Raising the Bar on War Jarble

More obfuscation from the Pentagon podium

Never tune in to an update from a Pentagon spokesperson and expect to come out of it unscathed. Last night, after actively listening to Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh fielding questions concerning recent deliberate escalation efforts by U.S. forces in the Middle East, I felt ready for an NFL concussion protocol after Singh’s “word jarble.” Her words.

After a cringable start - certainly not up to U.S. war machine mouthpiece John Kirby gaslighting standards - a simple two-part question from Reuter reporter Idrees Ali piqued my attention:

Hey, Sabrina. Is it now fair to say that the U.S. is at war in Yemen? And secondly, there are some reports about a U.S. MQ-9 being shot down over Iraq by Iranian-backed militia. Is that something you're tracking?

I expected the usual serving of warspeak word-salad, but nothing like this:

In terms of your first question, no, we don't seek war. We don't think that we are at war. We don't want to see a regional war. The Houthis are the ones that continue to launch cruise missiles, antiship missiles at innocent mariners, at commercial vessels that are just transiting an area that sees, you know, 10 to 15 percent of world's commerce.

The U.S. is -- what we are doing with our partners is self-defense. We certainly don't want to see this widen out to a regional war and we don't want to see this continue, which is why you have seen the action that we've taken. And as the secretary has stated before, we will continue to take that action if we need to.

Side-stepping end goal and casualty assessments, Singh’s clunky, war-state doublespeak continued for more than a half hour without a mention of the catastrophic Yemeni civil war, launched by Saudi Arabia and backed by the West. More than 377,000 deaths through 2021, with at least 4 million people displaced. Yemen was leveled, and the Houthis have absolutely nothing to lose.

Today the U.S. Central Command reported striking eight more Houthi installations in Yemen. It is the second time British bombers have taken part in the operation, now known as “Poseidon Archer”, suggesting a more organized and potentially long-term approach to the operations in Yemen.

Obviously more CENTCOM “self-defense” and “de-escalation through escalation” for the long haul, if we have that long.