A shocking Washington Post story seems to have finally shaken congressional Republicans from their deep partisan slumber. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth gave instructions to “kill everybody” on a boat allegedly transporting drugs, Alex Horton and Ellen Nakashima recently reported. The attack was part of an ongoing military operation targeting vessels coming from Venezuela on the grounds that drug traffickers pose a U.S. national security threat.

According to the article, the special operations commander overseeing the Sept. 2 attack authorized a second strike after it became clear there were two survivors of the initial strike. Hegseth has insisted he was not in the room when the decision was made, and government officials also suggested the second strike was justified because the two survivors could have been trying to contact a cartel for help. Under military law, though, the second strike could constitute a war crime.

A shocking Washington Post story seems to have finally shaken congressional Republicans from their deep partisan slumber. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth gave instructions to “kill everybody” on a boat allegedly transporting drugs, Alex Horton and Ellen Nakashima recently reported. The attack was part of an ongoing military operation targeting vessels coming from Venezuela on the grounds that drug traffickers pose a U.S. national security threat.

According to the article, the special operations commander overseeing the Sept. 2 attack authorized a second strike after it became clear there were two survivors of the initial strike. Hegseth has insisted he was not in the room when the decision was made, and government officials also suggested the second strike was justified because the two survivors could have been trying to contact a cartel for help. Under military law, though, the second strike could constitute a war crime.

After the Post article appeared, bipartisan criticism of the administration, along with demands for more information, emerged. Military officials then delivered a classified briefing to the House and Senate Armed Services and Intelligence committees during which they played a video of the incident. The session seemed to reassure Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton, who said he “didn’t see anything disturbing” in the footage and insisted that all the strikes were “entirely lawful and needful, and they were exactly what we’d expect our military commanders to do.” Speaking of his panel’s investigation, the Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Mike Rogers of Alabama, told reporters: “It’s done.”

Other elected officials, however, were far less placated. “I think it’d be hard to watch this series of videos and not be troubled,” Delaware Sen. Chris Coons concluded. Coons said he walked away from the briefing with “more policy questions than ever.”

The outrage over the Sept. 2 incident is only a drop in the bucket........

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