“Kill them all.”

That was the order, plain, deliberate, and damnable, issued by the booze and bronzer brined Secretary of War Crimes, Pete Hegseth, as if American power were his personal cudgel and human life his disposable currency. The directive slithered down the chain of command like toxic runoff, moving through people who knew better, people trained specifically to identify unlawful orders, people who could see clearly what the drone feed had already revealed in stark, pitiless detail.

. . .

But this administration reveres the rule-shredders, because it was born from a twice-impeached, thirty-four-times-convicted felon who tried to choke democracy into submission on his way out the door, a man found liable for business fraud and sexual abuse, a man who brags about grabbing women as if their bodies were handrails, a professional grifter steeped in the theology of self-exemption, convinced that laws were crafted only for the unlucky, the unpowerful, and the unprotected.

. . .

And so instead of restraint, they followed the command. Instead of refusing an unlawful order, the explicit duty etched into the Uniform Code of Military Justice, they passed it along. They complied. They aimed again. They fired again. And two men who posed no threat whatsoever were erased from the world in a second detonation.

. . .