TV News LIES

Navy Adm. Frank Bradley told lawmakers Wednesday he was open to the broader release of the video of the U.S. military’s early September lethal strikes against an alleged drug-trafficking boat in the Caribbean, apparently bucking Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who said a day earlier that the Pentagon would not release the full video of the mission to protect classified information.

Bradley, who was in charge of the Trump administration’s opening boat strike salvo on Sept. 2 and is now the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) commander, briefed members of the House and Senate Armed Services committees Wednesday in the Capitol on the controversial operation, in which 11 “narco-terrorists” were killed, including two individuals who survived an initial strike and were clinging to the wreckage.

Unlike Hegseth, who authorized the operation, Bradley expressed openness to having the video of the Sept. 2 strikes distributed more broadly, according to lawmakers on both sides of the aisle who attended the briefing.

“Adm. Bradley supported releasing the video and said that there is no reason why it can’t be released. Obviously, it has to be edited to make sure that there are no sources or methods disclosed, just as every other video that’s been released has been edited,” Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), who sits on the House Armed Services panel, told reporters after the classified briefing.

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The US military has launched a fresh round of deadly strikes on foreign vessels suspected of trafficking narcotics.

The US Southern Command posted footage of the strikes on social media on Monday, announcing it had hit three vessels in international waters, killing a total of eight men.

“Intelligence confirmed that the vessels were transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and were engaged in narco-trafficking,” US Southern Command said in a post on X.

The black-and-white footage showed the vessels moving through the water before being consumed by large explosions.

The US has struck more than 20 vessels in the Pacific and the Caribbean near Venezuela as part of Donald Trump’s escalating campaign against drug trafficking in the region. At least 90 suspected drug smugglers have been killed in the process.

The use of the military to attack suspected drug vessels marks a stark departure from historical precedent. The attacks have come under increasing scrutiny, with some legal experts saying they amount to unlawful extrajudicial killings.

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A JetBlue flight from the small Caribbean nation of Curaçao halted its ascent to avoid colliding with a US air force refueling tanker on Friday, and the pilot blamed the military plane for crossing his path.

“We almost had a midair collision up here,” the JetBlue pilot said, according to a recording of his conversation with air traffic control. “They passed directly in our flight path ... They don’t have their transponder turned on, it’s outrageous.”

The incident involved JetBlue flight 1112 from Curaçao, which is just off the coast of Venezuela, en route to New York City’s JFK airport. It comes as the US military has launched deadly airstrikes on suspected drug smugglers in the Caribbean and is also seeking to increase pressure on Venezuela’s government.

“We just had traffic pass directly in front of us within 5 miles of us – maybe 2 or 3 miles – but it was an air-to air-refueler from the United States air force and he was at our altitude,” the pilot said. “We had to stop our climb.” The pilot said the US air force plane then headed into Venezuelan airspace.

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U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) confirmed Saturday that two U.S. service members and one civilian were killed, and several others injured, after a gunman tied to ISIS launched an ambush.

“On Dec. 13, two U.S. service members and one U.S. civilian were killed, and three service members were injured, as a result of an ambush by a lone ISIS gunman in Syria,” CENTCOM wrote on social platform X. “The gunman was engaged and killed.”

“As a matter of respect for the families and in accordance with Department of War policy, the identities of the service members will be withheld until 24 hours after their next of kin have been notified,” the statement continues. “Updates will be provided as they become available.”

Troops were conducting a joint field patrol when they came under fire alongside Syrian security forces near the city of Palmyra, SANA, the government backed news agency, explained in a post on X.

“The savage who perpetrated this attack was killed by partner forces,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote in a statement.

“Let it be known, if you target Americans — anywhere in the world — you will spend the rest of your brief, anxious life knowing the United States will hunt you, find you, and ruthlessly kill you,” he added.

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The US’s sharpening ideological polarization is affecting a wider and much more junior cross-section of the country’s armed forces and challenging the military’s ability to remain above the political fray, a former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff has said.

Retired Adm Mike Mullen, who was the US’s top military commander under presidents George W Bush and Barack Obama, called the political environment facing currently serving officers “challenging” and “the most dangerous time” in his memory.

Speaking at a security forum organized by the Aspen Institute thinktank on Wednesday, he warned that it had become much harder to maintain the armed forces’ traditional apolitical stance than when he served as joint chiefs chair between 2007 and 2011.

“I didn’t really understand how hard [the civilian-military relationship] was until I was in the middle of it,” he said. “I talked about the military being apolitical a lot in those four year and it’s only gotten harder. We have gotten so much more divided.”

Mullen’s comments follow accusations that the Trump administration has consciously sought to politicize the military by purging senior commanders and by deploying national guard units on unaccustomed law and order missions in American cities, including Washington DC, to counteract supposed “crime waves”.

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The head of U.S. Northern Command on Thursday contradicted President Trump’s assertion that an “invasion [from] within” or an “enemy within” justifies the commander in chief’s National Guard deployments to American cities.

“I do not have any indications of an enemy within,” Gen. Gregory Guillot told Senate Armed Services Committee lawmakers when asked about Trump’s comments. “We maintain readiness to execute the orders to defend the homeland in many ways, but I have not been tasked in that way.”

Trump in late September declared that “an enemy within” was reason to deploy guard members in the United States. He also said the military “should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military,” referring to Democratic-run cities. 

“This is going to be a big thing for the people in this room, because it’s the enemy from within, and we have to handle it before it gets out of control,” Trump told generals gathered Sept. 30 at Quantico, Va. “It won’t get out of control once you’re involved at all.”

Guillot’s remarks, at the top of a hearing on Trump’s guard deployment to several U.S. cities, underlined a point of contention between Republican and Democratic lawmakers, with the former arguing that the guard was needed to fight lawlessness as local officials had not done their job in keeping the public safe. Democrats, however, said the deployments were an abuse of military power that violated state rights.

“In recent years, violent crime, rioting, drug trafficking, and heinous gang activity have steadily escalated,” said the panel’s chair, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.).

He called the deployments to several U.S. cities, including Los Angeles; Chicago; Washington, D.C.; Portland; and Memphis “not only appropriate, but essential.”

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