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The Trump cabal is telling us that it was a perfect mission. That means there was no collateral damage—even though children died!
"The real story here is the overwhelming success of President Trump's decisive military action against Houthi terrorists"
- Karoline Leavitt, WH Press Sec.
"It was a very successful mission."
- Pam Bondi, Attorney General
An image taken from video provided by the US Navy shows an aircraft launching from the USS Harry S Truman in the Red Sea before conducting air strikes in Sanaa, Yemen [US Navy via AP Photo]
There was no pressing reason for the US to attack when it did. Although the Houthis hadn't exactly backed down from their threat to shipping in the Red Sea so long as Israel maintained its siege of Gaza, they hadn't carried out any new attacks on shipping since Trump took office. In fact, early in the chat, JD Vance argued for delaying the attack for a month, saying "I think we are making a mistake," but in the end he agreed "to support the consensus of the team." So, the (war) games began.It seems likely, from the following messages that this 1st Strike hit a residential building somewhere in Yemen.
All this just to kill one guy?
A man gestures as he searches in the rubble of a house hit by a US attack in Saada, Yemen, March 16, 2025 [Naif Rahma/Reuters]
This second strike may have been timed to hit the first responders to the first strike. Hitting the rescue workers from an initial raid is a tactic the US has used in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq...Israel does this too.
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A man holds a fragment of a missile at the site of a US strike in Saada, Yemen March 16, 2025 [Naif Rahma/Reuters]
Don't worry JD, the United States is the richest country on the planet, and has very sophisticated air assault weapons, including armed drones. Yemen is the poorest country in the Middle East, and has almost no air defenses.
Victory is assured!
Everyone can see that Waltz is making these messages disappear in 4 weeks, and all here know, or should know, that is a violation of FIOA laws, making them all a party to this crime.
"Top missile guy." Would that be a military or civilian guy, an aeronautical engineer perhaps? Are they now legit targets for both sides? And how sure are you that you've got the right guy? After all, mistakes happen. You're the guy that added Jefferey Goldberg to this chat, and you left your Venmo contact list public. I hope you're not the official that signed off on killing this guy, and his girlfriend, and anybody that happened to live in her building.
Earlier in this chat, Ratcliffe, the CIA guy, suggested that if they delayed the strikes a month, they might be able to target someone higher up the food chain than "top missile guy."
If saying you're mobilizing CIA assets for an ongoing military operation doesn't qualify as classified information, I don't know what does. But, hey, who am I to argue with the Director of Central Intelligence?
A girl injured by the US strikes lies on stretcher at a hospital in Saada, Yemen 15 Mar 2025 [Naif Rahma/Reuters]
WASHINGTON/ADEN, Yemen, March 15 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump launched large-scale military strikes against Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthis on Saturday over the group's attacks against Red Sea shipping, killing at least 31 people at the start of a campaign expected to last many days.
Houthis say children among 32 killed after US fighter jets bomb Yemen
The US raids come after Trump warned that ‘hell will rain down’ if Houthis attacked ships in the Red Sea.
And what about the girlfriend? Is she a legitimate target? Does she even know her boyfriend is a top missile guy? You bombed her building. It sounds like you bombed an apartment building and it's now collapsed. Do you even know how many people you just killed? Do you even care?
Reports say that 32 people were killed that night, including 4 children. Another 101 were injured. JD Vance's response is "Excellent."
And now the congratulations begin:
By the time the weekend campaign was over AP was reporting:
As Pete Hegseth said, this was never about the Houthis. They are only pawns in a much larger game.
+ Biden made them do it.
As VD Vance said, this was about sending a message. That's why these people had to died. This is why their children had to die. Because they are the terrorists, and we are the good guys. Besides, as Jesse Walters said on Fox News:
"Nobody even knows what a Houthi is"
"I'm quite proud, quite proud, about what CENTCOM did in that initial series of very devastating strikes." Pete Hegseth said today in the Philippines, where he's talking about "freedom of navigation" and "re-establishing deterrence" in the South China Sea. I wonder how many innocent people will have to die to accomplish that.
Actually, the most important question is: Were they using Signal on secure devices?
Because it doesn't matter how well Signal, or any other secure communications app, encrypts your data, if there is an agent on your device that can read your keystrokes before they are encrypted and read your screen messages after they have been decrypted. This can be the case if the device is compromised by a software agent or spyware that is designed to do just that.
That is also the case with these AI chatbots like X's Grok, Microsoft's Copilot, or Google's Gemini, that are increasingly being pushed on to our smartphones and other computing devices. They typically ask for an "all access" pass to our devices so that they can "see what we see, and hear what we hear" as Microsoft bragged about its Copilot, and see what we type, and then send it all up to the cloud—unencrypted. This is becoming a big problem for privacy and security that no communications app, no matter how secure, can protect us from.
That's why it's essential to know what devices members of the Houthi PC small group chat were using Signal on, and what other software, not just spyware, but also AI chatbots, they had running on the same device.
Meredith Whittaker, the president of Signal, the company that makes the app, warned about this very problem at SXSW earlier this month, saying that these AI agents tended to break the "blood-brain barrier" that the privacy apps depend on:
"If a messaging app like Signal were to integrate with AI agents, it would undermine the privacy of your messages," she said.
So, this "agent" aspect of the Signal Houthi PC small group chat question is actually two questions in one:
Were any of the devices in this chat infected by spyware put there by malicious actors?
Were any of these devices running AI agents, such as Grok or Copilot, that the owner gave permission to read messages and send copies to the clouds via unencrypted channels?
Just asking.....
Signal is secure in more ways than one. Not only does the app offer end-to-end encryption for a thread, which still allows for you to read it, as well as any agent installed on your end, but it has another feature that allows for the deletion of a message on every device after a timer runs out—auto-deletion. They call it "Disappearing Messages." Of course, using that feature would be in complete violation of FOIA public records laws, and if this outlaw regime is using Signal to avoid document archive. public record, and disclosure laws, that maybe the most important revelation to come out of this whole fiasco. If that turns out to be the case, we are going to need to know a lot more about what they are using Signal for.
toxonix on slashdot writes: The Kremlin is actively targeting Signal accounts and exploiting their device linking feature to get copied on any conversation on a compromised device. I'm not sure any of these guys on the conversation are savvy enough to know the difference between a QR code from a Kremlin account and a legit one from Signal.
Famous last words:
Pete Hegseth on Fox News in 2016 [x.com]: “How damaging is it to your ability to recruit or build allies with others when they are worried that our leaders may be exposing them because of their gross negligence or their recklessness in handling information?”
What were they all doing on that Signal Houthi PC small group chat in the first place? I don't think that question has received near enough attention. I mean, why did Suzy Wiles, Trump's chief of staff, Joe Kent, Tulsi Gabbard's chief of staff, and Scott Bessent, the treasury secretary, need to know that an F-18 was about to attack a specific target in Yemen 30 minutes ahead of time? Why, really?
Even if I had not read the Tom Clancy books, and only seen a few of the movies, I would still know that rule #1 of operational security is: Information is distributed on a need to know basis.
IF YOU DON'T NEED TO KNOW, YOU DON'T NEED TO KNOW!
I don't care whether you call them war plans, attack plans, operations plans, or a recipe for disaster, you don't go blabbing all over the place what you plan to do and when you plan to do it unless you are a fool. You don't start bragging to the girl you want to impress just because she has a security clearance. Just because they have the credentials to know that doesn't mean they have the need to know.
Whenever you are planning an attack or other secret mission, operational details should be limited to those that need them for the success of the operation, and then only those details that that individual or unit needs to know for the success of the operation. That's how you keep your people and operations safe. Anything else is malpractice.
And people have been killed by these attacks on the poorest country in the Middle East, and not just terrorists. On the US strike on Yemen the following Monday, the BBC writes:
Updating an earlier death toll, Houthi health ministry spokesperson Anis al-Asbahi posted on X that 53 people had been killed including "five children and two women", and that 98 people had been wounded.
So, this is serious business. So, let us be serious, the Houthi PC small group had not been assembled to consult on this operation, or make any real-time decisions about its execution. They had been assembled by Mike Waltz to watch and be entertained. They were there as dilettantes, not as government workers essential to the success of a life and death mission.
They wanted to play a scene like these guys in the Tom Clancy movie "Patriot Games" only they were too lazy to all assemble in a War Room, so they did it over Signal.
Patriot Games - watching SF raid in Libya
Patriot Games - same scene, different angle
Those hoping to understand how Jeffrey Goldberg was able to publish such sensitive operational communications in the Atlantic, must begin by understanding what was really going on here. Only then can they asked the right question:
Margaret Brennan asked Mike Waltz, Trump's National Security Adviser, this very important question in yesterday's "Face the Nation," and then allowed him to escape into Ukraine without giving her a straight answer. She shouldn't have done that.
The Trump Administration is trying to use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to claim the power of arrest and rendition, in the middle of the night, of any non-citizen to a black hole in a foreign country, without the right to so much as a phone call, let alone a day in court, even to prove that the person being detained really is a US citizen.
Trump's first test case for these new powers is his renditioning of 238 Venezuelan men, (One of which turned out to be a woman, and another that wasn't Venezuelan. Both had to be sent back to the US.) to a notorious super max prison in El Salvador. Included in the ICE round up, aren't just criminal gang members, but also those that entered the United States legally, and have been living in the US legally before Trump revoked their legal status.
Among those sent to the CECOT labor camp in El Salvador in the first three plane loads were 137 Venezuelan men that Trump claims are members of the criminal gang Tren de Aragua, [TDA] and he is using the Enemy Aliens Act of 1798 to justify their otherwise completely illegal treatment.
The Alien Enemies Act is the sole surviving child of a group of four acts passed by congress and signed into law by President John Adams in 1798. The Alien Friends Act and the Sedition Act expired in 1800, and the Naturalization Act was repealed in 1802. The Alien Enemies Act, as amended, is still in effect as 50 U.S.C.ch. 3.
2019 April 17: Girl Scout Troop 5325 clean up!
Personally, I think the Alien Enemies Act should have joined its siblings a couple of centuries ago. I thought it was horribly wrong when FDR used it to throw Japanese Americans into concentration camps during WWII. From the memorial apologizing for those terrible days on the corner of Lincoln & Venice, I thought we had grown past that. I guess not. And at least FDR had a very real and declared war with Japan to base his actions on.
The framers of the act wanted to make it crystal clear that these extreme measures could only be taken when the United States was in a real war with another nation state, and not some rhetorical war like the "war on drugs" or the "war on terror." And these crafty old founding fathers knew their way around the English language.
So now, I think they've got Trump pretty well boxed in here. Probably, Trump's ppls should have really read the law before citing it. My best claim to legal scholarship is that I recently binge watched 3 seasons of Lincoln Lawyer, and even I can see that Trump doesn't have a leg to stand on, legally speaking. When you read the law, it really is a thing of word craft beauty. It begins by specifying just when this act applies:
50 U.S. Code § 21 - Restraint, regulation, and removal
Whenever there is a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation or government, or any invasion or predatory incursion is perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States by any foreign nation or government, and the President makes public proclamation of the event, all natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects of the hostile nation or government, being of the age of fourteen years and upward, who shall be within the United States and not actually naturalized, shall be liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as alien enemies.
From this it's easy to see that it takes no great feat in reading comprehension to find that this act only applies when there is a "declared war," meaning declared by Congress, or an "invasion or predatory incursion" by a "foreign nation or government," meaning a nation-state like Japan or Venezuela. Since this is the test of whenever the act applies, if the it fails this test, there's no need to read the act further.
But before moving forward with my main argument, I wish to take notice of something that speaks to the sheer meanness of the Trump regime: This 1798 law shields those younger than 14 from its effects, and that's just fine with the Trump regime. They've been sending so-called TDA members as young as 14 to a life of hard labor in El Salvador.
A lot of things have changed in over two hundred years, including our collective understanding of when the protections of childhood should end. In 1800, the average US life expectancy was 34.5 years, less than half of what it is now. In the Middle Ages a young noble might become a squire to a knight, and begin his military training at 14. In the 1800's apprenticeships begin at 14, as did university educations for those more privileged. In many ways, 18 is the new 14. But not for the Trump regime! If the 200 year old law says its terrible effects can fall on people as young as 14 in 1800, the Trump regime will use it to sell children into slavery in 2025. But I digress.
The Trump Administration has been trying to turn Fox News fear mongering built around a couple of videos without sound, run on a loop, of a dozen or so gangster looking guys with guns doing suspicious looking things in the hallways of a few Aurora, CO apartment buildings and said to be TDA gang members, into a reason to deport people with absolutely no due process. Trump thought that he could just brand TDA "bad hombres," and on that basis, claim the extraordinary powers vested in the Alien Enemies Act. Then a lawyer read the act. This lead to the most absurd claim made by NS advisor Waltz yesterday in this exchange with Margret Brenner. Starting about 5:14:
Mike Waltz: President Trump has determined that this group is acting as a terrorist organization. It is terrorizing our communities through attacks, torture, rape, and in the most awful of situations for those communities, number one. And number two, the Alien Sedition Act fully applies because we have also determined that this group is acting as a proxy of the Maduro regime. So, you have..
Margret Brennan interrupts: I'm sorry, just to clarify on that: this is suppose to apply if the US is at war with a country. You're saying that you have evidence that the government of Venezuela is directing these gangs?..
Mike Waltz interrupts: We're saying that TDA is acting as a proxy of the Maduro regime. This is how the Alien Sedation Act applies.
The charge that they never even read the law before applying it is bolstered by the fact that Donald Trump's National Security Advisor can't even get the name right! He twice refers to "the Alien Sedation Act," which is not a thing. It does not exist, and has never existed.
In 1798, the US enacted a set of four laws: The Naturalization Act. the Alien Friends Act, the Alien Enemies Act, and the Sedition Act. The set was named the Alien and Sedition Acts. Three of those, including the Sedition Act, had died a timely death by 1802. Trump is now trying to wreck people's lives by using the single remaining survivor, the Alien Enemies Act.
But why should he be expected to know that? He's only the White House National Security Advisor. He's only using the law to tear up the Bill of Rights, terrorist whole communities, and proclaim to the whole world their uncontestable right to snatch up anyone and sell him into slavery in a foreign land.
What he now does know, now that somebody who can read law at least as well as me, has explained to them, is that this law absolutely, positively, requires a war with another nation-state that is either declared, or pending declaration, before it can be implemented, and the founding fathers left very little wiggle room on that point. Hence Waltz's tell at the end of the above statement, "This is how the Alien Sedation Act applies."
So, to cover this "slight" problem that comes from using the law before reading it, we are expect to swallow the fiction that "TDA is acting as a proxy of the Maduro regime," meaning the Venezuelan government. This is crazy talk. This is how they are digging the hole they are in deeper.
According to the AP, the Maduro government claimed"it had dismantled the gang in 2023 after retaking control of the prison where the group was born."
But even assuming the Trump administration's logic that TDA is at war with the US, and TDA is a proxy of the Venezuelan government, doesn't that mean we are at war with Venezuela? After all, when elements of the Japanese First Air Fleet struck the United States at Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, the US didn't declare war against the Japanese Navy, it declare war against the Empire of Japan. So, the question has to be asked: Is the US now at war with Venezuela? Because, otherwise, Trump's use of the Alien Enemies Act on Venezuelan nationals in the United States is completely illegal on its face.
Just my legal opinion,
Clay Claiborne
24 March 2025
PS. Mike, if you want to add me to a group chat, just message me for a phone number. Small journalist need leaks too.
On Donald Trump's 2nd Inauguration, I want to congratulate Elon Musk, the capitalist behind the throne. And I want to make a point of why this man has no business running anything that people have to depend on.
Everyone knows of his failed Cybertruck demo where the balls shattered the glass. Twice! How embarrassing! I guess Elon is human after all.
What was he thinking? How did this happen? Had they not tested this before he demoed it to the world? This wasn't like one demo before one customer to sell one truck—and yeah, you screwed it up. This was a major demo before the world in which millions of dollars were on the table, and not just his fortune, but that of all that sail within him—or work for him. It's obvious that he never tested this scenario, or tested it enough. If he was managing my money. I would call that reckless in the extreme. You always test, and test, and test again, before you bet the house. I never even got my engineering degree, and I know that. If more of his rocket ships don't blow up, it's because he has some very good people working under him.
You get my point: He man who was so honest about the quality of his Cybertruck when he meant to lie shouldn't be running any 'Department Of Government Efficiency' or anything like it. Arrogance, and faith in one's own genius, can only get you so far, and we need a lot more.
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WASHINGTON/ADEN, Yemen, March 15 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump launched large-scale military strikes against Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthis on Saturday over the group's attacks against Red Sea shipping, killing at least 31 people at the start of a campaign expected to last many days.
As VD Vance said, this was about sending a message. That's why these people had to died. This is why their children had to die. Because they are the terrorists, and we are the good guys. Besides, as Jesse Walters said on Fox News:
