I find it disturbing that not one news organization has devoted major amounts of time to the botched intelligence raid in Yemen. Two American soldiers have died because of this action, yet it seems that American news organizations have gone quiet over what could be the beginning of a disturbing trend.
To recap:
In what an official said was the first military raid carried out under President Donald Trump, two Americans were killed in Yemen on Sunday — one a member of SEAL Team 6 and the other the 8-year-old daughter of Anwar al-Awlaki, the New Mexico-born al Qaeda leader who himself was killed in a U.S. strike five years ago.
The raid in southern Yemen, conducted by the super secret Joint Special Operations Command, was intended to capture valuable intelligence, specifically computer equipment, according to a senior U.S. military official. Three al Qaeda leaders were killed, according to U.S. officials.
Seal, American Girl die in First Trump Era Military Raid NBCNews.com, 1/31/2017
Trump has been in office just over a week. If this was not at all an Obama mission. Even though there were statements made that this raid was planned months in advance…
Contrary to earlier reporting, the senior military official said, the raid was Trump's first clandestine strike — not a holdover mission approved by President Barack Obama. The mission involved "boots on the ground" at an al Qaeda camp near al Bayda in south central Yemen, the official said.
"Almost everything went wrong," the official said.
Same article
If this is true, this means that Trump and his team ordered a “clandestine" raid in a very dangerous part of the world on a week’s notice.
This kind of thing has happened before...with similar results.
This is the public response to the operation.
Note the last sentence, “That’s as far as I’m willing to go at this time.”
If we hadn’t had any loss of life and got a ton of information about future attacks, what do you want to bet that they would have gone farther in their explanation.
My question is “Why now?" What was the rush? My fear is that this was done to try to bolster the administration’s foreign policy credentials by using some of our best and bravest as props to advance a political agenda. The administration sent out some tweets and statements feigning concern for those lost and called the raid “a success”, but we have all seen this kind of drivel before.
This was done on the first full day of Steve Bannon’s appointment to the National Security Council.
One last note, several sources have noted that the camp that was the target of the raid contained many female fighters who returned fire on the SEAL team. I hope that this was not a factor in the administration’s thinking when the camp was targeted.
Stay tuned...