SecDef Lloyd Austin Leaks War Plans In Signal Group Ch—
Who knew the drunk rapist Crusader wouldn’t work out?
It’s hard to say which part of this story in the Atlantic is more hair-raising but the funniest part is the last line.
In his text detailing aspects of the forthcoming attack on Houthi targets, Hegseth wrote to the group—which, at the time, included [Atlantic Editor-In-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg]—“We are currently clean on OPSEC.”
OPSEC means “operational security” which was being violated by Hegseth by his own Signal message in numerous basic, illegal, galactically idiotic ways.
The story could not be a more depressing view into the blundering pile of stupids that have captured the US federal government, or a scarier picture for anyone who cares about, well, anything. A reporter — and not just any reporter, the Editor-In-Chief of The Atlantic, still a formidable publication, despite its flaws — was accidentally invited by the National Security Advisor Mike Waltz into a Signal chat in which classified information about airstrikes on the Houthis was being disclosed.
First of all, under no circumstances should classified information be passed on an app you can download for free next to “Doodle Jump.” In exactly the way “her emails” were not a national security risk, this was. This was a “principals meeting” (which Waltz spelled wrong) — the top people in the US Government — being conducted on an insecure commercial app with disappearing messages set, a violation of the Federal Records Act. The mind boggles.
Second, no one in the chat, including DNI Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe or anyone else seemed to have anything to say about the absurd venue of the meeting, indicating it was not an unusual event. And no one seemed to notice the extra participant lurking in the background.
Third, the Vice President of the United States advocates for holding off on the strikes because it helps Europe with trade by striking at the Houthis, who endanger Europe’s trade routes with their attacks in the Suez Canal.
The account identified as “JD Vance” addressed a message at 8:45 to @Pete Hegseth: “if you think we should do it let’s go. I just hate bailing Europe out again.” (The administration has argued that America’s European allies benefit economically from the U.S. Navy’s protection of international shipping lanes.)
The user identified as Hegseth responded three minutes later: “VP: I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC. But Mike is correct, we are the only ones on the planet (on our side of the ledger) who can do this. Nobody else even close. Question is timing. I feel like now is as good a time as any, given POTUS directive to reopen shipping lanes. I think we should go; but POTUS still retains 24 hours of decision space.”
I’m old enough to remember when Europe was our ally, when this kind of international cooperation was how we kept the peace. No more. Europe is the enemy now — just a place to grind down enough to let Putin take it.
I’m trying to imagine what would happen if Lloyd Austin and Kamala Harris were debating how to best screw over Europe while sharing classified operational information that could get soldiers killed — on a goddamned APP.
It’s beyond idiocracy, it’s aggressive, metastatic brain death. The US government is being run by a parade of kakistocratic cult members, foreign agents and billionaire pawns all competing to get their own crimes shoved in between everyone else’s while trying to not get noticed.
The government of the United States is heading for major disaster. Every enemy on Earth is licking their chops at this display of case of mass Dunning-Kruger. There is no reason to think any of the functions of the national security apparatus are functioning in a serious way. There is observably no one in charge who knows what they’re doing. Who wouldn’t take a shot at us now if they were motivated?
Pete Hegseth is a dangerous man, not because he’s clever and underhanded but exactly because he isn’t. [h/t Patriottakes]
In the video of him drinking on the job, you can see his tattoos, a set of markings that speak to his Crusaders worldview. Here he is in 2018 discussing how to bring a third Temple Mount to Jerusalem, a precondition of the Rapture in dispensationalist Christian theology. This is why he’s such a fan of occupying Gaza.
The first Trump regime was a mess, but it still attempted, in some ways, to masquerade as a government. This is a government completely undeterred by rules, laws, morals or consequences. We are a failed state. And a state ruled by failures.
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1. The worst part is that they recklessly, offhandedly put the lives of our military people at risk by potentially telling the people they were ordering those military people to go bomb that the bombing was coming. The only reason they lucked out and escaped that tragedy was that an editor at The Atlantic was smarter, more responsible, and more patriotic than the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State, the Director of National Intelligence, the Director of the CIA, and the Vice President.
2. It was illegal as hell, both the gross security violation of talking about information at that level of classification on Signal, and the fact that they're trying to run the administration off the books by avoiding the legally mandated official channels and venues for this kind of thing, thereby violating the Presidential Records Act that Trump loves so much to talk about without knowing what it says.
When I was in the service, I had a security clearance, because I was responsible - at a much, much lower and more mundane level - for classified information and crypto equipment. I never got near anything this sensitive, because there was never a need for me to know it. But the stuff I needed to access was kept inside safes, under 24-hour watch, inside a vault with a steel door with a combination lock. I had a desk in that vault, and if I'd even left a classified document unattended on my desk there, I'd probably have been relieved for cause and maybe court-martialed.
Notwithstanding the fact that I retired in 1996, if I'd pulled a stunt like this, they'd still be piping sunlight into my cell at Leavenworth on alternate Tuesdays. And I'd deserve it.
Let's see whether any of these jerks (all of whom howled for Hillary Clinton to go to jail over her private email server) are fired, let alone prosecuted. My bet is that if anything, they'll tag some poor luckless staffer to scapegoat, and hang that person out to twist in the wind.
Putting a known drunk in charge of the military isn't the smartest thing to do. Especially considering lying geriatric Trump says he's a genius and has a "very high IQ."