BREAKING: War Sec may release footage of Sept narco-terrorist boat strike: ‘al Qaeda of the western hemisphere’

Hegseth was asked the Department of War (DoW) would be releasing the video, and said that the DoW was reviewing it, and that the situation was an ongoing operation, and when pressed on the question added, "The most important thing to me are the ongoing operations in the Caribbean with our folks that use bespoke capabilities, techniques, procedures, in the process. I'm way more interested in protecting that than anything else. So we're viewing the process, and we'll see."

Prior to the interview, Hegseth gave a speech about the importance of national security in the US. He defended the Trump administration's military action against suspected drug boats in the Caribbean Sea by equating them to Al Qaeda terrorists in the Middle East.

"The days in which these narco-terrorists, designated terror organizations, operate freely in our hemisphere, are over," Hegseth said. "These narco-terrorists are the al Qaeda of our hemisphere, and we are hunting them with the same sophistication and precision that we hunt in Al Qaeda," he continued.

"We are tracking them, we are killing them, and we will keep killing them so long as they are poisoning our mental narcotics so lethal that they're tantamount to chemical weapons. We're not doing this on our own throughout our hemisphere, our allies and partners recognize that these Narco terrorists threaten them as well."

This is part of the overall goal to bring the US in control of the western hemisphere. "The department's activities throughout the Western Hemisphere aren't just about killing narco-terrorists," he said. "They're also about deterring and defending our nation's interest against other threats to that in the hemisphere." Although the secretary has said that the different boats struck have all been carrying narco-terrorists, evidence of their activities has not been released.

"To that end," he went on, "the President will always provide the department will always provide the President's credible options when needed. That includes guaranteed US military and commercial access to key terrain like the Panama Canal, the Caribbean, the Gulf of America, the Arctic and Greenland."