Republican Senator Tom Cotton said that on September 2 in the Caribbean, a boat allegedly transporting drugs was attacked. Bradley appeared at a closed-door meeting of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees, which are investigating the legality of military actions within President Donald Trump's anti-drug campaign. This meeting took place after U.S. lawmakers from both parties asked the administration for explanations following a publication in The Washington Post, which reported that during this bombing, where eleven crew members of a boat allegedly transporting drugs were killed, a second attack was carried out to kill two survivors of the initial attack. Cotton, who was part of the meeting, defended the admiral's position and said that if he were in his place, he would have ordered multiple attacks. Democratic legislator Jim Himes, on the other hand, described what he observed during the meeting as «one of the most unsettling things» he has witnessed in his life and stated that in the video of the second attack, two people in a dangerous situation are seen being killed by the United States. Asked by the press on Wednesday at the White House, Trump said that the Pentagon will release the video of the second bombing, though he downplayed the controversy, as has Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, who claims he did not directly supervise the operation. A Defense official explained to NBC News that the admiral considered the two survivors as legitimate military targets that he could identify as «narcoterrorists». After the first attack, the two survivors communicated with another suspicious vessel suspected of being involved in drug trafficking, two people familiar with the matter said. According to figures confirmed by the Pentagon, since the start of military operations in August of last year to date, a total of twenty-one attacks on suspected boats transporting drugs have been carried out, in which 82 people allegedly linked to drug trafficking have died. The White House links the attacked vessels to the Tren de Aragua or the Cartel of the Suns, elusive criminal groups of Venezuelan origin that the White House has classified as terrorists within its large military deployment in the Caribbean and growing pressure on the government of Nicolás Maduro. U.S. Admiral Frank Bradley denied on Thursday that he had given the order to kill the survivors of the first U.S. Army attack.
