Top Armed Services Dem says Sept. 2 strike video would show Republicans' description 'completely false'

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: ABC News

December 7, 2025, 11:30 AM


The top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee said Sunday that surveillance video of U.S. military strikes targeting an alleged drug trafficking vessel in the Caribbean Sea on Sept. 2 would contradict how Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and other Republicans have described it.

“When they [the survivors] were finally taken out, they weren’t trying to flip the boat over. The boat was clearly incapacitated. A tiny portion of it remained, capsized, the bow of the boat. They had no communications device. Certainly, they were unarmed,” Rep. Adam Smith, one of the Democratic lawmakers who saw the video, said. “Any claim that the drugs had somehow survived that attack is hard, hard to really square with what we saw.”

Smith called the video “deeply disturbing” and said “it did not appear that these two survivors were in any position to continue the fight.”

That’s counter to how Hegseth and Republican Sen. Tom Cotton, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee who also viewed the video, have described the circumstances preceding the second strike.

Read more: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/top-armed-services-dem-sept-2-strike-video/story?id=128185897

[moniss]

1. Tom Cotton has always been a

lying weasel.

[in2herbs]

13. After the meeting Cotton said the video showed 4 strikes not two and then his expression revealed that he said something

he shouldn't have.

[markie]

2. so, when do we see it?

I will keep an open mind.....

[KS Toronado]

10. According to Rep. Adam Smith (D) in the video NEVER

kegsbreath has some weak excuse why the public can not see the video they are talking about.
Rep. Adam Smith flat out says the video proves who's lying and who isn't.

[stollen]

3. I want consequence

and reparations, substantial ones.

[Codifer]

12. You forgot

"Dear Santa".

[Dawson Leery]

4. kick

[liberalgunwilltravel]

5. Pencil neck

Cotton needs to have his smug face punched in. Rhetorically, of course.

[Midnight Writer]

6. Cotton described not just a second strike, but a third and fourth as well.

That changes the narrative significantly.

[BOSSHOG]

7. So republicans played to their strength

THEY LIED. For the purpose of covering up a crime. For a convicted felon and someone who likes to act manly.

[wiggs]

8. Doesn't matter if they were or weren't trying to flip the boat. Doesn't matter if they had working radios or

sign language or loud voices. The GOP and MSM are good at confusing the issue and making everything GRAY and subjective, taking on one outrage at a time and just leaving it unresolved and without context. It is clearly out of bounds and not a good look for us, however...

In reality, MSM and pundits and journalists are missing (intentionally?) the biggest and most important story...most actions and expressions from this administration are of the same piece, the same stance, the same message, the same big picture with the same motivations.

DEHUMANIZATION

Not just dehumanization of ship-wrecked survivors...but of protestors (tear-gassed or assaulted and/or jailed), immigrants (criminal or otherwise), democrats, assimilated Somalis, Afgans who helped the US in the middle east, political opponents, women generally, trans or queer persons (no gender claims on passports other than M/W), those who need social safety nets, Ukrainians, etc etc

Only those who are sociopaths lacking in empathy or morals can do all of this and it's about time MSM links all these news items together. It is much harder for Scott Jennings, Fox, Megan, and the rest to defend an overall big picture case than individual actions....and voters need to see the forest more than each tree (though voter power is diminishing each day).

[GiqueCee]

9. HEAVEN FORFEND!

A Republican engaged in deliberate mendacity? How could such a thing occur?

Oh. Right. "Republican" was the dead giveaway.

[Cosmocat]

11. This how they win

The shouldn't be doing this AT ALL.

Full stop.

But they splinter off on some tangential bullshit and force a debate over reality their imaginary position, which normalized by the media out of both siderism and they move the country past the basic norm that they shouldn't be doing it in the first place.