'Lot of heartburn in the Pentagon' over double-tap blame game: national security reporter

CNN National Security correspondent Natasha Bertrand reports the Trump administration is causing headache with its back and forth over who is responsible for a deadly double strike that destroyed a Caribbean boat and then killed its stricken passengers floating in the water.

“[T]here is a lot of heartburn in the Pentagon right now amongst officials who are saying, ‘how is [Secretary of Defense Pete] Hegseth shifting entirely the blame to [Navy Adm. Frank] Bradley… while at the same time he's saying that he has his back?’ Clearly he's trying to shift responsibility for the entire strike to him.”

Former military officials are saying Bradley would be court martialed “under normal circumstances” for ordering strikes against helpless swimmers after an initial strike destroyed their boat.

“I think he's very much trying to have this both ways,” Bertrand told CNN anchor Dana Bash. “On the one hand, [Hegseth] is saying that we fully support what these commanders are doing. On the other hand, he's saying that we're going to keep striking narco-terrorists and put them at the bottom of the ocean. But also, this was Admiral Bradley’s decision. He's the one that made this decision on September 2nd to kill the survivors of that of that strike.”

This, said Bertrand, suggests “a little bit of vulnerability’ on the part of both Hegseth and the Trump administration.

“The reality is that there are serious questions about why they made that decision to kill survivors of that first strike and ultimately why they then changed course and began repatriating survivors after that first strike,” she said. “Was there a recognition there by lawyers, perhaps, that, ‘hey, maybe this is not going to be good for us in the future?’

Heads are also spinning because White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt reiterated multiple times that ultimately, Hegseth and Donald Trump are the ones who make all the decisions about the operations — but, at the same time, she and Hegseth both say Bradley was in charge of this particular operation, and ordered that second strike that killed the survivors.

“So while Pete Hegseth … said, ‘kill them all’ it was Admiral Bradley, according to the Pentagon, who then made the decision,” said Betrand. “And I think that there's a lot of exploiting this nuance and saying that because Hegseth didn't necessarily order that second strike to kill the survivors, … then that kind of absolves him of all culpability in this.”

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