Alex Horton

And that is an accurate summary of what happened.

Didn't get into how they got there, but that is true.

We don't know, and we're still trying to figure that out.

We reported in our first story that there was a greater emphasis in planning in strikes to account for the possibility of survivors after that first strike.

But we don't know who directed it and what form it took.

But we do know that later on in other strikes, it led to a rescue mission to recover two survivors.

I think just as likely, and maybe even more likely, is...

They didn't think clearly enough through the process to account for survivors because they were confident that when you hit an unarmored, essentially a fishing boat at sea with a missile, that everyone's going to die.

But here's the very first strike and that didn't happen.

So I think what is pretty possible here is...

They regrouped after the first strike was over and everyone was dead.

And they said, perhaps, you know, we should account for this in our planning to what do we do if there's a survivor?

What are some of the things, you know, we need to just be more deliberate about that.

I think that's probably the more likely event is they realized that this was a potential gap in their planning and they addressed it after that.

It's pretty significant, and it has to be one or the other.

It can't be both, really.

Just because you use the military doesn't mean whoever you're attacking is a combatant or a lawful target.

You have to be attacking other combatants.

So that's one thing to underline is just because the U.S.

military was involved doesn't mean it automatically is in this basket of permissible or impermissible conduct in military operations.