National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and Vice President J.D. Vance celebrated news that a residential building in Yemen collapsed following a U.S. strike.
J.D. Vance, Peter Hegseth and Mike Waltz during a meeting at the Trump White House in March. (NATO, Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Along with raising alarm about a massive national security breach — and questions about the competence of top officials in the Trump administration who “inadvertently” added a journalist to a Signal group chat about plans to bomb targets in Yemen — the incident that Atlantic reporter Jeffrey Goldberg publicized this week included an apparent “confession” of at least one alleged war crime.
Goldberg on Wednesday released the entirety of the group chat that was held via the commercial messaging app Signal, following denials by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt that any classified information was transmitted in the discussion.
In addition to making clear the detailed plans for attacks on Houthi targets in Yemen using F-18s and drones, the conversation included a brief message from National Security Adviser Michael Waltz in which he appeared to casually describe a strike on a civilian target in Sanaa.
Waltz first praised Hegseth, Central Command leader Gen. Michael Kurilla, and the intelligence community for an “amazing job,” saying a “building collapsed” after U.S. intelligence identified a Houthi leader who was targeted for a strike.
He then clarified his message for Vice President J.D. Vance: “Their first target — their top missile guy — we had positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend’s building and it’s now collapsed,” wrote Waltz.
The vice president replied, “Excellent.”
The messages Goldberg disclosed to the public on Monday were sent on March 14-15 after he received a connection request from “Michael Waltz” via the Signal app on March 11. The conversation was about the Trump administration’s March 15 bombing of Yemen, which was carried out after the Houthis renewed a blockade on Israeli ships.
At least 31 civilians were killed in the bombing campaign, and the Houthi media office reported at the time that the U.S. had struck a “residential neighborhood” in Sanaa.
On Wednesday, journalist and author Kim Zetter said Waltz’s message suggested top administration officials knew U.S. forces had “targeted [a] residential building,” despite President Donald Trump’s claims to the contrary.
Dylan Williams, vice president for government affairs at the Center for International Policy, said the messages contain “prima facie evidence of at least one war crime applauded by the people who conspired to commit it.”
Matt Duss, executive vice president of the organization, recalled the warning of Foundation for Middle East Peace president Lara Friedman in September 2024 regarding the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s “rules of war” in Gaza — where “every human being” has been defined “as a legitimate military target — a terrorist, a terrorist supporter or sympathizer, or a “’human shield’ … allowing the annihilation of huge numbers of civilians and destruction of entire cities.”
“The costs of these new rules of war will be paid with the blood of civilians worldwide for generations to come, and the U.S. responsibility for enabling, defending, and normalizing these new rules—and their horrific, dehumanizing consequences—will not be forgotten,” said Friedman at the time.
Duss said Wednesday that “rules of engagement that permit destroying an entire civilian apartment building to kill one alleged terrorist is part of [former President] Joe Biden’s legacy.”
“It’s still a war crime though,” he added, “and Waltz’s text is a confession.”
Julia Conley is a staff writer for Common Dreams.
This article is from Common Dreams.
Views expressed in this article and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
Matt Duss completely supported Blinken and said Israel has a right to defend itself, showing what a warmonger he is. Israel is the illegal occupier and constantly engages in genocide. The Palestinians are the ones with the legal right to defend themselves. Duss is just a sheepdog like Sanders.
So glad Tulsi Gabbard is living up to the expectation that she’d stop the merry-go-round
America killing indiscriminately is nothing new…examples abound. A violent nation and too many in awe of it.
Yes, a nation that is both emotionally violent and anti-intellectual. A nation of children, many of whom are happy to stay that way.
So how long do these pubescent school boys get to keep their jobs?
The proper response to the Signal/Goldberg kerfuffle is to basically ignore it and immediately drill down into the depraved criminality of Washington bombing civilians and Ansar Allah (the “Houthis”) to benefit the sadistic supremacist artificial state of Israel.
Ansar Allah are total heroes on the world scene today!