General Discussion

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/08/does-pete-hegseth-even-believe-that-war-crimes-exist

..."War crimes, particularly avoiding being held to account for them, have been the great defining cause of Hegseth’s career. Referring to the Geneva conventions against war crimes, Hegseth wrote that US soldiers “should not fight by rules written by dignified men in mahogany rooms eighty years ago”. In his book, he recounted his contempt for being briefed in Iraq by a Jag officer giving guidance about the rules of engagement, referring to the Jags as “jagoffs”. His company, Charlie company, took the name “Kill company”, and posted a whiteboard with the number of kills, the “kill board”, which tallied up dead civilians. Hegseth defended the commanding officer, who “did cross the line at certain times”, but was “an American hero and a trained warrior”, to the New Yorker in 2009.
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On air, he was a strident advocate for the pardoning of three men convicted or accused of war crimes. Army Lt Clint Lorance had been convicted of second-degree murder for ordering his troops to fire on three unarmed Afghan men. Green Beret Maj Mathew Golsteyn was accused of killing an unarmed Afghan man he had detained and of burning his body. On Fox & Friends, Hegseth said: “If he committed premeditated murder then I did as well … Put us all in jail.”

Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher in particular had become a martyr figure among the Maga faithful. The charges against him described especially gruesome behavior. He was accused of stabbing a 17-year-old captive fighter in the neck, posing with him before the killing and his body afterward for a video and photos. Gallagher was also charged with shooting civilians, including an elderly man and a young girl, which he denied. Ultimately, Gallagher was convicted only of posing with the corpse. Hegseth lobbied for his and the others’ pardons, and featured Gallagher and Golsteyn, his band of brothers, on an hour-long special on Fox called Modern Warriors, where he touted Gallagher as a “war hero”. Trump granted three acts of clemency on 15 November 2019, the success of Hegseth’s advocacy."...(more)