Friday on MS NOW’s “All In,” Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ) said Secretary of War Pete Hegseth needed to be held accountable for his disregard of civilian casualties.
Host Chris Hayes said, “There’s reporting that, there’s images in Iran that appear to show landmines that have been, I think, dropped out of airplanes and scattered in a part of Iran, it’s possibly near the near the site of where missiles might be launched, but in essentially civilian area. This is the first time in years that this has been deployed by the U.S. Do you have concerns about that?”
Kim said, “Absolutely. I mean, it highlights why we need to have public hearings to be able to understand what exactly we are doing, whether it’s these weapons, if they are in fact land mines that are American, it is the first time in years. And there’s a reason we don’t want to use these: the potential for civilian harm and for not targeting precision with military targets. And it would be a huge step backwards. But again, this has been a pattern, Chris, a pattern that we’ve seen, Secretary Hegseth, whether it’s the boat strikes, whether it’s the attack on that school, that killed over 160 people in Iran, as well as, you know, I pushed for legislation a couple years ago that started the Civilian Protection Center at the Pentagon. This is something that was trying to minimize civilian casualties, as we saw in Iraq and Afghanistan. And now, Secretary Hegseth over the last year has gutted it, you know, reduced the staff, right down to the very bottom, has not been pushing forward on the funding and look at what we’re getting. So this is looks like a pattern of very clear, not just neglect but disregard by this Secretary of Defense when it comes to civilian casualties, which is on us now that we own that as a country and that is something that he needs to be accountable for.”
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