United States Defense and Military Forces

• Inside the Pentagon’s Scramble to Deal With Boat Strike Survivors - Officials initially weighed sending survivors of U.S. attacks on boats suspected of drug smuggling to a notorious prison in El Salvador, to keep them away from American courts.
• Defense Bill Demands Pentagon Show Congress Boat Strike Orders - In a sign of bipartisan frustration with the Defense Department, the final defense policy bill aims to compel the Pentagon to share execute orders and video documentation.
• Democrats Call for Releasing Video of Deadly Boat Strike in the Caribbean - Top Democratic lawmakers who have seen the footage said Sunday that making the video public would provide transparency around the strikes that killed two survivors on Sept. 2.
• Superpower Competition: The Missing Chapter in Trump’s Security Strategy - President Trump is shifting from discussion of the long-lasting competition among the world’s biggest economies and nuclear powers.
• Not All Targeted Killings Are the Same. Hegseth’s Boat Strikes Are Illegal. - A former secretary of homeland security on the illegality of Trump’s boat strikes.
• Pete Hegseth Is Ordering Executions at Sea - Did Pete Hegseth break the law after authorizing Venezuelan boat strikes? The Times Opinion editor, Kathleen Kingsbury, argues that there are multiple reasons the strikes were legally dubious.
• Trump’s Security Strategy Focuses on Profit, Not Spreading Democracy - President Trump’s new National Security Strategy describes a country that is focused on doing business and reducing migration while avoiding passing judgment on authoritarians.
• Second Strike Scrutiny Obscures Larger Question About Trump’s Boat Attacks - Congress is focusing on two deaths in one strike. But nine other people died in that same attack, and the United States has killed 83 in all. Were any of those killings legal?
• Boat Strike Video Shown to Lawmakers - Two men struggled to cling to the boat’s hull, according to lawmakers and congressional aides. Then Adm. Frank M. Bradley gave an order for a follow-up strike, and the men were gone.
• Trump Trumpets Peace in Africa Amid War on Drug Boats, in Day of Dissonance - President Trump presided over a Congo-Rwanda peace deal on the same day his administration was being questioned about potential war crimes.