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Footage of the U.S.’s “double tap” boat strike in the Caribbean on September 2 is extremely disturbing, says a lawmaker who was shown the video in a closed door briefing by top military officials on Thursday.

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Dan Caine and Special Operations Command head Frank Bradley visited Capitol Hill on Thursday. During that visit, officers briefed the top Republicans and Democrats on the House Armed Services Committee, the Senate Armed Services Committee, and the House Intelligence Committee regarding the strikes.

Rep. Jim Himes (Connecticut), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said the officers showed lawmakers the footage on Thursday morning.

“What I saw in that room was one of the most troubling things I’ve seen in my time in public service,” he told reporters afterward. “You have two individuals in clear distress, without any means of locomotion, with a destroyed vessel, who were killed by the United States.”

Himes raised the fact that a U.S. military manual lists an attack on a shipwrecked vessel as an example of an impermissible strike.

Indeed, the Department of Defense’s Law of War Manual uses an attack on a shipwreck as an example — not just as an illegal order, but also as one that is so “clearly........

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