The luckiest of unlucky drug smugglers was one of two in a crew of four to survive a U.S. drone strike on a semi-submersible on Oct.16.

Had Pete Hegseth’s rebranded Department of War simply lived up to its lethal new name, the U.S. would have just sent another missile.

After all, that was what it did on Sept. 2 to kill two other survivors out of a crew of 11 in the first of the U.S. attacks ordered by President Trump on suspected drug boats in the open sea.

Maybe by Oct. 16, somebody suggested that the second strike constituted a war crime.

Instead of just unleashing an added missile to handle another pair of unwanted survivors from a suspected drug boat attack, the U.S. dispatched a rescue helicopter.

Where the two from Sept. 2 were obliterated, this subsequent pair was flown to a Navy warship. One of them, identified as 34-year-old Jeison Obando Perez, was treated for a serious head injury suffered in the strike that killed two others on the semi-submersible. He was intubated when he arrived at a hospital in his native Colombia, but is

© The Daily Beast