The knives are out for the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. The leaks from the Pentagon about him will continue until Hegseth is gone.

The officers do not want a boss who is giving illegal orders while scapegoating the generals and soldiers who follow them:

At the White House on Monday, Karoline Leavitt, the press secretary, read a statement that said Mr. Hegseth had authorized the Special Operations commander overseeing the attack, Adm. Frank M. Bradley, “to conduct these kinetic strikes.”

She said that Admiral Bradley had “worked well within his authority and the law directing the engagement to ensure the boat was destroyed and the threat to the United States of America was eliminated.”

Bradly gets pushed forward to take the beating while Hegseth and Trump claim innocence:

Bradley will have the chance to address outstanding issues about the strikes when he speaks with lawmakers Thursday behind closed doors. Some lawmakers have said the Trump administration appears to be making Bradley into something of a scapegoat.

“Looks like they’re throwing him under the bus,” said Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.), often a critic of the administration, “but these kinds of decisions go all the way to the top.”

Adm. Bradley had the poor choice of following an illegal order or getting fired.

In my recent piece abut U.S. strikes on boats in the Caribbean I suggested that the head of Southern Command, Adm. Alvin Holsey, was made to retire because he rejected orders to kill survivors of U.S attacks:

On the very same day those survivors were rescued, October 16, the DoD announced that the head of its Southern Command was ‘stepping down’: ..
…
It now seems clear that Admiral Holsey got fired for not following Hegseth’s illegal order and for ordering the rescue of the survivors of the strike.

A piece in today’s Wall Street Journal confirms this impression:

Cont. reading: The Knives Are Out For Hegseth

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As it is becoming obvious that Ukraine is losing in the proxy war against Russia, the ideas European governments are are throwing around are getting more crazy.

Some are now eager to ‘pre-emptively’ attack Russia in ‘retaliation’ for alleged ‘hybrid attacks’ against European countries. Those ‘hybrid attacks’ are mostly pure fantasies.

Politico was first to report this nonsense:

Europe thinks the unthinkable: Retaliating against Russia – Politico, Nov 27 2025
Countries are looking at joint offensive cyber operations and surprise military drills as Moscow steps up its campaign to destabilize NATO allies.

Russia’s drones and agents are unleashing attacks across NATO countries and Europe is now doing what would have seemed outlandish just a few years ago: planning how to hit back.

Ideas range from joint offensive cyber operations against Russia, and faster and more coordinated attribution of hybrid attacks by quickly pointing the finger at Moscow, to surprise NATO-led military exercises, according to two senior European government officials and three EU diplomats.

“The Russians are constantly testing the limits — what is the response, how far can we go?” Latvian Foreign Minister Baiba Braže noted in an interview. A more “proactive response is needed,” she told POLITICO. “And it’s not talking that sends a signal — it’s doing.”

What are the ‘hybrid attacks’ in question?

Russian drones have buzzed Poland and Romania in recent weeks and months, while mysterious drones have caused havoc at airports and military bases across the continent. Other incidents include GPS jamming, incursions by fighter aircraft and naval vessels, and an explosion on a key Polish rail link ferrying military aid to Ukraine.

The idea to ‘pre-empivly’ attack Russia comes from an Italian defense paper:

Last week, Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto slammed the continent’s “inertia” in the face of growing hybrid attacks and unveiled a 125-page plan to retaliate. In it, he suggested establishing a European Center for Countering Hybrid Warfare, a 1,500-strong cyber force, as well as military personnel specialized in artificial intelligence.

To me that looks like someone is seeking additional NATO payments. Three days later a Italian NATO general furthered the idea:

Cont. reading: NATO Thinks Of ‘Pre-emptive Strikes’ Against Russia To ‘Defend’ Against Something That Did Not Happen

My post on Trump’s war on Venezuela two days ago mentioned a Washington Post report (archived) about a war crime directly ordered by U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth:

The longer the U.S. surveillance aircraft followed the boat, the more confident intelligence analysts watching from command centers became that the 11 people on board were ferrying drugs.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. “The order was to kill everybody,” one of them said.

A missile screamed off the Trinidad coast, striking the vessel and igniting a blaze from bow to stern. For minutes, commanders watched the boat burning on a live drone feed. As the smoke cleared, they got a jolt: Two survivors were clinging to the smoldering wreck.

The Special Operations commander overseeing the Sept. 2 attack — the opening salvo in the Trump administration’s war on suspected drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere — ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions, two people familiar with the matter said. The two men were blown apart in the water.

The Intercept had previously reported (archived) the second strike the U.S. military had launched against survivors:

People on board the boat off the coast of Venezuela that the U.S. military destroyed last Tuesday were said to have survived an initial strike, according to two American officials familiar with the matter. They were then killed shortly after in a follow-up attack.
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Last week, a high-ranking Pentagon official who spoke to the Intercept on the condition of anonymity said that the strike in the Caribbean was a criminal attack on civilians and said that the Trump administration paved the way for it by firing the top legal authorities of the Army and the Air Force earlier this year.

“The U.S. is now directly targeting civilians. Drug traffickers may be criminals but they aren’t combatants,” the War Department official said. “When Trump fired the military’s top lawyers the rest saw the writing on the wall, and instead of being a critical firebreak they are now a rubber stamp complicit in this crime.”

The high-ranking Pentagon official is correct in that the strikes against boats in international waters are criminal attacks on civilians.

But the killing of survivors of such strikes is more than that. It is undoubtedly a war crime.

Hegseth’s order to kill survivors was clearly illegal. It was the duty of the soldiers in the line of command to reject the order. That they have not done so but followed the order is in itself a war crime.

How do we know this?

Because the Department of Defense’s LAW OF WAR MANUAL (LOWM) (pdf) says so:

Cont. reading: Soldiers Have ‘Duty To Refuse’ Hegseth’s Order To Commit War Crimes