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Pete is nothing if not a shapeshifter like most of the people around Trump who were against him before they were for him.
No ads, no remuneration. Die Gedanken sind wirklich frei. The tyrant "has desires which he is utterly unable to satisfy, and has more wants than any one, and is truly poor, if you know how to inspect the whole soul of him: all his life long he is beset with fear and is full of convulsions, and distractions, even as the State which he resembles."
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Pete is nothing if not a shapeshifter like most of the people around Trump who were against him before they were for him.
Hegseth risked ‘potential harm to US pilots’ in using Signal to discuss strikes: Report
... “The Secretary sent nonpublic DoD information identifying the quantity and strike times of manned U.S. aircraft over hostile territory over an unapproved, unsecure network approximately 2 to 4 hours before the execution of those strikes,” the report states.
“Using a personal cell phone to conduct official business and send nonpublic DoD information through Signal risks potential compromise of sensitive DoD information, which could cause harm to DoD personnel and mission objectives.” ...
“Although the Secretary wrote in his July 25 statement to the DoD OIG that ‘there were no details that would endanger our troops or the mission,’ if this information had fallen into the hands of U.S. adversaries, Houthi forces might have been able to counter U.S. forces or reposition personnel and assets to avoid planned U.S. strikes,” the report concluded.
“Even though these events did not ultimately occur, the Secretary’s actions created a risk to operational security that could have resulted in failed U.S. mission objectives and potential harm to U.S. pilots.” ...
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt, nevertheless, repeatedly stated that it was legal – even as she further claimed, as President Donald Trump did Sunday, that Hegseth was unaware that it had happened.
At the time of the attack off the Trinidad coast, Frank Bradley was head of the Joint Special Operations Command. According to a Washington Post report about the incident, it was he who relayed the order from Hegseth to “kill everybody” by sending Navy SEALs back to the disabled boat to have them kill the two people clinging to the wreckage.
In October, Bradley was promoted to run the U.S. Special Operations Command. ...
One illegal act leads to another, and another, and another.
Over 80 alleged criminals are now dead in such attacks, but we'll never know if they really were criminals.
Hegseth order on first Caribbean boat strike, officials say: Kill them all: As two men clung to a stricken, burning ship targeted by SEAL Team 6, the Joint Special Operations commander followed the defense secretary’s order to leave no survivors.
... The alleged traffickers pose no imminent threat of attack against the United States and are not, as the Trump administration has tried to argue, in an “armed conflict” with the U.S., these officials and experts say. Because there is no legitimate war between the two sides, killing any of the men in the boats “amounts to murder,” said Todd Huntley, a former military lawyer who advised Special Operations forces for seven years at the height of the U.S. counterterrorism campaign.
Even if the U.S. were at war with the traffickers, an order to kill all the boat’s occupants if they were no longer able to fight “would in essence be an order to show no quarter, which would be a war crime,” said Huntley, now director of the national security law program at Georgetown Law. ... "the state using force is judge, jury and executioner," Huntley said. ...
If the video of the blast that killed the two survivors on Sept. 2 were made public, people would be horrified, said one person who watched the live feed. The Intercept first reported that the survivors were killed in a follow-up attack. ... There has been no public release of a subsequent strike video ...
German General Anton Dostler was executed by firing squad in December 1945 after admitting he ordered the executions of fifteen captured American soldiers in March 1944 because he was ordered to do so by Field Marshal Albert Kesselring.
The latter was convicted in the Ardeatine massacre of hundreds of Italian citizens and sentenced to death in May 1947, but, incredibly, pressure exerted by the sympathetic English, including by Winston Churchill and Harold Alexander, resulted in a commutation of his sentence to life in prison by General John Harding in July 1947.
Kesselring would have died in prison, but even more incredibly was released from there in October 1952 for health reasons, and didn't die until 1960 of a heart attack.
The Kesselring affair is emblematic of the decadent trajectory of the English character still plumbing new depths even today, a trajectory America is also on. At least the Americans of the time dispatched Dostler expeditiously within months of his arrest.
The Italians hated Kesselring about as much as they hated Mussolini.
It's probably too early to guess how Pete will be remembered here. After all, he has crimes to go before he sleeps, and promises to keep.
No more Milleys.
OK man, but it would have cost a lot less just to fire them all when they failed their next fitness tests.
The round trip tickets must have cost a fortune, paid by the taxpayers.
Take courage people!
You too can become populists just like Pete and Little Marco. Just get your degrees from Princeton and Harvard and the Universities of Florida and Miami.
... Vice President Vance had to break a tie vote to get Hegseth confirmed after three Republicans — Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Mitch McConnell (Ky.) — voted no. ...
More.
The Atlantic publishes full Signal thread with Hegseth, Waltz after Trump says texts not classified
... Goldberg in Wednesday’s report wrote: “If this text had been received by someone hostile to American interests—or someone merely indiscreet, and with access to social media—the Houthis would have had time to prepare for what was meant to be a surprise attack on their strongholds.”
“The consequences for American pilots could have been catastrophic,” he wrote. ...
In the chats, the user identified as Vice President JD Vance expresses concerns about the strikes but ultimately agrees to go along with US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth's plan - before adding 'I just hate bailing Europe out again.'
Hegseth responds: 'I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It's PATHETIC.'
And of course they want to throw Mike Waltz under the bus:
There are claims that Mr Waltz is facing the sack over the saga - as he's believed to have been the official who 'added the editor-in-chief [of The Atlantic] to the group'.
One source told Politico: 'Everyone in the White House can agree on one thing: Mike Waltz is a f***ing idiot.'
The Financial Times reports that privately some German officials are starting to wonder out loud whether the time has come to acquire their own nuclear arsenal.