Press secretary confirms the Defense Secretary authorized a follow-up strike on apparent survivors clinging to the wreckage of an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean.

OK. Pay attention. This is the part where I lower my voice. Because this one is not funny.

The Caribbean strike. The first Caribbean strike. The one in September. The one where the United States Navy hit, with a missile, a small boat the administration said was carrying narcotics. That one. The one we already covered.

That strike left, on initial reporting, two survivors in the water. They were holding onto the wreckage. They were, in the photographic record that has since circulated, visible in the water.

What the administration confirmed, on the podium, on Thursday, via the press secretary, was that the Secretary of War, after the first strike, authorized a follow-up strike. The follow-up strike was on the wreckage. On the people holding onto the wreckage. That follow-up strike, by the press secretary’s own confirmation, killed those two men.

Buddy. I want you to read that again. Slowly. The Secretary of War. Authorized a second strike. On survivors. Of the first strike. Who were clinging to the wreckage. In the open ocean. In international waters.

The Geneva Conventions, which the United States is a signatory to, have language. The language is specific. The language addresses exactly this. You do not strike, under the law of armed conflict, a person who is visibly hors de combat. That is the term. Hors de combat. Out of the fight. In the water, holding onto a board, after you missiled their boat. That is hors de combat. That is in the textbook. That is in the Marine Corps textbook. I have shaken hands with the Marines who have read it.

The administration’s defense, by Friday morning, was that the men were combatants in a designated narcotics-trafficking operation, and the second strike was lawful. The Pentagon’s own JAGs, per the reporting, are not unanimous on that point. The Senate Armed Services Committee, per the reporting, is requesting the chain of authorization. The chain of authorization is, by the press secretary’s confirmation, the Secretary of War.

I have been arguing with televisions for thirty years. Tonight I am turning the television off.