Welcome to Margin of Error, a politics column from Tom Scocca, editor of the Indignity newsletter, examining the apocalyptic politics, coverage, and consequences of Campaign 2024.
Where was the harm in the Houthi PC small group scandal? This was, within a certain set of limits, the dispute as the story accelerated into its third day: Yes, a set of high Trump administration officials had, apparently by accident, looped Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic, into a Signal chat that discussed the planning and carrying out of the United States' March 15 attack on Yemen—but did the security breach really matter?
After publishing an edited chat transcript on Monday, The Atlantic went ahead and published a more complete version Wednesday morning, the day after administration officials had told the Senate Intelligence Committee, under oath, that no classified information or war plans had been discussed in the unsecured setting. Where the magazine's first story had described the chat material as "operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing"—with Goldberg writing that the information "could conceivably have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel"—the followup story fully quoted Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth:
1215et: F-18s LAUNCH (1st strike package)
1345: 'Trigger Based' F-18 1st Strike Window Starts (Target Terrorist is @ his Known Location so SHOULD BE ON TIME – also, Strike Drones Launch (MQ-9s)
1410: More F-18s LAUNCH (2nd strike package)
1415: Strike Drones on Target (THIS IS WHEN THE FIRST BOMBS WILL DEFINITELY DROP, pending earlier 'Trigger Based' targets)
1536 F-18 2nd Strike Starts – also, first sea-based Tomahawks launched.
Obviously, in principle, if the person accidentally added to the chat had been someone more hostile to the U.S. military than Jeffrey Goldberg, or if one of the chat's official members had been spied on as they conducted classified business in an insecure setting on what may have been a personal device—Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, for example, was reportedly doing his share of the chatting during a trip to Russia—the attacking forces could have been exposed to a counterattack from the Houthi militants they were supposed to be targeting.
But the expanded chat also shows the group was even more cavalier about the actual and indisputable damage they were doing. After the bombings, Trump's National Security Advisor, Michael Waltz, texted, "Building collapsed. Had multiple positive ID. Pete, Kurilla, the IC, amazing job." The Atlantic clarified the latter part:
Waltz was referring here to Hegseth; General Michael E. Kurilla, the commander of Central Command; and the intelligence community, or IC. The reference to "multiple positive ID" suggests that U.S. intelligence had ascertained the identities of the Houthi target, or targets, using either human or technical assets.
Beyond the possible exposure of intelligence methods and assets, though, what Waltz was directly and literally saying was that the United States had blown up an occupied building. That was the "amazing job."
Vice President JD Vance responded with "What?" and Waltz clarified:
Typing too fast. The first target—their top missile guy—we had positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend’s building and it's now collapsed.
"Excellent," Vance replied.
The "girlfriend's building" was evidently not a military facility but a residential building in Yemen's capital, Sana'a, which U.S. forces hit sometime around a quarter after eight o'clock in the evening. Initial news about the leveling of a dwelling in Sana'a reported that at least two people were killed and 13 injured, with three children among the wounded. Overall, the Houthi health ministry reported that the American attacks killed 53 people, with "five children and two women" among the dead.
In all of the available text of the group chat, Waltz's mention of the girlfriend was the only reference, however oblique, to the fact that the war plans involved United States forces deliberately bombing at least one civilian target. The only real disagreements about the attack revolved around Vance's belief that it would be a "mistake" for the United States to protect European shipping from Houthi attacks without getting concessions from Europe in return, and his warning of a "further risk that we see a moderate to severe spike in oil prices."
Nor was there any discussion about any danger or urgency that might justify the extraordinary and generally illegal choice to kill some civilians for the sake of quickly also killing an important Houthi figure. On the contrary, Vance wrote that "there is a strong argument for delaying this a month, doing the messaging work on why this matters." In reply, Joe Kent, an aide to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard (and a proponent of the theory that the FBI incited Jan. 6), wrote, "There is nothing time sensitive driving the time line. We'll have the exact same options in a month."
Even the officials who wanted to attack right away didn't claim the Houthis were a pressing military target. "Waiting a few weeks or a month does not fundamentally change the calculus," Hegseth wrote. The reasons not to wait, he wrote, were, "1) this leaks, and we look indecisive; 2) Israel takes an action first—or Gaza cease fire falls apart—and we don't get to start this on our own terms."
"This [is] not about the Houthis," he added.
The Houthis, and their neighbors, were just the people we happened to be dropping bombs and missiles on. One of the Trump administration's first priorities at the Department of Defense was to disassemble and eventually abolish the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, an office the Washington Post described as working to "advise commanders on the risks of collateral damage and offer a clearer picture of the combat environment."
The United States has historically talked more about the importance of protecting civilians than it has protected civilians; when your self-assigned mandate is to wrap the entire world in an omelet of security, on your own terms, a substantial amount of egg-breaking is built in. The Biden administration made some real progress reining in our drone killings and getting our forces out of Afghanistan, only to spend the last year of its term saying vaguely disapproving things as Israel slaughtered tens of thousands of noncombatants with the bombs we kept sending them.
Once again, though, the great lesson of a Trump presidency is that there are worse things than hypocrisy. Joe Biden and his advisors, however resentful they may have been about it, understood that they were supposed to care about killing innocents. The Trump administration chat participants—making life-and-death decisions without any visible input from the president himself and celebrating the results with a flurry of emoji—didn't think about the innocents at all.
