USSECDEF Pete Hellsbreath shared this on Signal with the Trumpf national security team which all the NATO countries read: "I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It's pathetic."
President Trump said this week that Iranian-backed Houthi militants in Yemen have been "decimated by the relentless strikes" that he ordered beginning on March 15. But that's not what Pentagon and military officials are privately telling Congress and allied countries. In closed briefings in recent days, Pentagon officials have acknowledged that there has been only limited success in destroying the Houthis' vast, largely underground arsenal of missiles, drones and launchers, according to congressional aides and allies. In just three weeks, the Pentagon has used $200 million worth of munitions, in addition to the immense operational and personnel costs to deploy two aircraft carriers, additional B-2 bombers and fighter jets, as well as Patriot and THAAD air defenses to the Middle East, the officials said.
The total cost could be well over $1 billion by next week, and the Pentagon might soon need to request supplemental funds from Congress, one U.S. official said.
So many precision munitions are being used, especially advanced long-range ones, that some Pentagon contingency planners are growing concerned about overall Navy stocks and implications for any situation in which the United States would have to ward off an attempted invasion of Taiwan by China.
This boondoggle cost the Israeli taxpayer zero shekels and potentially jeopardized one Mossad HUMINT source in Yemen, but cost the hardworking American taxpayer $200m and put US pilots at risk. Meanwhile the Shia Houthis are starving and only too eager to get help from anywhere they can, namely the UN and Shia Iran (which is why they support them against Israel): cdn.openart.ai
Historically, extermination of indigenous peoples have been self-funded, like Russia's 19th-century eastward expansion against the Turkic people of Central Asia or the US 19th-century westward expansion against the Apaches and the Sioux. Israel's Nakba is a precedent in that the 20th-century ethnic cleansing of Palestinians has been externally funded by the taxpayers of another country, namely the "good ole U.S. of A." media.istockphoto.com
The "savages," as Trumpf calls them, shot down another another US MQ-9 Reaper drone. This is the third such drone the Houthis have shot down since 3 Mar and the second shot down since the US began conducting daily strikes to please Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman (MBS). While the US has been carrying out airstrikes daily for 20 straight days, there have been few updates from the Trumpf junta on the status of the operation. The Pentagon has not held a press briefing in weeks and the DoD has been quiet about the ongoing strikes. The average cost of a MQ-9 drone is about $30 million and each costs about $3,500 per flight hour. (Source: Fox News, 4 Apr 2025). The hardworking American taxpayer is simply getting soaked: stljewishlight.org
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