For weeks the left and their media allies have screamed “war crime” while piling on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth without waiting for facts. Now ABC’s Martha Raddatz has quietly reported what many conservatives suspected: a source familiar with the September mission says the two survivors actually climbed back onto the stricken boat, were salvaging narcotics, and were believed to be in communication with others — facts that change the whole legal picture.
That revelation matters because Hegseth had posted video evidence of the strike and explicitly framed the operation as targeting narco-traffickers operating on known trafficking routes, a move he and the White House defended as necessary to stop drugs flowing to our streets. The secretary’s public account of the incident made clear the administration viewed these vessels as legitimate threats to American lives and sovereignty.
The crucial detail that a JAG officer was reportedly advising commanders and that the survivors appeared to be “still in the fight” undercuts the left’s preferred narrative that the military casually executed helpless people. Journalistic outrage jumped to conclusions before this context was available, and now anchors who cheered the smear are left looking like they rushed to judgment rather than demanded evidence.
Make no mistake: the people condemning Hegseth today are doing so for political gain, not national security. Democrats and their media partners have weaponized every tragic headline to try to kneecap this administration, and now some fringe House Democrats are even threatening impeachment theater over a legitimately complex battlefield decision that involved legal counsel and real-time operational risk. Political grandstanding does not keep fentanyl out of American neighborhoods.
Secretary Hegseth himself has been transparent about what he saw and when, saying he watched the live feed of the first strike but was not present for what followed, which is precisely the kind of accountability detailed reporting demanded — yet many in Congress still prefer a circus to actual oversight. If members want answers, they should subpoena the unedited footage and the JAG assessments instead of staging a partisan prosecution aimed at gutting our defense posture.
Conservatives should be proud that this administration is finally treating drug cartels as the transnational threats they are, not as quaint criminal enterprises to be winked at by soft-on-crime elites. The alternative is doing nothing while our communities are flooded with deadly narcotics and while autocratic regimes and criminal gangs grow bolder on our doorstep. Our commanders must be trusted to protect the homeland, and political saboteurs must not be allowed to tie the hands of the people who fight for our safety.
The proper response now is not more virtue-signaling investigations but a clear-eyed demand for transparency, followed by support for the men and women who acted on legal advice to stop real threats. Patriots know the difference between lawful, hard decisions and cowardly appeasement; we will stand with those who defend America and insist that critics produce the evidence they claim exists before they destroy careers and hinder the fight against narco-terrorism.
