The USAFRICOM has a problem with transparency…..it does not report as it should…..
The October 4 ambush in Niger, which led to the deaths of four US special forces, has led to a flurry of inquiries, both on the specifics of the incident and reports of leaving behind troops, but also that the African Command appears not to have told anybody about the scope of US operations within Niger before that.
With a lot of questions still unanswered, the focus has grown increasingly on the shocking lack of transparency for US military operations in Africa. Yet Niger has also led to some interest in revisiting the details of another incident, the May 11 death of a US Navy SEAL in Somalia, the first such death in that country in decades.
In that case, the SEALs were skulking around on the outskirts of a remote Somali village, killing suspected al-Shabaab militants until one of them was spotted and killed. This resulted in several hours of fighting and ending in a hasty retreat by US forces, leaving behind a lot of evidence of the incident.
Indeed, AFRICOM wasn’t particularly forthcoming about what happened in Somalia, either, but villagers were able to retrace the steps of the US troops, using the footprints in the mud and rubbish left behind to offer the closest thing to a timeline for that incident that the public has ever, or likely will ever, see.
(antiwar.com)
There are serious problems within USAFRICOM….maybe the Commander-In-Chief could stay off Twitter awhile and get a grip on this situation.
After a month of conflicting stories there is still NO definitive answer as to what happened that caused the deaths of 4 special ops troopers.
The October 4 ambush along the Niger-Mali border left four US special forces killed, and revealed to the US public and Congress for the first time that some 1,000 US troops were on the ground in Niger. After a month has passed, what else have we learned?
Very little, as it turns out. Niger and the Pentagon continue to offer radically different versions of what happened on that day, as well as the circumstances in which the US troops were left behind in the evacuation, something US officials initially insisted couldn’t have happened.
Nigerien officials say this was an “operational mission,” but one in what was not considered enemy territory, intended to detain a suspected ISIS recruiter. Pentagon officials say none of that happened, and that there was absolutely no intention to kill or capture anybody.
What the Pentagon is saying happened continues to vary day to day, and sometimes hour to hour, but officials continue to insist that he “investigation” into the incident is ongoing, and that a final version will be released in a few weeks. Until then, anything the Pentagon says happened seems to be a wild guess, and subject to revision.
US officials are also saying the size of the deployment in Niger, which went from an unspecified number of US “trainers” to 1,000 combat troops without anyone being informed, is likely to grow further. Whether we’ll hear about that when it happens remains to be seen.
(antiwar.com)
Who’s fooling who?
AS an ex-combat vet I want to know what happened to these men….I get the feeling that there uis something not being told about their mission. I realize that most of these missions are top secret but this one is done and they lost 4 good men…time for the truth to come out.
And now a new theory is being floated about eh death of Sgt. La David Johnson, remember him? He is the one that Trump did all the childish Tweeting about.
The new theory he was kidnapped……
One of four American soldiers killed in Niger last month may have been kidnapped by ISIS-linked militants before he was executed, sources say. A village elder in northern Niger tells CBS that a battle raged for more than two hours after a group of Green Berets was ambushed by attackers on motorbikes. He says after the battle was over, he saw three American soldiers dead in a truck, stripped of their uniforms. The body of Sgt. La David Johnson, however, was not found for two days and military sources tell CBS that they believe he was taken prisoner by militant who later shot him and dumped the body around half a mile away from the battle site.
The military is investigating how the four soldiers became separated from their unit during the Oct.4 attack while seven other American troops were reportedly evacuated. Five Nigerien troops were also killed in the attack, though sources tell the Guardian that the Nigerian forces fled soon after the ambush, leaving the Americans to fight alone. The sources say the trapped American troops struggled to call in an attack from nearby French forces, who complained about bad weather and rough terrain.
The attack has been called a “massive intelligence failure.”
My thought is………YA THINK?
It appears that US troops have been fighting in Mali border region before the deadly attack in Niger….
The Pentagon’s attempt to settle on a narrative for what happened on the October 4 ambush in Niger, in which four US special forces troops were killed, is greatly complicated by the fact that Nigerien troops were present at the time, and their defense ministry is being more frank about what happened.
The Niger Defense Ministry reported over the weekend that the joint forces who were caught up in the ambush were actually engaged in tracking and fighting Islamist militants along the Mali border in the hours leading up to the attack.
This is dramatically different from every version of events offered by the Pentagon, which has insisted the US troops were on a purely non-combat mission, which is why they didn’t have armored vehicles or any plans to evacuate if trouble happened.
That doesn’t exactly make sense if the US forces were specifically out to attack Islamist fighters, and makes US claims they thought the operation was “low-risk” with little chance of enemy contact, if they specifically were out there looking for enemies to contact.
The Pentagon’s own version of events isn’t set in stone, which is a good thing since it’s seemingly full of untruths. Officials have downplayed the problems with their version by insisting that they’ll reconcile it when they finish their investigation into the incident
(antiwar.com)
The story about the attack changes almost daily….which leads me to believe that something is hinkey with the stories told.
Mission creep comes mind……especially in sub-Saharan Africa……Unz Reader , Libertarian lean journal takes a look at this occurrence….
The British Empire, which at the end of the 19th century ruled one quarter of the earth’s land surface, is long gone. But its robust successor and heir, the United States, has set about enlarging it.
As I sought to explain in my last book ‘American Raj – How the US Rules the Muslim World,’ the US imperium exerts its power by controlling tame, compliant regimes around the world and their economies. They are called ‘allies’ but, in fact, should be more accurately termed satrapies or vassal states. Many states are happy to be prosperous US vassals, others less so.
http://www.unz.com/emargolis/mission-creep-in-darkest-africa/
Mission creep is an understatement….there is a whole war being fought that we mere mortals know very little about……..
Six years ago, a deputy commanding general for U.S. Army Special Operations Command gave a conservative estimate of 116 missions being carried out at any one time by Navy SEALs, Army Green Berets, and other special operations forces across the globe.
Today, according to U.S. military documents obtained by VICE News, special operators are carrying out nearly 100 missions at any given time — in Africa alone. It’s the latest sign of the military’s quiet but ever-expanding presence on the continent, one that represents the most dramatic growth in the deployment of America’s elite troops to any region of the globe.
https://news.vice.com/story/the-u-s-is-waging-a-massive-shadow-war-in-africa-exclusive-documents-reveal
I have said before and continue to believe it….there is something rotten within USAFRICOM…..
Thoughts?
In Saner Thought 