I think this clown’s head might roll pretty good
Canada, Greenland, Mexico, and Panama are even more relieved that the American war machine is run by idiots and incompetents. When they make war plans, they invite random journalists to the meeting…which is also held over a commercial app rather than all those secret channels the government controls. The editor of the Atlantic got advance notice about a recent bombing run over Yemen.
The world found out shortly before 2 p.m. eastern time on March 15 that the United States was bombing Houthi targets across Yemen.
I, however, knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that the attack might be coming. The reason I knew this is that Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, had texted me the war plan at 11:44 a.m. The plan included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing.
This is going to require some explaining.
Is it? Is it, really?
It’s clear the military is being controlled by the gang who can’t shoot straight. My questions are: are they going to repeat this behavior next time they want to blow something up? Are they going to pay attention when the Pentagon tells them to not use that app? Will the Democrats be as persistent in hounding these baboons as the Republicans were about Hillary’s Emails
?
And, was Pete Hegseth sober at this badly mismanaged meeting?
The current line from the White House is “Forget about the reporter we incompetently invited into our top secret meeting being held on a unsecure chat app! Instead, look at all these dead Houthis we just killed! So no harm done!”
Pfffffft… Do you have to ask? I can here Chuckie now: “We don’t want to stoop to the Republican’s level with all these divisive accusations of scandal. We want to win on the issues… As soon are our donors tell us what the issues are.”
Edit: I can hear…
As Esquire’s Charlie Pierce often says, “Only the best people” will never stop being funny.
These folks are proof of the adage that the first rule of membership into the Dunning-Kruger club is that you don’t know you’re a member.
The White House confirmed the story in the Atlantic.
Hours later Pete Hegseth said the story was not credible having been written by a so-called journalist known for perpetrating hoaxes, before melting down shouting Russia, Russia, Russia!
Hegseth has no idea what’s going on. But, it gets worse! In a senate hearing CIA Director Ratcliff took the Sargent Schultz Defense claiming he saw NUHZING, heard NUHZING! Couldn’t recall anything, even though he was on the chat thread. Senator Warner (I think) called him a liar to his face. Ratcliff was rat-trapped.
It’s not just that their incompetence and amateurishness are on full display. The content of the texts is very revealing, too. What’s with Vance and Hegseth’s disparaging attitudes towards Europe? Their insults go way beyond what one might expect over mere policy disputes. This sounds personal. Did some European piss in Hegseth’s gin? Did Corporal Vance get into a spat with a NATO ally while paper shuffling in Iraq? Something is not right with these boys.
Yeah, was reading the news this morning:
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cg70xgxl3vmt
Ratcliff and Gabard turned into Alzheimer’s sufferers during that questioning.
Trump also took the Sargent Schultz Defense (tip of the hat to Doc Bill). The president, who can barely read, says no one reads The Atlantic. The Atlantic has over a million subscribers. I guess they need the paper.
@ 6
Ex-right-winger here: They hate generally Europe because of stuff like national health care, laws against hate speech, secularism, strict gun control, high taxes and regulation, a more liberal attitudes toward sex and sexuality. The garbage about NATO “freeloading” is just a smokescreen.
HAROLD MEYERSON on the American Prospect, commented that the conversation reveals that “the chat drones on about the wisdom of attacking the Houthis, with Vice President JD Vance noting that opening the Red Sea to normal ship traffic will help Europe a lot more than it helps the United States” “I just hate bailing Europe out again,” Vance says. Then “Stephen Miller, the deputy White House chief of staff for policy” says that Trump wants this, and they all shut up and go along. As Trump would say: ‘Yes men, losers, sad.”
The anti-Europe rhetoric is in keeping with their general pre-World War II isolationism. Trump and crew are opposed to NATO and the UN because they believe it costs them money (taxes). They have no idea how much World War II cost the US and the world as a whole.
Pete Buttigieg called it an “Epic Fuck Up”
see also https://www.vox.com/on-the-right-newsletter/405758/signal-leak-trump-vance-hegseth-foreign-policy
I didn’t even know the GOP fascists hated Europe much less why.
It could be because the USA can’t push the Europeans around very easily,.
The EU has 449 million people to our 346 million, i.e. a larger population.
The EU also has 15% of the world GDP to our 26% of world GDP, not as large economically as the USA but close.
Then again, since when do the christofascists need a reason to hate anything? They just hate and then hate some more.
I know they hate me and people like me since they say so often.
Pretty obvious fuck-up. Trump of course takes no responsibility.
An UKanian perspective (but typical of other countries):
raven @ #16 — Back in my younger days, conservative people would sometimes paraphrase George Washington’s “Farewell Address” where he warned against foreign entanglements. I believe this adage was hoisted a lot during the debate over the US joining the League of Nations after World War I. Ultimately, the US did not join the League. It would take another war, billions of dollars, and millions of lives to break the hold that old saw had on the US. Obviously, people find it difficult to evolve their thinking. It will probably be the doom of us.
@15 Raven
If you measure by PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) instead of exchange rates, the US and EU GDPs are nearly the same.
https://statisticstimes.com/economy/united-states-vs-eu-economy.php
As the unofficial spokesanthropoid for the American Friends of Baboons Society, I must strongly protest insulting baboons by comparing them to Republicans and Republican-Lites (Schumer, the Clintons, Obama, Biden, Carville, etc.). Baboons are far far more intelligent and moral than these people. Compare them to amoeba instead.
Edit: I just heard from a colleague, the spokesmicroorganism with the International Organization for the Rights of Amoeba. I apologize to amoeba and agree that they are smarter than most Congress critters. An accurate comparison is they have the brains and morals of rocks.
And I’ll bet far more of the EU GDP is from actually useful, productive work, rather than from double-counting, negative-sum economic activity like private equity hollowing something out, rent-seeking, and similar shenanigans, than is the case for the US GDP.
And a true fact is that each of them was duly elected by their constituency.
(Maybe elect smarter people?)
Buttigieg ’28, anyone?
Or AOC? Yes to both/either
Why do so many of you Yankees think that you will be having an election 2028?
Tim Walz. I think we’re going to be stuck with one straight white guy or another for awhile. He seems reasonable and no nonsense plus has the political chops. I thought he campaigned well and the ticket came close to pulling it off last year. We need to pull more from the middle plus rattle the couch potatoes and get some turnout.
chigau @ #24 — I’m having a worry over that one myself. Maybe a coronation is next.
I’m certain the U.S. will have elections in 2028. That’s how autocracies work these days.
It already doesn’t really have free and fair elections.
what numerobis said, and hj a while back on his blog. sham elections, like what erdogan and putin run. it keeps the fascist rubes dreaming they are free while the rest of us just sigh and cry eternally.
regarding the original situation tho, i love seeing that the incompetence is real. gives a sliver of hope to a hope-deprived country. keep up the good work, creeps.
numerobis @ #24
Ah. Quite right.
North Korea and Russia for examples.
@6 & @10: Hatred of Europe is literally as old as America. Allegedly it’s because of royalism, but in reality it’s also always been multiculturalism, overall sophistication, and (worst of all back then) secularism. (Remember: all those Pilgrims and other religious extremists had come here to get away from people of other faiths.)
robro @12: They also, and this can’t be repeated often enough, think that the US was on the wrong side of that war. The US had its own Nazi Party in the 1930s and they merely faded into the background after the attack on Pearl Harbor and Hitler’s subsequent declaration of war against the US. They never actually went away.
Raging Bee @30
Early era US there was more a schism between those favoring Britain and France.
The current kneejerk visceral animosity toward Britain is perhaps because our beloved revolution and 1812. Look at The Patriot and the villainous portrayal of the Green Dragoon Tarleton vs heroic Swamp Fox/Gamecock hybrid Gibson. That movie at least gave some props to the French. Some animosity toward Britain may come from observed treatment of Ireland, though Irish weren’t all that welcome here due to anti-Papal bias.
The visceral hatred of the French is resentment toward the actual importance of Lafayette and the lesser known Rochambeau as far as factors influencing the revolutionary outcome against the British. Spain played a lesser indirect role too. Detracts from the revolutionary heroics of the founders to acknowledge the French role. Must hate them then because reasons. America or nascent US was but a smaller part of a larger war. We make it out to be much more.
To some conservatives in the US the animosity toward France also stems from their revolution as seen through the eyes of Burke. Plus in the US aspersions were cast at the time toward the alleged Bavarian Illuminati role in that and who in the US was an Illuminati plant. That conspiracy theory goes way back. Propaganda for an election I think.
Focusing on the much later Vichy problem detracts from the brave Resistance. My own dislike though toward France (and England) stems from the outcome of WWII for Vietnam. That had an ugly echo.
He certainly wasn’t in that first interview disembarking the plane. He seemed to me fuzzy and unfocused but unfeasibly angry with it; head jabbing, finger pointing. (Perhaps they had refused to serve him for the last 90 minutes.)
at that time there were no other democratic self governing countries only strong countries with imperial ambitions and centuries worth of animosity and war run by hereditary rulers it was good advice the time.
Today I think it is the cultural differences and issues and their independent minded politics. They just do not feel in any way inferior and have no need to be subservient to anyone but will join together voluntarily for mutual benefit
the magat conservative is a hundred years late at least. clueless and unequipped for the times we live in.
OT but good news.
Democrats just won in two local elections in Pennsylvania.
These are in deep Red counties. James Malone won in a district that voted for Trump by 15 points four months ago.
The US voters are waking up to the attempted destruction of the USA and at least some of them aren’t going to go down without a fight.
The attempted destruction of Social Security isn’t going to go over well. 72 million US people get Social Security and 40% of them depend solely on Social Security for their income. These people are by definition old and poor.
They are also mostly…Trump voters.
Who are reaping what they sowed and it isn’t working out for them.
Crossposted w/the infonite thread
Stephen Colbert:
“Signalgate: Trump Tries To Dodge Explosive National Security Scandal” | All Of Them Should Be Fired.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=ihHU3IVVrfM
@ 35
And what marginalized groups did these candidates have to throw under the bus to appease the illiterate and uncultured voters of these counties?
This is how you get another Fetterman.
Actually PZ, quite a few people are suspicious that they used “non-government controlled” systems for a very specific reason. If anything those non-government systems can a) be under their control, as in they can erase things in them, and/or b) do not track the messages being passed back and forth, especially after you have deleted them. Government systems all fall under “information rules”, unless they are military, where this may not be the case, and all “inter-government” correspondence has to be documented – so, like, the “deep state”, i.e., the less corrupt, actually give a shit about some level of accountability, people can pin down who said what, when, etc. No record, no evidence, thus, no accountability.
” He adds that Waltz is “probably” not going to be using the application again, with Waltz chiming in saying it’s best to get everyone in a room together.”
Sounds wonderful for interested terrorists.
From The Onion: “We’ll be okay as long as terrorists don’t have the Internet.”
The Atlantic editor was inadvertently given 2 hours to prevent the death of 53 innocent people, and instead he logged out of the chat because he felt it was inappropriate to be there when American fascists kill innocent people. So fuck him.
More likely a coronary, given his age, physical condition, and diet.
Ten’ll get you one the answer is “trans people”.