So just how did Jeff Goldberg get invited to the Hegseth Hootenanny, anyway? How does a respected, well known journalist with an international reputation (as well as the editorship of a well-known Liberal magazine) get invited to participate in a secret phone call of ultra high level Trump Administration National Security weenies?

It doesn’t take a mental giant to figure out how such a potentially critical conference was held on a platform that had the potential to betray critical military and diplomatic secrets. Remember, the infamous group chat not only revealed important operational details of an imminent military mission, it also broadcast some very embarrassing evidence of the total contempt for our military allies held at the very top of our nation’s top security levels.

The Signals platform was convenient, it had some encryption capability, and it was easier to activate and deploy than the usual cumbersome but secure authorized military and diplomatic com channels. They just got lazy. Yes, they were stupid and unprofessional, but it was mostly lazy. As someone who has actually worked on the the fringes of the national security apparatus I know just how inconvenient it can be to follow full security procedures to carry out even the most routine (yet Top Secret) communication. If you work in that system, and especially in a top-level position in it, it can be really annoying when YOU have to drop everything you’re doing and assemble a team scattered all over the world in a hurry and simply don’t have the approved system in place to do so. Its Hillary’s emails or the Mar-A-Lago secret bathroom stash of classified documents all over again. Believe me, it happens all the time.

But Goldberg’s appearance on that list of essential officials was no accident. He is not someone who the Trump gang would normally include in their counsels, and he had a reputation for being critical, if not downright hostile, of the Administration. In fact, that’s his job. Goldberg was vey right to suspect that his inclusion in the conversation was a prank, or even a deliberate ambush, and he chose not to participate or publish until after the other participants had publicly declared there was no classified war plans in the messaging, and that the bombing was already underway. He’s the only one who acted responsibly in this affair. Still, that does not explain how he got on the list of individuals to be included in the chat.

There is a clerk, or secretary, or assistant somewhere in the Secretary of Defense’s staff who put Goldberg on that list, knowing he would be able to handle the fallout of such a message effectively and credibly; which he did. Somebody working for Hegseth, or one of the other big shots working with him, is trying to sabotage his own boss’s operation by leaking his secrets. Think Deep Throat. Or maybe it wasn’t some underling, maybe it was one of the participants themselves, one who is terrified to suddenly find himself a trusted member of a criminal enterprise but is too cowardly to come out publicly against it. Marco Rubio, maybe?

I’m a pretty law-abiding guy myself, but I have never been too keen on the latest fad of getting tats. I figure if I ever do need to become a fugitive from the law, that I will not carry an indelible mark on my body that will allow the authorities to identify me.

Just for grins, do a Google search on ‘hegseth tattoos’ and flip on the ‘images’ option. I’m surprised this redneck thug hasn’t been deported as an obvious Central American drug gang member.