But I'll leave it there so Todd can speak on this as well.

Yeah, no, thanks.

Again, most of my targeting experience in Afghanistan was with dynamic targets, but this target appeared to be probably one that had been included in the target list during the, you know, who knows how long ago, right, the development of the operations plan.

And at the time, at least from what I've written reports, at the time, you know, this, you know, this school was actually part of the IRGC base.

And then at some point from the time it was included on the target list until the time the targeting was carried out, it had changed, you know, and had no longer been part of the base and had been turned into a school.

And so I guess I differ a bit with Tom in that I think the commander who ordered the strike There was no doubt in his mind that that was a lawful target.

And so I think, you know, you have to trace the mistake back.

So why don't we go in reverse order? How about that? So Todd, do you want to go and then Margaret and then Tom?

But if the defense department does have that plan to actually blow up every bridge in a country, every bridge in Iran, and the power plants, would that plan be legal?

Uh, n- no, Lawrence, it wouldn't be.

Targeting decisions and targeting operations have to be conducted on a case by case basis.

So there are cases or circumstances where power plants and bridges could be lawful military targets if they are contributing to the military, uh, of the, uh, of the enemy, and if attacking them would give the United States a definite military advantage.

But that has to be done on a case by case basis.

You can't just carte blanche, uh, say that all power plants are now going to be targeted.

That in fact would be a war crime.

What, what would you be suggesting? If you were in the defense department now, what would you be using as a, as a defining rule here?

it

is.

It's very concerning.

Again, one of the fundamental principles in the law of armed conflict is that you cannot use a protected status to gain a military advantage with the intent to kill or wound the enemy.

That is one of the earliest things that we are taught as judge advocates when studying the law of armed conflict.

And it's so basic that it's hard to believe that that was missed.

And if they weren't fundamentally concerned with the baseline rationale, then all of these details, like how the plane is communicating, whether or not is a military aircraft, that all in some ways will absolutely important become secondary to the bigger point, which is you have not set the legal predicate for war.

No, you're right.

Talk a little bit about that.

Yeah, you know, all of the different things that we're hearing, right? This confusion over the facts or the twisting of the facts.

Now, this is being done intentionally, just as you said, to divert attention away from what's really happening, right? I just watched Star Wars with my kids over the weekend.

These aren't the droids you're looking for, right? It's an attempt to try to distract and to confuse the facts so that nobody knows why.

what to believe.

You hope that in the end, right, this trail of contracts and transfers of funding and agreements that hopefully they'll come to light so that we can find out about it.

But Currently, they're certainly doing their best to make sure that nobody understands or nobody can figure out the truth, right? I mean, Hannah Arendt sent it.

What say you?

Really, at the end of the day, that image is not what they want people across this country to have playing in their living rooms and then having to live with from that point forward.

No, I think you're exactly right, Michael.

And I think back to when those photos of Abu Ghraib were released and the results that came from that.

I think General Petraeus actually had stated at one point that those pictures from Abu Ghraib were the greatest recruiting tool for al-Qaeda and Iraq insurgents to come in and carry out attacks against U.S. troops.

So I think domestically, this could have a very great effect, but also internationally, it's just going to lose even more international support, which we're already losing with certain countries cutting off sharing of intelligence for counter-drug operations.

So I think you're spot on there, Michael.

Talk to us about the sort of depth of risk that the Pentagon is putting our brave service members up against.

Yes, while the Secretary of Defense kind of likes to laugh off rules of engagement and the law of armed conflict and the role of JAGs, one of the primary reasons why it's so important for U.S. forces to follow the law of armed conflict is to try to minimize that risk of moral injury.

Uh, wh- is there any conceivable way that you could, uh, launch that strike without thinking, "This is going to kill those two men"?

Uh, no.

They would have known that, uh, that the strike would have killed those two individuals and, um, uh, again, back, you know, in my experience, what this looks like was a bleeding over of the tactics, techniques and procedures and the legal authorities that were used for 20 plus years in the counterterrorism fight in Afghanistan and o- other places.

Um, th- in those cases, right, if- if there's a military objective that is still operable that they can target and there are two members of the declared hostile force, the terrorist organization there, um, whether they're, you know, killed or wounded or not doesn't matter.

The rules are just totally different when we're talking about people shipwrecked at sea.

They didn't try any, uh, judicial procedure with them whatsoever.

No.

That, uh, to me, that seems very odd.

brought to land and given the appropriate due process, right? That our system provides for.

Yes, and besides the point of providing them due process, we should have brought them to the United States where we could have questioned them, perhaps gaining more intelligence on the drug networks that they were working for, transporting drugs for, so that we could then, again, pass that information on to our Coast Guard forces who could intercept the drugs as they have been for 20 plus years.

Fiscal year 2025, the Coast Guard intercepted more drugs than they had ever intercepted before.

This type of activity is not only risking their success, but as we've heard, the UK, the Netherlands and Colombia have stopped sharing intelligence with us regarding drug trafficking in the Caribbean.

And we really depend on cooperation with our international partners.

Our Coast Guard operate with the Coast Guards and navies of many of the Caribbean and Central American countries.

And if we lose that cooperation, we will become much less effective.

What does that all say to you?

We wanna know what the law is." Maybe you could start by telling us, like, how would you go about thinking about that issue?

Well, that's, it's a difficult question because as you well know, right, your legal analysis is fact-dependent, and we have very limited facts right now.

So I would first start off by asking for more facts, right? And we would have to understand what exactly the rules of engagement were, who had the authority to approve the strikes, any types of restrictions that had been put on that authority, whether that authority could be delegated.

So oftentimes, you know, the advice that a JAG might give would be who has the approval or who has the authority to approve this certain type of strike.

So you would need all of that background information.

And then you would apply the law to those facts.

And in this case, you know, my advice would be based on what we know that those two individuals are out of the fight, you know, hore de combat is the term, pardon my awful Latin, and that we had a duty to not target them.

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