‘Fog of War’: Hegseth Tells Press What They ‘Don’t Understand’ About Strikes on Narco-Terrorists

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth defended the Department of War’s second strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean, citing the “fog of war.”

Hegseth said during the second strike on Sept. 2, the boat “was on fire,” so he didn’t personally see survivors, and he said he “didn’t stick around” for the remainder of the mission following the first strike. He said Adm. Frank Bradley “made the correct decision” in sinking the boat, which he “had complete authority to do.”

“This is called the fog of war,” Hegseth said at Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting. “This is what you in the press don’t understand. You sit in your air-conditioned offices up on Capitol Hill and you nitpick. You plant fake stories in The Washington Post about ‘kill everybody,’ based on anonymous sources, not based in anything, not based in truth at all.”

Hegseth said reporters were throwing out “really irresponsible terms about American heroes, about the judgment that they made.”

“I wrote a whole book on this topic because of what politicians and the press does to war fighters,” he said. “President [Donald] Trump has empowered commanders—commanders—to do what is necessary, which is dark and difficult things in the dead of night on behalf of the American people. We support them, and we will stop the poisoning of the American people.”

A reporter asked Trump if he supported the second strike to kill survivors of the Venezuelan boat strike.

“All I know is this, every boat that’s blown up that you see, we save 25,000 lives,” Trump said, adding that he still hasn’t gotten a lot of information.

“To me, it was an attack,” he said. “It wasn’t one strike, two strikes, three strikes.”

The president said he wants the drug boats taken out, and he is willing to attack on land if necessary.

“These people have killed over 200,000 people last year,” he said. “We’re taking those sons of b—- out.”

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