WASHINGTON (TND) — Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth would not commit to showing all members of Congress the full video of a deadly double strike on an alleged drug boat on September 2.
He shared the news after he attended a closed-door meeting with Hegseth, along with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, as well as fellow top lawmakers known as the „Gang of Eight“ on Tuesday afternoon.
(8 hours ago)
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio briefed the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees on Tuesday about the Sept. 2 strikes on a suspected drug boat in the Caribbean. CBS News congressional correspondent Caitlin Huey-Burns has the details.
For a little under an hour — 41 minutes, according to a separate US official — Bradley and the rest of the US military command center discussed what to do as they watched the men struggle to overturn what was left of their boat, the sources said.
Ultimately, Bradley told lawmakers, he ordered a second strike to destroy the remains of the vessel, killing the two survivors, on the grounds that it appeared that part of the vessel remained afloat because it still held cocaine, according to one of the sources. The survivors could hypothetically have floated to safety, been rescued, and carried on with trafficking the drugs, the logic went.
The other source with direct knowledge of the briefing called that rationale “f**king insane.”
GOP Sen. Tom Cotton, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, spoke with reporters after the briefings. They both said Bradley told them that he had not been ordered to leave no survivors. The initial Post report quoted an anonymous source as saying that, before the first strike, Hegseth verbally ordered that everyone on the boat be taken out. „The order was to kill everybody,“ the Post‘s story quoted the source as saying. Hegseth has denied the Post‘s account.
Trump, a Republican, has largely stood by his defense secretary, among the most important Cabinet-level positions. But the decisions by Wicker, alongside House Armed Services Chair Mike Rogers of Alabama and the top Democrats on the committees, to open investigations provide a rare moment of Congress asserting itself and its authority to conduct oversight of the Trump administration.
The leaders of the House Armed Services Committee said late Saturday they are seeking “full accounting” of an early September U.S. military attack against an alleged drug-trafficking boat in the Caribbean after a report alleged that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered U.S. troops to “kill everybody” aboard the vessel.
“This committee is committed to providing rigorous oversight of the Department of Defense’s (DOD) military operations in the Caribbean,” Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), the chair of the House committee, and Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the top Democrat on the panel, said in a joint statement.
(today)
On Tuesday, Republican leaders from four US House of Representatives national security committees and one subcommittee released a statement endorsing Speaker Mike Johnson‘s proposal to advance legislation this week, offering security assistance to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan.
„Speaker Johnson has produced a plan that will boost US national security interests in Europe, the Middle East, and the Indo-Pacific,“ the leaders of the House Armed Services, Foreign Affairs, Intelligence, Appropriations and Defense Appropriations panels said in a statement.
(02.04.2024)
With the onslaught of new wars, Congress added $70 billion over the last two years to an already bloated Pentagon budget, much of which is funneled directly into the coffers of defense contractors like Palatir, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman. The stock values in these companies have since experienced double-digit growth – a lucrative business opportunity not overlooked by lawmakers calling the shots.
At least 25 members of Congress sitting on national security committees have simultaneously purchased stock in these very same companies. The majority of these members sit on the Senate and House Armed Services committees, the entities responsible for overseeing the Defense Department budget and contracts.
(August 9, 2023)
This month, as House and Senate conferees begin to iron out differences between the two chambers on a nearly $900 billion Pentagon spending bill for next fiscal year, both the House and Senate armed services committees want to place a new generation of nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missiles (known as SLCM-Ns) back on Navy vessels. That would be a mistake.
The group discussed “the need to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, the Abraham Accords, and the opportunities for expanding the circle of peace with additional countries.”
Netanyahu then thanked Jeffries and members of the delegation for their support for the State of Israel, emphasizing the important relationship between Israel and the United States.
Later this week, Netanyahu will meet with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
Pentagon officials told the House Armed Services Committee in a classified briefing last month that Ukrainian forces are unlikely to be able to recapture Crimea from Russian troops in the near future, an assessment that was surely unwelcome news in Kyiv, where retaking the peninsula is one of the government’s core goals for the war.
A Ukrainian attempt to retake Crimea would also be a red line for Vladimir Putin that could lead to a wider Russian response, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a Zoom call with a group of experts Wednesday.
The proposal, offered by the committee’s top Republican, Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama, would pour an extra $23.9 billion into buying more weapons, and boost research and development, construction, and maintenance accounts. If approved, the new topline spending level would be $740 billion.
Fourteen Democrats broke ranks to push the GOP budget proposal over the finish line.
The letter was organized by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Reps. David Price (D-N.C.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn). Among the co-signers are several committee chairmen, including Foreign Affairs Chairman Gregory Meek (D-N.Y.), Armed Services Chairman Adam Smith (D-Wash.) and Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.)
The Senate Armed Services Committee agreed Thursday to add $25 billion to President Joe Biden‘s already massive $715 billion Pentagon spending request, a move that prompted immediate outrage from progressive activists who have been demanding cuts to the bloated U.S. military budget.
With overwhelming bipartisan support, the House Armed Services Committee has added a Liz Cheney-spearheaded amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which throws severe roadblocks in the Trump administration’s proposed scale-down of US military presence in Afghanistan and Germany.
As The Intercept‘s Glenn Greenwald notes, both parties advancing the amendment cited in their arguments the completely unsubstantiated intelligence leak that was recently published by credulous mass media reporters alleging that Russia has paid bounties to Taliban fighters for killing the occupying forces in Afghanistan. Yet another western imperialist agenda once again facilitated by unforgivably egregious journalistic malpractice in the mass media.
Congressional staffers had planned to ask questions about the shifting explanations and wanted to receive a global threat assessment for U.S. personnel.
FBI officials had been expected to brief a group of House lawmakers on counterintelligence issues related to Iran on Wednesday in a separate closed-door session but those plans also changed at the last moment, according to two sources familiar with the planning. The reason for the cancellation remains unclear but the briefing was added to the calendar late last week, one of the sources said.
– The Trump administration has canceled three classified briefings scheduled for lawmakers on the situation with Iran
– The move comes amid questions about the president‘s justification for killing Iranian General Qassem Soleimani
– The last round of administration briefings ended with lawmakers furious over a lack of candor by Trump administration officials
– Additionally, Senate Democrats said they have enough support to pass a war powers resolution to limit Trump‘s ability to use a military response to Iran
Iraqis “do not want to be led around on a leash by the Iranians,” Representative Elissa Slotkin, Democrat of Michigan and a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said in an interview. “But, unfortunately, due to the chaos and confusion in the Iraqi central government, Iran is paradoxically the best poised to take advantage of the grass-roots unrest.”
….proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone. I am in no hurry, our Military is rebuilt, new, and ready to go, by far the best in the world. Sanctions are biting & more added last night. Iran can NEVER have Nuclear Weapons, not against the USA, and not against the WORLD!
Donald Trump hat einen Militärschlag gegen Iran nach eigenen Angaben kurzfristig abgesagt. Die Zahl der Todesopfer wäre im Vergleich zum Drohnen-Abschuss „unverhältnismäßig“ gewesen, sagte der US-Präsident.
(20.06.2019)
(20.06.2019)
(20.06.2019)
The White House invited House and Senate leaders and Democrats and Republicans on the House and Senate intelligence and Armed Services committees to meet with President Donald Trump on Thursday.
(12.06.2019)
Rebuking at the House bill’s $733 billion top line, which is $17 billion less than the Trump administration requested, panel Republicans threw their weight behind an amendment to add the money back. The GOP-controlled Senate is due to consider a rival $750 billion bill that passed the Senate Armed Services Committee in May.