Screengrab from a video posted on Truth Social by Donald Trump, showing the first missile strike on a boat allegedly hauling illegal narcotics on Sept. 2, 2025.

Getting away with murder must be quite easy, provided that your motive is sufficiently inscrutable.

– Tom Stoppard, The Real Inspector Hound

Pete Hegseth is a producer of snuff films. The media-obsessed, if not media-savvy, Hegseth has produced 21 of these mass murder documentary shorts in the last three months, featuring the killings of 83 people–if you take his word for it. Hegseth introduces these kill shots like Alfred Hitchcock presenting an episode of his old TV show–without the irony, of course. There’s no irony to Pete Hegseth. No intentional irony, that is. It’s all bluster and protein-powder bravado to titillate the Prime-time Fox audience as they nibbled at their TV dinners.

Who were the people being killed? What did they have in their boats? Where were they going? No one seemed to care. Pete certainly didn’t care. It was the explosion that mattered, the now you see it, now you don’t quality of the videos.

Pete’s snuff films have the mise en scène of a ’90s video game, the zombie slaughter games Pete grew up on, burning callouses onto his thumbs from obsessive use of this joystick.

The irony, lost on Hegseth, is that these are the precise kinds of videos that ethical whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning used to scrape from the secret vaults of the Pentagon and ship to Wikileaks. Videos of crimes committed by US forces. In his dipsomaniacal mind, Hegseth seems to believe these snuff films are proof of the power and virility of the War Department under his leadership. In fact, each video is a confession. The question is: will he be held to account and who will have the guts to do it?

As the Washington Post reported, the very first of Hegseth’s snuff films had a gory epilogue that he chose not to share. Shortly after the smoke cleared from the missile strike, the drone video footage showed that two people had survived the attack and were clinging to the smoking wreckage of the boat. The commander of the operation, Navy Adm. Frank Bradley, ordered two more missile strikes: one to kill the survivors and another to destroy the remains of the boat and the bodies of its crew. According to the Post, Bradley was acting under the orders of Hegseth to “kill everybody.”

But the crime that left survivors shouldn’t be obscured by the crime that killed the survivors. Calling them “war crimes” doesn’t seem right, since there’s no declared war, congressional authorization or legal justification for the strikes. Serial mass murder is a far more accurate description.

The Trump brain trust had a hard time getting its story straight. First, they denied the Post’s story of a second strike. It didn’t happen. Fake news. Complete fabrication. Trump came out to say he wouldn’t have supported a second strike and didn’t believe it happened. On Monday, they sent Karoline Leavitt out to admit a second strike had taken place, but that Hegseth knew nothing about it. Next, they blamed the second strike on Adm. Bradley. This was followed by a statement saying the second strike was perfectly legit and that Bradley was fully authorized to order the killing of the two survivors. By Thursday, they were telling Congressional leaders that the second strike wasn’t aimed at killing the survivors but sinking the remains of the boat. The survivors were just collateral damage.

Sept 2

Hegseth: “I watched it live. We knew exactly who was in that boat. We knew exactly what they were doing, and we knew exactly who they represented, and that was Tren de Aragua, a narco-terrorist organization designated by the United States, trying to poison our country with illicit drugs.”

Oct. 23, after reports that people had survived another attack…

Hegseth: “So the Department of War is not going to degrade, or just simply arrest. We’re going to defeat and destroy these terrorist organizations to defend the homeland on behalf of the American people.”

Trump: “We’re just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country.”

Nov. 28

Hegseth responded to the Post story: “Fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory.”

Nov. 30

Trump: “He [Hegseth] said he did not say that, and I believe him. I wouldn’t have wanted that. Not a second strike. The first strike was very lethal. It was fine, and if there were two people around, but Pete said that didn’t happen. I have great confidence.”

Hegseth mocking the murders he authorized…

I don’t know if this was ever a serious country, but once it pretended to be…

Dec. 1

Reporter: Does the administration deny that that second strike happened or did it happen and the administration denies that Hegseth gave the order?

Leavitt: The latter is true.

Reporter: Admiral Bradley was the one who gave that order for a second strike?

Leavitt: And he was well within his authority to do so.

Hegseth: “Admiral Mitch Bradley is an American hero, a true professional, and has my 100% support. I stand by him and the combat decisions he has made—on the September 2 mission and all others since.”

Dec. 2

Karoline Leavitt: “Secretary Hegseth authorized Admiral Bradley to conduct these kinetic strikes. Admiral Bradley 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.”

In fact, the second strike, and any order to authorize one, is a clear violation of Section 5.4.7 of the DOD Law of War Manual:

Prohibition Against Declaring That No Quarter Be Given. It is forbidden to declare that no quarter will be given. This means that it is prohibited to order that legitimate offers of surrender will be refused or that detainees, such as unprivileged belligerents, will be summarily executed. Moreover, it is also prohibited to conduct hostilities on the basis that there shall be no survivors, or to threaten the adversary with the denial of quarter. This rule is based on both humanitarian and military considerations. This rule also applies during non-international armed conflict.

Dec. 3

Hegseth: “I watched that first strike live. I didn’t stick around for the hour and two hours or whatever, where all the sensitive site exploitation digitally occurs. So I moved on to my next meeting. A couple of hours later, I learned that the commander had made the decision, which he had the complete authority to do. And by the way, Admiral Bradley made the correct decision to ultimately sink the boat and eliminate the threat. He sunk the boat, sunk the boat and eliminated the threat and it was the right call. We have his back.”

“Two hours or whatever?” It was actually just a couple of minutes: “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.” Where did Hegseth go, down to his private

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