-2-shipwrecked-sailors-us-admiral-consulted-top-military-lawyer-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2025\/12\/25\/before-executing-2-shipwrecked-sailors-us-admiral-consulted-top-military-lawyer-report\/","title":{"rendered":"Before Executing 2 Shipwrecked Sailors, US Admiral Consulted Top Military Lawyer: Report"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Admiral<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Adm. Frank \u201cMitch\u201d Bradley, left, walks to a holding room in the Capitol Visitor Center on December 4, 2025, before briefing members of Congress on boat strikes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Photo: Bill Clark\/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A military spokesperson refused to comment on what the admiral told Congress beyond confirming that \u201che did inform them that during the strike he sought advice from his lawyer and then made a decision.\u201d<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Jessica Corbett<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dec 24, 2025 (CommonDreams.org)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The journalist who initially revealed that President Donald Trump\u2019s administration killed shipwrecked survivors of its first known boat bombing reported<\/a> Tuesday that the admiral in charge consulted with a US military<\/a> lawyer before ordering another strike on the two alleged drug traffickers who were clinging to debris in the Caribbean Sea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just days after Trump announced the September 2 bombing on social media<\/a>, Intercept<\/em> journalist Nick Turse exposed<\/a> the follow-up strike that killed survivors, citing US officials. The attack has sparked fresh alarm in recent weeks, since late November reporting from the Washington Post<\/a><\/em> and CNN<\/em> that Adm. Frank \u201cMitch\u201d Bradley ordered the second strike to comply with an alleged spoken directive from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to kill everyone on board, which Hegseth has denied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RECOMMENDED…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Top<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Top Dem Says Video of Military \u2018Attacking Shipwrecked Sailors\u2019 Among \u2018Most Troubling Things\u2019 He Has Ever Seen<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"US<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

UN Experts Say Those Ordering and Carrying Out US Boat Strikes Should Be \u2018Prosecuted for Homicide\u2019<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

After the first strike, \u201cBradley\u2014then the head of Joint Special Operations Command\u2014sought guidance from his top legal adviser,\u201d according to Turse. He interviewed several sources familiar with the admiral\u2019s recent classified briefing to Congress, former members of the Judge Advocate General\u2019s (JAG) Corps, and ex-colleagues of the JSOC staff judge advocate to whom Bradley turned, Col. Cara Hamaguchi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Turse reported:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

How exactly [Hamaguchi] responded is not known. But Bradley, according to a lawmaker who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a classified briefing, said that the JSOC staff judge advocate deemed a follow-up strike lawful. In the briefing, Bradley said no one in the room voiced objections before the survivors were killed, according to the lawmaker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Five people familiar with briefings given by Bradley, including the lawmaker who viewed the video, said that, logically, the survivors must have been waving at the US aircraft flying above them. All interpreted the actions of the men as signaling for help, rescue, or surrender.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Bradley, now the chief of Special Operations Command, declined to comment, the reporter noted. SOCOM also declined to make Hamaguchi available, though the command\u2019s director of public affairs, Col. Allie Weiskopf, said: \u201cWe are not going to comment on what Admiral Bradley told lawmakers in a classified hearing. He did inform them that during the strike he sought advice from his lawyer and then made a decision.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Tuesday\u2019s reporting caught the attention of the former longtime executive director of\u00a0Human Rights<\/a>\u00a0Watch (HRW), Kenneth Roth, who has\u00a0stressed<\/a><\/a>\u00a0that not only is it \u201cblatantly illegal to order criminal suspects to be murdered rather than detained,\u201d but \u201cthe initial attack was illegal too.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/x.com\/KenRoth\/status\/2003870076613570973?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2003870076613570973%7Ctwgr%5E4e4cee5b95dc5de64a114c9bcc5073c020b623f4%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2Fadmiral-bradley<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Various other experts<\/a> and US lawmakers<\/a> have similarly condemned the dozens of strikes in the Caribbean and Pacific Ocean since September\u2014which as of Monday have killed at least 105 people, according to<\/a> the Trump administration\u2014as \u201cwar crimes<\/a>, murder, or both,\u201d as the Former JAGs Working Group put it<\/a> after the Hegseth reporting last month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cExtrajudicial executions,\u201d declared<\/a> public interest lawyer Robert Dunham on social media Wednesday, sharing Turse\u2019s new report and tagging the groups Amnesty International<\/a> USA, HRW, and Reprieve US, as well as the Office of the United Nations<\/a> High Commissioner for Human Rights and independent experts who report to the UN Human Rights Council.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those experts on Wednesday\u00a0rebuked<\/a>\u00a0Trump\u2019s recent aggression toward\u00a0Venezuela<\/a>, including not only the boat strikes but also threats to bomb the South American country and attempts to impose an\u00a0oil<\/a>\u00a0blockade. They said that \u201cthe illegal use of force, and threats to use further force at sea and on land, gravely endanger the human right to life and other rights in Venezuela and the region.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jessica Corbett<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jessica Corbett is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Full Bio ><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Adm. Frank \u201cMitch\u201d Bradley, left, walks to a holding room in the Capitol Visitor Center on December 4, 2025, before briefing members of Congress on boat strikes.  (Photo: Bill Clark\/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images) A military spokesperson refused to comment on what the admiral told Congress beyond confirming that… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45763"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45763"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45763\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45764,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45763\/revisions\/45764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}