My friend Marc Thiessen makes some excellent points in his Washington Post column today (which I recommended to listeners of our podcast during my discussion with Rich Lowry this morning). He defends the Trump administration against war crime allegations related to the now infamous “double tap” strike that killed two alleged drug traffickers who were shipwrecked (because of the first missile strike) off the coast of Venezuela.
Relying on David Shedd, formerly of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Marc observes that double taps are not unusual. In combat, initial strikes often do not eliminate the threat and additional strikes are necessary to destroy the targeted enemy asset. This is obviously why, as I noted on Tuesday, the Trump administration has tried to shift the focus of the second strike from the shipwrecked people (the focus of media coverage initially, to which the administration did not effectively respond) to the remnants of the ship and its cargo.
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