Featured Full details of the US Raid in Yemen

If this raid is being called a success then that means the tradeoffs that came with it are acceptable. Would anyone trade off 25 civilians, a dead Seal and a downed aircraft as successful for a few HVT's?

 

Navy Seal serviceman killed.
Nine children under the age of 13 killed.
Fourteen other civilians killed.
$70 million Osprey aircraft destroyed.
Object of raid, Qassim al-Rimi, eluded capture.

Sean Spicer, White House spokesman, "a successful operation by all standards."

 

Furthermore, this idea that John McCain, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services committee should not comment on this issue is ludicrous. This is exactly what his job entails--oversight of the military.

 

Misplaced blame on Trump for Yemen raid ignores deeper problems

"Some U.S. military officials, Reuters reports, blame President Trump for approving a military raid “without sufficient intelligence, ground support or adequate backup preparations.” This is wrong headed, potentially damaging to civil-military relations, and masks deeper problems with U.S. counterterrorism efforts.

Navy SEAL William “Ryan” Owens died of wounds received on January 29th during a raid in Yemen. Three others were also wounded. 14 al Qaeda militants were reportedly killed as were over a dozen civilians. This was Trump’s first covert military action.

The special operations plan was reviewed by the Pentagon and recommended for Trump’s approval. If the commander on the ground believed the intelligence and support were insufficient, he could have aborted the mission. Trump did not force an unwilling SEAL team into a dangerous raid. He was approving what the military said should be done.
In keeping with Washington’s toxic political environment, Trump opponents seized upon this as evidence the president carelessly put American troops in harm’s way. This is nonsense.

 

I'm not saying it's Trump's fault though. It's just ridiculous listening to his mouthpiece tell me it was a success when it was obvious that the raid went awry.

 

The final decision was made by Trump to go ahead with the raid. It was on his watch. He is to be given either the praise or the blame whichever is correct. From my readings I have concluded that the decision was made without careful consideration by Trump and a lack of vetting and input from the military.

From: http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/08/opinions/trump-yemen-raid-geopolitics-vinjamuri-opinion/

Within days of taking office, Trump had agreed to the Yemen raid. Even after a very thorough vetting, Obama had deferred a similar raid.

Trump's decision on the raid came the day before he announced an executive order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries and just days before his dramatic reorganization of the National Security Council, which saw Stephen Bannon appointed to the Principals Committee and both the Director of National Intelligence and Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman removed as regular participants.

 

Salon article:

"....The strike was initially planned during the final days of President Barack Obama’s administration, but because the military wanted to conduct the raid during a moonless night, Obama felt the need to postpone it until after his term had ended. Because it is unclear what was said to President Trump before he signed off on the raid, it is difficult to determine his own level of responsibility for the raid’s failure."

 

Regardless of what Obama did or did not do. Trump made the decision. It is his responsibility.

Like Harry Truman's sign on his desk for Trump, "The Buck Stops Here."

 

The point is Trump inherited it and it's very suspicious to see the military weasel the blame off on him.

 

Regardless it was Trump who made the decision to go ahead with the mission. It is his responsibility. That he did not vet the mission well is strongly indicated:

From: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...tched_yemen_raid_that_killed_a_navy_seal.html

As the New York Times reported on Wednesday, Secretary of Defense James Mattis and Gen. Joseph Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, presented the plan over dinner at the White House, on Jan. 25, to Trump, his son-in-law Jared Kushner, and his political strategist Steve Bannon.

Officials told me that Trump approved the plan then and there. The next day, the National Security Council’s Deputies Committee—an interagency group of deputy and undersecretaries from various Cabinet departments—held a meeting to discuss the plan. But, as one official put it, the meeting was “pro forma and irrelevant,” as the decision had already been made.

 

Where to start...

1. Are any details being reported? I haven't been able to dig up anything. Don't even know if the bird went down to enemy fire or hitting a goose.

2. Nice to see the media focusing on body counts again. Next thing you know they'll be bringing peace mom Cindy Sheehan out of retirement to set up a protest at Trump Tower.

3. The Osprey was just starting to gain a reputation as a rugged craft, after that one specimen made it back from a mission in Africa shot full of 12.7mm holes.

4. Sure are a lot of people AAR'ing this thing with no details. I reckon I'll wait until we know more. Or course Seals were involved, so a few books and movie will probably be out shortly.

5. Yemenis. When even the Palestinians think you're too buck wild, well, then you must be pretty wild.

 

I heard the Osprey came in too hard on a landing, was disabled, so we destroyed it with airstrikes rather than let the terrorists pick it over.



Sent from my Moto Droid Turbo.

 

But was it pilot error, environmental factors?

I wonder what type of terrain. A night landing in the big, wavy type sand dunes is always difficult.

The damaged helicopter from the bin Laden compound clipped a building, so I guess that's a possibility, too.

 

Ospray, $75 million gone.

Navy seal, one life gone.

Innocent civilian lives gone.

Mission not properly vetted by Trump. Did not call in military advisers. Bumbled ahead and the cost is huge. Inexperience, arrogance, over confidence, meglomania ... spell disaster.

Mission, not a success.

 

http://www.npr.org/2017/02/10/51437...-winning-mission-or-failure-its-not-so-simple


White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Feb. 2 that the raid was planned last November — under the Obama administration — and that the goal of the mission was to get information.

But neither is true, NPR's Tom Bowman reports.

Rather, the specific place of this eventual raid was identified in November as one to focus on. (Other potential places were also identified.)

"The goal of the raid was intelligence-gathering," Spicer said Tuesday, "and that's what we received, and that's what we got. That's why we can deem it a success."

But the U.S. would not send in SEAL Team Six, the premiere anti-terrorist commandos, to pick up some cellphones and computers, a U.S. official told Bowman.

Part of the effort was to get top al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, leaders. While more than a dozen militants were killed, a top target, Qassim al-Rimi, either slipped away or was not at the location.

 

FollowTheWay is correct.

Not only that but the video Trump used is worthless as it was not of the raid we are talking about. The video is ten years old. False news from Trump, and that is being kind to him.

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/201...ntagon-prove-donald-trumps-deadly-yemen-raid/


An attempt by the US military to defend Donald Trump's first covert military operation fell apart on Friday, when a video the Pentagon cited as "valuable intelligence" snatched during the raid transpired to be more than a decade old, and available on the internet.