Comment by legitster
8 months ago
The whole thread is WILD, and the fact that it was verified is crazy. But the actual text of the thread is horrifying:
On one hand, they say they complain about "bailing out Europe". But on the other hand, they explicitly moved up the timeline so they could move before other actors and take credit.
> "If the US successfully restores freedom of navigation at great cost there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in return."
So to be clear, when presented with the option to wait a month, they instead explicitly choose to act decisively for political reasons. And then they want to turn around and extort European allies over it.
The US is primarily attacking Houthis to support Israel and not Europe. Vance knows that.
J.D. Vance comes of as a rabid anti-Europeanist in his speeches, tweets, and apparently also his private messages. Here in Denmark the authorities reported that his wife, Usha Vance, is tied to an unusual money transfer and upcoming meeting with Greenlandic separatists.
No, I'm pretty sure this is actually about shipping lanes and freedom of navigation. Israel doesn't need the help.
If you read the story, one of their concerns is that if they don't act, Israel was going to instead.
So no, then it clearly wasn't about shipping lanes and freedom of navigation but just about taking the credit. After all if Israel was going to do it instead it could simply be solved by waiting a little bit. These guys are super transactional and they were afraid they missed the moment that would allow them to take credit and use it as coin for exchange.
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Co-incidence?
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-fcpa-anti-bribery-law-exe...
J.D. Vance is less of a person and more of a living proxy for the will of Peter Theil.
> So to be clear, when presented with the option to wait a month, they instead explicitly choose to act decisively for political reasons.
This feels like a pretty reasonable thing for a nation-state actor to take into consideration, no? Is there any country on earth where the government altering timing of something for political convenience would be surprising?
The rest of this story is hilariously egregious. The part about the government discussing its own best interests and acting in them is the least abnormal thing here.
Bailing out europe when us is the cause of so many troubles in middle east (and not only that, or at least contributed to it) is deeply ironic
The US has veto'd ceasefire calls in the UN Security Council which European countries have been in favour of (or at least abstained).
Yes, Europe benefits from the strait more than the US, but it isn't Europe's mess in the first place.
I disagree. The root cause is obviously Israel founding which was the the last colonial project that Western European countries undertook.
I predict that in the next decades Europe will cut ties with Israel completely but until then we reap what we sow.
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The wilder thing is people are surprised this is happening.
rendered: https://mimoo.github.io/houthi_signal/
what I noticed is that even at the highest level people think prayers can be effective:
> JD Vance
> I will say a prayer for victory
To me what's funnier is that they believe an F/A-18F Super Hornet needs divine intervention to go up against Ansar Allah's "top missile guy".
That they use emojis…
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How was it verified?
It's been acknowledged by the government that this happened. They aren't denying anything, and are saying it was just a mistake. From WSJ:
> House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) dismissed questions about whether Waltz should face consequences for discussing the Yemen operation on an unclassified chat group that included a journalist. “Clearly I think the administration has acknowledged it was a mistake and they’ll tighten up and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/trump-us-war-...
SecDef and the White House were claiming it was made up. This is double speak from the Speaker.
By the bombings taking place at the time specified and the government verifying that someone was indeed added to a chat mistakenly.
https://x.com/JenGriffinFNC/status/1904221405618577650
> [National Security Council] statement: "At this time, the message thread that was reported appears to be authentic, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain. The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to our servicemembers or our national security." - NSC Spokesman Brian Hughes
And from the article, practical verification:
> According to the lengthy Hegseth text, the first detonations in Yemen would be felt two hours hence, at 1:45 p.m. eastern time. So I waited in my car in a supermarket parking lot. If this Signal chat was real, I reasoned, Houthi targets would soon be bombed. At about 1:55, I checked X and searched Yemen. Explosions were then being heard across Sanaa, the capital city.
And today, confirmation from Trump:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-stands-na...
> "Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man," Trump said Tuesday in a phone interview with NBC News.
> When asked what he was told about how Goldberg came to be added to the Signal chat, Trump said, “It was one of Michael’s people on the phone. A staffer had his number on there.”