A Real-Time Measure of Reliability
How someone describes their own conduct tells you a lot about how much to trust their next story.
Here’s a quick way to judge someone’s reliability: compare what they say they did with what the evidence shows they did. This can be applied to ongoing matters where credibility is being questioned. It’s a way in which stories that happened on the past can have a contemporary relevance.
The Pentagon watchdog has issued its report on what’s now called Signalgate — the text chain in which a reporter was accidentally included while senior officials discussed plans for a strike on Houthi rebels.
About one person involved, the watchdog says their actions “created a risk to operational security that could have resulted in failed U.S. mission objectives and potential harm to U.S. pilots.”
In that same text chain, that person was responsible for operational security and pledged to uphold it:
“I will do all we can to enforce 100% OPSEC.”
If you told senior officials you were enforcing “100% OPSEC,” and later the Pentagon watchdog concluded your actions had put the mission, U.S. pilots, and operational security at risk, how would you describe what you did. Answer below:
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If a person chose A, they would not only be giving you their view of Signalgate — they’d be offering you a real-time signal of their ability to assess facts and draw conclusions from those facts.
Given this, if the person then told you something about a U.S. attack on alleged drug smugglers, would you be:
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who transmitted via Signal upcoming strikes on Houthi targets, responded to the watchdog report by claiming “Total exoneration.”
Trump doesn’t want to fire Hegseth because Hegseth will carry out his order to shoot American civilians.
Yet another nail in Laura Loomer's coffin, "He was completely exonerated by the report." Maybe she couldn't read it because her lip fillers were in the way.