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Dec. 2, 2025 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
26:47
Who Ordered The Second Strike

President Trump's shoot to kill policy on boats off the coast of Venezuela has run into serious legal trouble after the media has reported that his Defense Secretary, Hegseth, ordered survivors of a first strike to all be killed as they clung to the wreckage of the boat. "Kill them all," he was reported to have said. But why are they killing anyone? Are we at war? Also today, NATO slips further into irrelevancy...

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Rules Of Engagement 00:08:53
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today, we have Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you this morning.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you this morning?
Good, good.
Excellent.
Talk about some things that we've talked about before.
And if we have problems in our foreign policy, it looks like we'll be busy for a while.
We'll be busy for a while.
So, but I want to talk a little bit about this, you know, rules of engagement.
Also, what you can do, you know, when you're in battle, you know, there was a lot of Milai stuff in Vietnam.
You know, how far can they go?
Obviously, some of that stuff was just so criminal.
And it was supposed to be straightened out, but war is ugly.
And it's come up again.
And I imagine it gets by a lot of people because it's not quite like Milai in Vietnam.
We don't have that many people on the ground in Venezuela, even though I consider that a very serious thing because we have a lot of military.
I heard a number of military personnel that we have floating around Venezuela, and it's thousands of people.
It looks like they could be prepared to invade or do whatever they desire.
But the argument and the discussion that's gone on is, you know, they shot up these boats because they were drug dealers.
They were hauling in drugs.
I wonder if they had alcohol on there or what were they doing.
And we talked about that last week, and they killed people.
And we made the point that it wasn't much of a trial.
They didn't have charges.
Under what law was this done?
And it was, to me, very, very, you know, dangerous escalation.
But the big argument and discussion turned out to be how much can you do after that?
Because they didn't kill everybody.
Oh, what do we do?
Well, we can't go to kill people.
So there is an order, and they're still trying to figure out who gave the order.
President didn't do it.
HexF didn't do it.
Oh, we'll find somebody to blame.
That's okay.
You go clean up the mess you made.
You didn't kill all the people.
And, well, they better call Lindsey Graham.
He'll strain this up.
He says, do it the first time.
Kill them all.
That's just so disgusting.
But anyway, this is going on.
I don't know whether it's going to be settled because war is ugly and it looks like we have about six different places.
And if we run out of steam in one place or do something decently, they'll find another place to satisfy the military-industrial complex.
We kind of sometimes were at a disadvantage because sometimes we cover things a little bit too soon.
We covered this yesterday.
And after the show was over, both of us were watching the events as the day progressed, and it became a bigger and bigger story later in the day.
So we kind of got punished, I guess, in a way that we talked about at first.
But it has become a big story.
And, you know, part of it, I think, is that it's easy to get disappointed that things don't come to a head the way we wish they would.
You know, we believe that this entire operation is blatantly illegal.
You can't just blow people out of the water because you suspect them of a crime, regardless of what that crime is, regardless if they're running drugs or whatever they're running.
You have to stop them.
They have to be arrested.
People say, well, why are we wasting our time doing that?
Because the next time you may be in that boat fishing and you're going to get blown up.
So there's a reason for these things.
But nevertheless, now the reason people are talking is just as you introduce it, Dr. Paul, because apparently, and this was a story that the Washington Post ran with a few days ago, a strike held back in September.
As you say, there were two survivors.
They were clinging to the wreckage of the boat.
And Hegset, the Secretary of Defense or war, whatever he wants to be called, reportedly said, kill them all.
And so they went back and did a second strike and killed the survivors, which is blatantly, by any accounts, an illegal act to do.
And I'll show you actually, according to the Pentagon's own rules of engagement, is illegal.
So now that's a big story.
And it's not just Democrats playing for political points.
Of course, they are.
But also Republicans are now starting to get nervous about this because the public is overwhelmingly against attacking Venezuela.
They don't support this war.
And they're starting to sour a little bit on the idea that we've killed 80 people and we have no idea who they are or what they were doing.
Right.
And, you know, this is a big deal.
And they should be talking about it and trying to sort it out.
But, you know, the sorting out of problems like this is always cover-up.
You know, oh, no, the big ones, they'll have a conference or they will have a commission to study it, to find out who killed whom and why.
But this was a small little thing, and they didn't think they were going to have any noise about it.
But now they're talking about making this decision to clean up the mess.
And my argument, and I think you sort of alluded to this, what about the big one?
The big argument.
Why are we there?
I mean, could blowing up so many ships and killing people and not be an act of war?
I mean, it's pretty serious.
But so far, they're still not talking about there.
They're talking about the details of who told them who made, who gave permission to clean up the mess they created.
Oh, a couple of people didn't get killed.
We got to go back and do it.
That is sick.
And like, what if there was one of these rules that when you go to war, you should be under threat of a foreign power coming in?
Were there going to be troops coming into Florida?
I mean, I wonder what their plan was.
But this is so disgusting that I just think that the American people need to wake up because it has a significant, because right now, they continue to talk about what our economy is doing and the prices are doing.
And they never quite put the two together because prices are going up.
That's right.
But it's going up.
How many billions of dollars have we spent in Ukraine and the Middle East?
And now there's this backup now on another skirmish that they could have, another invasion.
And I don't see how we could get that deeply involved in Venezuela and not get involved in Colombia.
Yeah.
Well, what's frustrating about this whole thing is that they're not even really trying to make sense anymore.
You know, with Saddam and with all the other war propaganda, they at least tried to make it make sense.
This doesn't make sense.
Trump is telling us on the one hand, well, I got to blow up these boats.
I got to bring the entire, you know, a huge portion of our navy off the coast of Venezuela because I've got to stop this drug trafficking in the U.S.
Then someone says, well, it doesn't come from Venezuela.
I don't care.
And then what else does Trump do?
He pardons the former president of Honduras who literally trafficked 400 tons of cocaine into the United States.
We talked about it yesterday.
So they're not even trying to make it make sense.
On this hand, I'm going to stop drug trafficking.
On this hand, I've got to let this drug trafficker go.
You know, people, it just doesn't make sense anymore.
The libertarian position is if you have prohibitions on bad stuff, you're just going to get more black markets and all this.
They still do it.
But we don't have black markets, even though more people die from alcohol than they do from fentanyl.
But we don't do it because they're illegal.
And people, you don't have El Capone selling the drugs or running the racket.
But they can use this.
I think, and I think you lean this way, is this as an excuse for other reasons what they have in lieu.
But I'll tell you what, I don't think, I mean, if it was, but why they go to arresting foreign people, drag them up to our country and put them in prison, and then give them a pardon for political reasons, which makes no sense.
Makes no sense.
Well, here's a good example.
I think I took out three short clips about how they're not trying to make it make sense.
Now, this double tap, they call it, which is when they went back and murdered the people who survived the first hit.
Blame Game Missteps 00:04:25
Now, that is clearly a very serious thing.
Well, President Trump didn't even seem to understand what was going on.
Let's watch that first clip.
It's a short clip, so pay attention to it.
I might want to grab that earpiece, Dr. Paul, and put that in and listen to that.
I'm just going to play all three.
So put that first one up.
Here's President Trump on Air Force One being asked about this double tap.
You've been going, I don't know that that happened.
And Pete said he did not but he didn't even know what people were talking about.
So we'll look into it.
But no, I wouldn't have wanted that second strike.
The first strike was very lethal.
It was fine.
And if there were two people around, but Pete said that didn't happen.
So he says he said that didn't happen.
There wasn't a second strike.
I wouldn't have wanted a second strike.
So he clearly didn't know that this happened or he's trying to cover it up and not doing a good job.
That's the first one.
Now they go on and they finally admit there was.
Go to the next one.
This is Caroline Levitt.
She is the spokesperson for the president, for the White House.
Now they're finally admitting it happened, but they're blaming someone else.
Let's listen to that.
That's why you've seen a drastic difference in this administration's policy with respect to the last.
And it's one of the many reasons the American public re-elected this president and support this Secretary of War in conducting these strikes.
So to be fair, to clarify, Admiral Bradley was the one who gave that order for a second strike.
And he was well within his authority to do so.
Separate questions.
So Admiral Bradley now was the guy who took the blame.
They threw him under the bus.
No, it was Bradley that did it.
We didn't do it.
We have no idea.
But he was well within his right.
Now, the third one here, if you can just show it before you play it, because Judge Apolitano reposted it and he made a comment that I wouldn't mind sharing with our viewers, if we can put that on the screen.
So, well, let's just listen.
Let's just watch it.
Judge Apolitano is the one who posted.
Listen to this part.
You said that the follow-up strike was lawful.
What law is it that allows no survivors?
The strike conducted on September 2nd was conducted in self-defense to protect Americans in vital United States interests.
The strike was conducted in international waters and in accordance with the law of armed conflict.
So hold on a second.
No, that's from the judge's show.
He played that.
So she asked, well, what law allows you to kill the survivors?
Well, self-defense.
And then she said the law of wars.
Let's just go ahead to this.
This is actually the Defense Department's law of war manual.
These are their laws.
Go to the blue one so we can just show the cover.
Now, she claimed that this manual says that you can kill survivors of a shipwreck.
This is the active Department of Defense law of war manus.
It's very long, over 1,500 pages, very detailed, right?
She claimed that it says you can do that.
You can kill survivors.
Well, go to the one previous because he's got out of order.
If you go to this section, it's section 18.3.2.1, it is very clear.
It says the requirement to refuse to comply with orders to commit law of war violations applies to orders to perform conduct that is clearly illegal or orders that the subordinate knows in fact are illegal.
And I highlight this part.
For example, orders to fire upon the shipwreck would be clearly illegal.
That's their own law of war, Dr. Paul.
It's clearly illegal, even though Carolyn Levitt said it's perfectly legal.
You know, the way I read that record on what people have to do to break the law, I think the first hit doesn't qualify as a justifiable hit.
No, no, no, it doesn't.
You're right.
Absolutely.
So we're back to that.
But, you know, the one thing overall on this, who blame this guy, no, blame this guy, blame this guy.
We don't even know why they're there.
Is there a real, oh, well, it's fentanyl, you know, and that's why they're there.
And so I think it's a bad reflection on the government and the administration that there's an ineptness in carrying out these orders.
You know, they won't take the responsibility of who really is at fault.
NATO's Future: A Policy Debate 00:13:28
They sort of hide.
And I think it's ineptness.
I don't think it's all that bad because I think America people ought to wake up and find out how these stupid things happen.
And this one is it.
And I think that this can be used as a positive wake-up call on how this goes on.
But I guess I can't be overly optimistic.
I think you nailed it on the head earlier on.
I mean, the question certainly is, why did you go back and kill these people?
Why did you kill the others in the first place?
Why did you kill the other 79 or 78 people in the first place?
But you make a great point.
But the real question is, what are we doing there in the first place?
Why are we there?
And now Trump is in a trap.
You know, I was on the Redacted yesterday and I mentioned this.
This is how the neocons work.
They talked him into sending all those naval vessels there.
They sweet talked him.
They said, oh, it'll be easy.
As soon as Maduro sees that carrier, he's going to cower and whine and retire and resign and get out of here.
It'll be easy.
They talked him into it, just like they did with George W. Bush.
He said, okay, they said, just let us move them there.
We don't have to do anything.
But now that they're there, what's he going to do?
He can't back down because he'll look like a wimp.
He doesn't want to do that.
We know that for sure.
You know, there was one military personnel talking about this, and I was assuming he sounded sensible.
He says, you know, with this much equipment and ships down there and a number of personnel, this is not, they're not there for a short-term event.
You know, that those that those little boats were going to threaten the United States.
It's okay.
We took care of them.
No, they have enough.
They have enough there.
I guess the aircraft carriers, the biggest aircraft carrier ever made in history.
Yeah.
You know, so maybe they're testing equipment and something like that, some other evil.
Yeah, I heard Colonel Danny Davis on the show yesterday talking about a lot of the guerrilla warfare training that they do in Venezuela.
Apparently they have a lot of like almost like militias.
They're not proper army.
They're almost like militias and they're trained to fight in the jungles.
And he made a good point, which is that if we do attempt a ground war there, it is going to be a Vietnam.
They're going to be coming at us from all areas, all sectors, coming out, killing a lot of Americans.
And it's not going to take long before Americans will say, what the heck is going on?
Why are Americans getting killed down here?
What's the reason?
I wonder if we could set up a lottery and do some betting.
How long do you think we're going to be there?
Is this a one-year deal or a short period of time?
Or is this going to try to compete with a 10-year event?
Or are we trying to get excessive of Afghanistan and be there for more than 20 years?
Who knows?
Who knows?
Well, I guess we can move on to another topic now.
This is a Wall Street Journal.
And there's a few articles like this.
If we can go to that first one of the Wall Street Journal, we'll skip a few of those ones that I had.
We already basically covered that territory.
Now, a lot of stuff is also happening with Russia-Ukraine, Dr. Paul.
As you very well know, we have Steve Witkoff again in Russia.
He's meeting with Putin.
I guess he's briefing him on the talks they had with the Ukrainians on Monday.
But the one thing that's irritating Europe is that they're not involved and nobody cares.
And here's an article.
It's not a good article, quote unquote.
It's a good article because it reflects the reality of what's happening.
Trump's push to end the Ukraine war is sowing fresh fear about NATO's future.
And the article talks about the fact that really basically America's European NATO partners are not involved in this whatsoever.
They're just being completely overlooked.
And it's becoming more and more obvious from the article and from reality that NATO itself has become irrelevant at this point.
Yeah, all this discussion, you know, about NATO and what we should be doing back and forth, it's always based on assumption that I think causes our problem.
And the assumption is that it's automatic, it's persistent, and we have to live with it of interventionism.
We have this responsibility.
Of course, other countries do it, you know, and they participate.
But right now, we're the powerhouse, at least for a while, yeah.
And so everything is a discussion that this is automatic.
They never say, well, what would it be like?
They don't even ask.
They don't even bother to ask.
What would it be like if you didn't have our intervention around the world?
Wouldn't there be a lot more peace?
Yeah, if we weren't on there, there'd be a lot more peace, probably.
Yeah, there would.
And let's look at just a couple of pieces from this article, the Wall Street Journal article.
You can put that next one on.
So a couple of indicators they're talking about that the U.S. just really isn't taking NATO that seriously anymore, which is, if that's true, we can cheer the Trump administration for that.
But they're talking about there's a growing split between the U.S. and its NATO partners.
On one side, White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff will be in Moscow for the latest rounds of talks.
Meanwhile, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and I highlighted this, will be skipping a biannual gathering of NATO foreign ministers and sending a deputy in his place.
The last time the U.S.'s top diplomat didn't show up at the event was 1999, which is pretty interesting.
And if you go to the next one, there was this leaked phone call between Witkoff and his counterpart in Russia, where it was basically a 10% of teapot.
But it gave the impression the Trump administration is more interested in improving ties and economic cooperation with Russia than defending the transatlantic alliance.
Well, duh, that makes sense.
And I'll go to the next one really quick.
Ben Hodges, I'm sure you've seen him on TV, Dr. Paul.
He's a general who's always on there talking head, super, super hawkish, hates Russia, wants war.
But this is interesting, not for the reason he meant.
He's talking about how the U.S. is trying to, you know, basically push Europe out and deal directly with Russia.
Ben Hodges, he says, that's the dream scenario for Russia.
Since the Soviet Union, its goal has been to drive a wedge between the U.S. and Europe.
I think the reason Trump disregards Europe is because he sees Europe as being inconsequential, which it is.
It is.
You know, talking about the future of NATO.
And a lot of people say, well, the beginning of the war was 2014, the Russians invaded Ukraine.
Yeah, that's out of the blue.
99% of the time.
At the same time, NATO was very much involved.
And we were part of NATO.
It remains that way.
But now, if this is true, that we're not getting along with the Europeans as well.
And Trump has said some things that he doesn't like, you know, spending money.
They don't pay their share, that sort of thing.
But so let's assume that maybe NATO is fading.
And, you know, you could say the position we've held for a while, for a long time, is we don't really believe that collectivism, like you get from NATO, is a good thing.
You know, it's not, it has nothing directly related to our national defense and our security.
So they do this, and they say that NATO, NATO has to be observed.
If we didn't have NATO, it's not maybe an automatic good.
You know, we don't like NATO.
You can say, oh, well, that's good.
We've been complaining.
Maybe they want to have that collective, but maybe it will be a super boost for a single country and a single person to gain more power.
And that would not be good.
Yeah, it's a possible downside.
It's a good point.
It's a good point.
Well, one thing I was thinking when I was reading the Wall Street Journal article is if the U.S. is viewing NATO as more and more irrelevant, well, why is that?
Well, it's because how NATO's behaving.
And I'm going to offer exhibit A for this whole thing.
If you put the next one on, look at this general, this man right here.
He's an admiral.
He's an Italian admiral.
And he is, if you go to the next clip, he is the top military officer of NATO.
And here's what he, here's his brilliant idea, Dr. Paul.
NATO's top military officer floats the idea of a preemptive strike on Russia.
So no wonder they're irrelevant.
What is wrong with this guy?
So Dave DeCamp wrote this up for anti-war.
NATO's top military officer has floated the idea of a Western alliance conducting a preemptive strike on Russia, a comment that drew sharp rebuke.
Admiral Giuseppe Cavo-Dragone, the chair of NATO's military committee.
So he's not just some backbencher, Dr. Paul.
He's the top guy.
He made the provocative comment in the context of discussing, quote, Russian hybrid attacks in Europe.
He told the Financial Times that a preemptive strike could be considered a defensive action, but he added that it's further away from our normal way of thinking and behavior.
And he adds, being more aggressive compared with the aggressivity of our counterpart could be an option.
The issues are legal framework, jurisdictional framework, and who's going to do this.
The Italian admiral said, well, who's going to do it?
The answer is short, no one.
The second answer is, you need to be quiet and go home.
But this doesn't make any sense.
There's no sense whatsoever.
So I get to think, well, if this doesn't make any sense and they're in charge and they've been around a bit and they consume a lot of wealth, what motivates them?
And it's never easy to come up with a precise answer because it gets so big and fuzzy.
We do know that special monetary interests are involved.
A lot of times it's political, but they're doing so many dumb things that nobody is making their empire bigger except one country.
That could be it.
But that wouldn't answer all the questions because I don't think Trump has been a consistent defender of NATO.
He's criticized it a lot.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, I'm going to close out if you think we're about there.
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Over you, Dr. Paul.
Very good.
And I want to close once again to thank our viewers for tuning in today.
And I hope you'll help us spread the message of liberty.
When we talk about foreign policy, I like to summarize things and simplify things.
And sometimes a couple words are a lot more important than a long speech.
But many times I answer a question, just come home.
We just don't need to be there.
And it's easily defensible.
And I think this is the case.
We could just think of the places that we could do that.
We would not endanger anybody.
We would actually be a blessing to a lot.
And it would also be involved in cutting back our wild spending.
And then, if you just come home, then what do you do?
Just mind our own business.
We don't need to be involved like this stuff we were talking about today, blowing up ships and arguing over, well, can you shoot a survivor or who's going to get blamed for that?
And I'll tell you, people say, well, you can't do it.
This means that you'll be weak.
And I argue the opposite.
I think a policy that was designed that way would make us strong, not weak.
We would be very much involved with world events and world philosophy because then people, if we do quite well with this position, maybe others would emulate us and live a free society.
And both economically and militarily, the whole world would be better off.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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