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Patriotic American Veterans Are Coming After Pete Hegseth — and Demanding Harshest Punishment Possible: "Those Are War Crimes" Veterans and senior officers purged from the Pentagon are done with half-measures. Firing Pete Hegseth is the bare minimum. As the calls for his removal grow louder, they are demanding that Congress go further: impeach him, convict him, and permanently bar him from ever holding public office again. "There is no pathway back to an effective and respected DOD with Hegseth as the secretary of war," said one senior officer forced out under his watch. "Many of us blame Congress almost as much as we blame him. The government has failed the military, and impeaching Hegseth is the first, necessary step toward restoring any faith or confidence." The indictment against him is long and ugly. Retired Rear Adm. Michael Smith, founder of National Security Leaders for America, says the case extends far beyond the war with Iran. He points to the deadly boat strikes against civilians in the Caribbean — strikes he flatly calls war crimes, which is to say murder — and to the abrupt resignation of the Southern Command commander. "Was it because he was given an illegal order and he didn’t want to follow that?" Smith asked. The failures do not stop there. Veterans groups have condemned Hegseth's refusal to evacuate military families from Bahrain before the fighting with Iran began, leaving spouses and children in harm's way when Iran struck the Navy's largest base in the Middle East. They have also highlighted the reported conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln and the targeted removal of senior officers who are women and people of color. Hegseth has not merely been a bad secretary. He has been a destructively criminal one. Simply letting him leave with no accountability should not and cannot happen in a country like the United States of America.