What was left after Trump's "Successful" Raid in Yemen
So, our Navy Seals and UAE Special Forces, after finding themselves surrounded, in a bloody battle with an enemy that, as they found out on the radio before they arrived, had already been tipped off to their arrival, this happened:
“As the pitched gunbattle continued, officials called in Marine Cobra helicopter gunships, backed by Harrier jets, to strike the AQAP fighters, according to U.S. officials familiar with the incident.
An elite Special Operations air regiment was then sent in to pull the team and its casualties out of the fray, banking into the night under heavy fire to link up with a Marine quick-reaction force that had taken off in MV-22 Ospreys from the USS Makin Island floating offshore.
The two units planned to meet in the desert to transfer the wounded SEALs so they could be taken back to the amphibious assault ship for treatment, but one of the Ospreys lost power, hitting the ground hard enough to wound two service members and disable the aircraft.
With the twin-engine transport out of action, a Marine jet dropped a GPS-guided bomb on the disabled $70 million Osprey to ensure that it did not fall into militant hands.
We should return Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi, with Yemen, Yemen, Yemen, imho. They rushed the raid, got one of our soldiers killed, three injured, 13 women and children killed, and one very expensive and very unreliable Osprey blown up.
We need answers. Why didn’t the President bother to show up in the Situation Room?? Who was, considering we had no confirmed Secretary of State? Did they seriously plan this over a dinner party? Were all of the risks laid out for the President? Did they lay them out on the table between the dessert course and the brandy? Did they clear or coordinate this with the Yemeni government? (Doesn’t sound like it.)
When they realized that the target had been tipped off to their impending arrival, who made the decision to continue in spite of this fact? Have they determined how they were tipped off? Did they understand that there was no way to achieve their mission of “detaining al Queda operatives and retrieving electronic intelligence” if the target knew they were coming? Was the Osprey taken down by the fighting, or did it suffer yet another mechanical failure?
Did they actually get “valuable” intelligence, or just a bunch of clips already on the internet like a modern version of the ‘Anarchist’s Bible’? I’m guessing, since those inside had plenty of time to prepare, all of the “good stuff” had already been destroyed, if it was even there in the first place. That was quick. I took the dog out for a walk and what I suspected has been proven — they released tape that was at least 10 years old and publicly available as the “valuable intelligence”. Why, when the Obama administration had decided that, “the operation had been reviewed several times, but the underlying intelligence was not judged strong enough to justify the risks”, did they decide differently? Did they receive new intelligence?
It has been reported that the raid had been initiated “without sufficient intelligence, ground support or adequate backup preparations.” Did they know that half of the occupants were women and children? Why were there no survivors? Had they planned for any?
And, like in the Benghazi case, why are they saying one thing on the TV shows while saying something completely different in private? Wasn’t that the Obama administration’s big sin the different stories? The terrorist attack vs. caused by a video tape designations?
And lastly, did they know what they were doing, at all, and have they just blown any chance of us being seen as an ally to be trusted in this region. considering this:
“The elder Awlaki, a former government minister, said the village in which his granddaughter was staying was not an AQAP hotbed, but rather home to her uncles, tribal sheikhs who were actually fighting with the legal government of Yemen, which the ruling Iran-backed Houthi movement ousted in a coup.
Awlaki said the exiled former government was sending arms to his relatives from its southern stronghold in Aden, to combat the Houthis.
“If the Americans assumed that those arms were going to the hands of al-Qaida or something, I don’t know,” Nasser al-Awlaki said. “I cannot understand why the Americans use this big commando strike, which is similar to what happened to Osama bin Laden, in a small village in Yemen.”
They need to own this, and all indications, the constantly changing stories, the “Of course we...” lies, the release of false “evidence”, is that they really, really screwed the pooch here. I say hearings. For the next four years.
