'The Signal security lapse was bad. So is what the chat logs actually reveal.' [View all]

"As he sized up a U.S. plan to strike Houthi militants in Yemen in March, Vice President JD Vance didn’t think such an aggressive move was a good idea — at least not now. The vice president’s initial comment in the Signal chat that has gotten so much attention this week was that such a strike would be 'a mistake.''...Among other things, he didn’t think the American public would understand why we were doing it and worried that it might cause oil prices to spike. In that message, he wrote:"

"3 percent of US trade runs through the suez. 40 percent of European trade does. There is a real risk that the public doesn’t understand this or why it’s necessary. The strongest reason to do this is, as POTUS said, to send a message. I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now. There’s a further risk that we see a moderate to severe spike in oil prices. I am willing to support the consensus of the team and keep these concerns to myself. But there is a strong argument for delaying this a month, doing the messaging work on why this matters, seeing where the economy is, etc."

"Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth responded by arguing that the strike wouldn’t even be about the militants the U.S. sought to kill. Instead, it was about signaling American power to the world. Though most of the commentary about the Signal group chat this past week has focused on the accidental inclusion of journalist Jeffrey Goldberg — an outrageous breach of national security protocols — the scandal has also provided us an extraordinary window into Trump’s inner circle’s thinking about foreign policy strategy."

"What it reveals is a cavalier attitude toward new open-ended bombardment campaigns. And it underscores how farcical Trump’s pledge to be president of 'peace' and focus narrowly on American interests has already turned out to be. Trump didn’t need to drop bombs on scores of sites across the poorest country in the Middle East now or with such intensity — and his whole team admitted it."

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/signal-chat-leak-yemen-bomb-attack-vance-rcna198384