The Atlantic called the Trump administration’s bluff on Wednesday morning, responding to their claim that none of the information in the Signal group chat discussing strikes on Yemen was classified by releasing virtually the entire chat. The discussion, which included Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg for no reason beyond incompetence and the wildly illegal desire to keep the planning out of the reach of Congress or federal records laws, sure seems like it should have been classified.
Does “1215et: F-18s LAUNCH (1st strike package)” sound like a “plan” to you? How about “1415: Strike Drones on Target (THIS IS WHEN THE FIRST BOMBS WILL DEFINITELY DROP, pending earlier ‘Trigger Based’ targets)”? Or maybe “1536 F-18 2nd Strike Starts – also, first sea-based Tomahawks launched”?
Reporting from others including Politico have stated the obvious, that yes, such details of military operations are obviously, hilariously classified. The administration, of course, is lashing out about the release, though the general Trumpland ethos of “never admit fault under any circumstances” is maybe running into a wall here when faced with such evidence. In sort of a “you’ve got no arms left” situation, White House deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich’s “Yes I have!” seems to seize on the substitution of “attack” for “war” in The Atlantic’s verbiage: “The Atlantic has already abandoned their bullshit ‘war plans’ narrative, and in releasing the full chat , they concede they LIED to perpetuate yet ANOTHER hoax on the American people. What scumbags!”
The chat logs go on to reveal the team celebrating what is pretty obviously a war crime. National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, who originally added Goldberg to the chat, reported on results of the strike, saying: “The first target – their top missile guy – we had positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend’s building and it’s now collapsed.” There is, of course, no official indication that the girlfriend or any other non-targets were in the building, but the Houthi-run Yemeni health ministry has said that at least 53 people were killed in the strikes.
The calls for resignations will get louder today, with even Fox News seeming to not quite know where to land on things. At the very least the episode lays bare the sheer dramatic incompetence at the top of government today. In the midst of Hegseth’s minute-by-minute rundown of the strikes, he added: “We are currently clean on OPSEC.”
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