how while the Secretary Of Defense was supposedly AWOL and incommunicado in the hospital undergoing emergency treatment for prostate cancer, multiple air and missile strikes involving aircraft, ships and submarines from multiple countries were hammering targets all over Yemen? Sixty targets at 16 sites, and 3 more this morning! Sure, this operation was carried out while no one was aware of his whereabouts, no one was in charge of the Defense department, and even the President was unaware of the Secretary’s whereabouts or condition.

A raid of this magnitude and complexity is not carried out without extensive preparation and planning. Sure, contingency plans for this sort of thing are drawn up ahead of time, sometimes months ahead of time, and additional planning and changes are included up to the last minute. Plans are in place in case this sort of attack has to be carried out unexpectedly, but they are also refined and tuned up to the last minute when they are planned ahead of time. No doubt all the “war rooms” are manned and operational, and other commands are alerted and on standby in the event anything goes wrong. All sorts of backups and Plan B’s are ready to go And of course, the White House is on full alert. This action was not a last minute, knee jerk response to unexpected enemy activity, it was a carefully rehearsed and thoroughly planned operation.

And they expect us to believe all this happened when SecDef was missing? I’m not saying Gen Austin wasn’t sick and in the hospital, but I’m sure he was involved in the planning and either he or his deputy was at the helm when it all went down. And I suspect his missing hours were probably leaked (if not downright fabricated) as part of a misdirection operation. The military isn’t very good at reacting to surprises, but it is very good at pulling them off. I’m sure it wasn’t just the Houthis who were caught with their pants down.