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war crimes
‘Most Convoluted Bullshit I Ever Heard’: Dem Lawmaker Torches Hegseth for Boat Strike Rationale
"With each of these extrajudicial killings, the administration is pirating American values."
Apr 29, 2026
Rep. Bill Keating on Wednesday tore into Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's justifications for US strikes against alleged drug trafficking boats that many legal experts and humans rights organizations consider acts of murder.
During a hearing before the US House Armed Services Committee, Keating (D-Mass.) accused Hegseth of overseeing a lawless killing spree that is damaging the US military's reputation throughout the world.
"With each of these extrajudicial killings, the administration is pirating American values," the Massachusetts Democrat said. "We will continue to investigate this. We will. It'll come forward in the future."
Rep. Bill Keating on Hegseth's justification for the military's extrajudicial killings: "I found no justification. We were given classified information on the second strike. I can't discuss it, but I must tell you, it is the most convoluted bullshit I have ever heard in my life." pic.twitter.com/I8gvGaSMcj
— The Bulwark (@BulwarkOnline) April 29, 2026
Keating then said that, after receiving classified briefings on the administration's boat bombings, he found "no justification" for them whatsoever.
"We were given classified information on the second [boat] strike," Keating said. "I can't discuss it, but I must tell you, it's the most convoluted bullshit I ever heard in my life. This should be public. This is our honor. This is what makes America a difference maker."
Hegseth responded by accusing Keating of leveling "an incredible array of false accusations."
The boat strikes, which have been carried out by US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) since September, have so far killed at least 185 people. The Trump administration has not publicly released any evidence showing the targeted vessels were carrying drugs.
Before the Pentagon under Hegseth's leadership began conducting the lethal boat strikes last year, drug trafficking in international waters was treated as a criminal offense, with law enforcement agencies and the US Coast Guard intercepting boats suspected of carrying drugs and arresting suspects.
Trump’s bombings of boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific have been called “extrajudicial killings” by advocacy groups including Amnesty International.
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Sharing 'Grim' Survivor Stories, Amnesty Renews Call for War Crimes Probe of US Strike in Yemen
"I have nothing left that keeps me going," said a survivor who lost a leg. "I want them to provide any type of reparation that will help with our life in any way possible. Something that will revive my hope."
Apr 28, 2026
A week after Democratic senators launched an investigation into US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's assault on federal efforts to mitigate civilian harm, Amnesty International on Tuesday renewed its call for a war crimes probe of the American airstrike on a migrant detention center in Yemen that killed dozens of people last April.
While the United States has been bombing Yemen since 2002 as part of the so-called War on Terror, the Trump administration stepped up attacks last spring, in response to Houthi rebels' resistance to Israel's genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.
"The Trump administration's approach to its airstrikes in Yemen from March to May 2025 should have set off alarm bells in the USA and around the world, clearly signaling an urgent need to strengthen measures to protect civilians," Amnesty International USA director Nadia Daar said in a statement exactly one year after the bombing in Saada.
"Instead, the US administration has systematically weakened safeguards, shrinking offices aimed at reducing civilian harm, while simultaneously displaying a dangerous disregard for the lives of civilians endangered by armed conflicts," she continued. "Against that backdrop, attacks such as the US attack on a school in Minab in Iran, which killed [155] people, including 120 children, were a tragically foreseeable consequence of a failure to implement robust civilian-harm mitigation efforts."
Amnesty concluded last month that the US bombing of the Iranian school "packed full of children" on February 28 was "a serious breach of international humanitarian law" and those responsible "must be held accountable."
Erika Guevara Rosas—Amnesty International's senior director of research, advocacy, policy, and campaigns—stressed at the time that "the US authorities could, and should, have known it was a school building. Targeting a protected civilian object, such as a school, is strictly prohibited under international humanitarian law."
In a potential preview of what Iranian families impacted by that strike will face, Guevara Rosas noted Tuesday that one year after the attack in Yemen, "US officials have failed to hold anyone accountable or even to clarify the status or outcome of the investigations they had announced a year earlier."
"Families of those killed in the attack on the detention center in Yemen are still being denied basic information about what happened, [and] remain without justice for their loved ones," she explained. "Survivors continue to struggle, lacking the means to secure a decent living or even receive adequate medical treatment."
Amnesty interviewed over a dozen survivors identified by pseudonyms, including Araya, a 22-year-old Ethiopian man, who sustained a serious arm injury and said: "If I don't take a painkiller, I feel hopeless and wish to die. I think about how, at such a young age, I can't even support myself and still rely on help from others. The metal rod inside me is very painful and uncomfortable. It drives you insane."
Jirata, a 30-year-old Ethiopian man, has a metal rod in one of his legs, and lost the other in the attack. He told Amnesty that "I have lost hope and I have nothing left that keeps me going. I came here [to Yemen] to work like everyone else to help my family and change mine and their life for the better... Now people carry me to the toilet."
"The US government caused all this and as a result [of the airstrike], I can no longer work and support myself," he detailed. "I want them to provide any type of reparation that will help with our life in any way possible. Something that will revive my hope."
Another Ethiopian man, 32-year-old Abay, similarly said that "I went to Yemen to change my family's life, but now I made my family's life even harder than it was before," due to his leg and hand injuries.
"I feel broken whenever I see their faces," said Abay, who returned to Ethiopia. "You can see the sadness on their faces. I hoped for a better life, to work and change our lives, but everything turned upside down."
Guevara Rosas said that "the story of these migrants is grim and heartbreaking. Traveling to Yemen in search of better opportunities, they were detained by the Houthis, denied their freedom, then attacked in a US airstrike. Those who survived have been left in limbo, with no justice or reparation in sight, nor an explanation for why this happened to them, an acknowledgment of the wrong done to them, or any support offered to help them carry on with their lives."
She argued that "they must receive full, effective, and prompt reparation, including restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, satisfaction, and guarantees of nonrepetition, through an effective and accessible mechanism."
According to Airwars, US forces have killed 443-642 people in Yemen since 2009. The official government estimate for civilian deaths in that time is just 13. The deadline for the Pentagon's next annual report on civilian casualties is May 1.
Guevara Rosas declared that "in order to stop this deadly spiral, the USA must ensure prompt, transparent, impartial, independent, and effective investigations into attacks that have resulted in civilian casualties, including those in Yemen and Iran."
"The US Congress must also urgently step up its oversight role and demand answers, including a public accounting of these strikes and the adequate and prompt provision of reparation to the civilians that have been harmed, and ensure it is not appropriating funds that may contribute to breaches of international law," she added.
So far, both Republican-controlled chambers of Congress have declined to pass a war powers resolution reining in President Donald Trump's illegal war on Iran, invasion of Venezuela, or bombings of boats allegedly transporting drugs on the high seas. Still, Democratic Sens. Ruben Gallego (Ariz.), Tim Kaine (Va.), and Adam Schiff (Calif.) intend to force a Tuesday vote on a measure aimed at blocking the president's use of US forces in unauthorized hostilities against Cuba.
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'No Truly Convincing Strategy': German Chancellor Says US Being 'Humiliated' by Iran
"The problem with conflicts like this is always: you don't just have to get in, you have to get out again. We saw that very painfully in Afghanistan for 20 years. We saw it in Iraq."
Apr 27, 2026
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Monday warned that the United States is being "humiliated" by Iran and risks getting trapped in a quagmire there like it did in Afghanistan and Iraq.
"The Iranians are clearly stronger than expected and the Americans clearly have no truly convincing strategy in the negotiations either," Merz told students at the Carolus-Magnus-Gymnasium in Marsberg, North Rhine-Westphalia. "The problem with conflicts like this is always: You don't just have to get in, you have to get out again. We saw that very painfully in Afghanistan for 20 years. We saw it in Iraq."
"At the moment, I do not see what strategic exit the Americans will choose, especially since the Iranians are clearly negotiating very skillfully—or very skillfully not negotiating," the Christian Democratic Union leader continued. "An entire nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership, particularly by the so-called Revolutionary Guards."
US President Donald Trump on Saturday abruptly canceled a planned trip by special envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff to Islamabad, Pakistan to negotiate a ceasefire with Iranian officials after prior talks ended without an agreement.
Nearly two months of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran have killed more than 3,400 people, at least 2,100 of them civilians—including 503 women, 413 children, 91 health workers, and 9 journalists, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency.
The Lebanese Health Ministry said Monday that the death toll from Israeli bombing of its northern neighbor has topped 2,500, including hundreds of women and children. At least 14 people were killed on Sunday by Israeli strikes, despite a US-brokered ceasefire.
The head of the Iranian Red Crescent Society said Saturday that the organization has submitted evidence of US and Israeli war crimes to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which in 2024 issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for crimes against humanity and war crimes—including murder and forced starvation—in Gaza, where more than 250,000 people have been killed or injured since October 2023.
Merz said Monday that the US-Israeli war on Iran is harming his country.
"It is at the moment a pretty tangled situation," he said. "And it is costing us a great deal of money. This conflict, this war against Iran, has a direct impact on our economic output."
Merz said that Germany was still open to deploying minesweeping warships to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran has blocked almost all international shipping. However, the chancellor said such a move would only come after fighting stops.
The German leader also told students at the school that their country must assume a greater leadership role within the European Union.
"If we were to unite more effectively and do more together," he said, "we could be at least as strong as the United States of America."
Some observers asserted that the US isn't the only country being humiliated, pointing to Germany's support for Israel, which is rooted in deep-seated guilt over the country's systematic slaughter of 6 million Jews during the Nazi-era Holocaust.
In addition to brutally cracking down on pro-Palestine protests and suppressing speech critical of Israel's obliteration of Gaza, Germany initially planned to intervene in the South Africa-led genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), also in The Hague.
However, Berlin said last month that it will not intervene in the ICJ case in support of Israel so that it can better focus on its own defense in a separate case before the tribunal filed by Nicaragua accusing Germany of enabling Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza via arms sales.
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