Trump approve raid without sufficient intel or support

Amiga · Feb 2, 2017

ipaman said: ↑

You're dear leader Obama has blood on his hands. You better get to work because you gotta a lot of threads to create so you can bring awareness. I'm not kidding, every president has innocent blood on their hands and we need to know about it! Good luck with your efforts, I look forward to the awareness you'll be providing.
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So Obama again? You can't stay on topic? And this is a pretty good example of projection. Ipaman, do you realize how much you been protecting your dear leader?

Bobbythegreat · Feb 2, 2017

txtony said: ↑

Obama doesn't matter anymore. What the military said matter dude. You going to ignore it?
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What are you arguing here, that a plan that was built over the course of months by the Obama administration and enacted by the Trump administration was a bad one.....and that's somehow Trump's fault?

You do understand that those kinds of raids are very dangerous right? I mean, just inherently. You also realize that this raid was MUCH less risky or dangerous than the one that took out OBL?

You also realize that if not for the timing of the lunar cycle your boy Obama would have been the one to okay this EXACT mission right?

What point are you trying to make here?

TheresTheDagger · Feb 2, 2017

Bobbythegreat said: ↑

The ONLY reason this raid didn't happen during the Obama administration is because of the moon cycle, they were waiting for a moonless night. The raid was completely planned out under the Obama administration.....but don't let the truth get in the way of a good narrative I suppose.

Seriously, at some point you are going to have to stop embarrassing yourself like this.
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Can you paste a link to this information?

larsv8 · Feb 2, 2017

ipaman said: ↑

I totally predicted your mindless automaton responses. I think folks on the left have some form of PTSD since the election. Seek help friends.

And for the record, you never heard about Benghazi from me. Especially in this context.
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You said something stupid and hypocritical, and then predicted people would call it stupid and hypocritical?

HIGHER LEVEL THINKING OVER HERE.

ipaman · Feb 2, 2017

larsv8 said: ↑

You said something stupid and hypocritical, and then predicted people would call it stupid and hypocritical?

HIGHER LEVEL THINKING OVER HERE.
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Granville · Feb 2, 2017

Azadre said: ↑

Where did you find this? I saw he pocket vetoed the plan, and it was brought back up for Trump and he just did it half assed.
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The article the OP posted clearly states that Obama was waiting for a moonless night......

Ubiquitin · Feb 2, 2017

Granville said: ↑

The article the OP posted clearly states that Obama was waiting for a moonless night......
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Thanks. I hadn't heard he vetoed it because conditions were not optimal from moonless. But that would mean he got the plan after New Year's. Seems like the appropriate thing to defer to a new administration moving in a few weeks. (Unlike a supreme court seat which was for almost a quarter of a term!)

If Hillary won, she'd be responsible for these deaths but instead it's Trump. Either way, it does not win hearts and minds.

TheresTheDagger · Feb 2, 2017

So the question is did Trump demand this action take place immediately despite the risks or did someone lower down the chain of command screw up by not getting the intel and support lined up first. The article seems to infer the former but I'd be surprised if Trump got that involved in the details of the raid.

FranchiseBlade · Feb 2, 2017

TheresTheDagger said: ↑

So the question is did Trump demand this action take place immediately despite the risks or did someone lower down the chain of command screw up by not getting the intel and support lined up first. The article seems to infer the former but I'd be surprised if Trump got that involved in the details of the raid.
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It doesn't really matter, because either way, as the leader he is responsible.

TheresTheDagger · Feb 2, 2017

FranchiseBlade said: ↑

It doesn't really matter, because either way, as the leader he is responsible.
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That depends on whether we are trying to make sure this doesn't happen again OR just score political points.

FranchiseBlade · Feb 2, 2017

TheresTheDagger said: ↑

That depends on whether we are trying to make sure this doesn't happen again OR just score political points.
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No, it doesn't. We can correct problems if it was someone lower down on the totem pole. But Trump doesn't ever admit he was wrong, so we can't change it if it was his decision.

But it's about leadership and the commander-n-chief. He's responsible and politics don't matter.

When Carter tried to use the military to rescue the hostages, and there was the failure that happened and the crash that prevented the rescue attempt, it was Carter's responsibility. It doesn't matter that there was a mechanical failure on the helicopter. He wasn't the mechanic, or supervisor, but the ultimate responsibility was and always will be his.

Bobbythegreat · Feb 2, 2017

TheresTheDagger said: ↑

Can you paste a link to this information?
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As others pointed out, it was in the link in the OP but I could find other sources if it was necessary. What really matters is that it wasn't some half cocked plan produced by Trump, it was something that had been in the works for months that was almost entirely formulated by the previous administration but they ran out of time due to the lunar rotation not playing ball so they passed it along to the next administration. The Trump people then were told about it and their people (including many competent generals) thought the plan was solid and it was signed off on when they would have a moonless night as called for in the plan.

There's no cheap political points to be scored here, it was just a mission that didn't go well. They happen. It was a nice move by the president to show up to console the family of the operator that didn't make it back.

Rocket River · Feb 3, 2017

ipaman said: ↑

Politicizing an American soldiers death. The left sinks lower and lower.
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BENGHAZI!!

Rocket River

JeffB · Feb 3, 2017

Trump should not have trusted these generals and should have enacted his secret plan to defeat ISIS.

Amiga · Feb 3, 2017

Sounds like not only insufficient Intel, but possibly wrong Intel. In addition, because of alt facts straight out of the WH, I don't know which sides to believe in this report. Did the US even got what they wanted out of the raid - locals said US troops never entered any building or take any computers or docs.

http://www.npr.org/sections/paralle...st-military-raid-continues-to-raise-questions

The tribal delegation visiting Sheikh Abdelraouf al-Dhahab was still talking in the very early hours of the morning last Sunday when his nephew, Abdullah, noticed strangers approaching on foot across the rocky, inhospitable terrain of central Yemen.

"Who are you?" Abdullah called out into the night. "Who are you?"

The men shot him dead.

Startled by the gunfire, the Dhahab family scrambled to take up its own weapons and defend its house.

According to accounts by locals, this was the way the battle began with U.S. special operations forces and some of their allies, which would unfold over several hours on the ground — and end with an aerial bombardment.

By dawn, one American sailor was dead and three other service members were injured. Locals say numerous civilians, including women and nine children, were among the Yemenis killed. The U.S. military has opened an investigation, and U.S. military officials tell NPR that civilians were indeed among the victims.

Taken together, claims and counterclaims from the U.S. military and local residents described a chaotic operation, one that drew sharp criticism from Yemeni officials who usually support the U.S. The aftermath of the raid shows the potential dangers if the U.S. military relaxes its current restrictions about using force and protecting civilians, which President Donald Trump has asked the Pentagon to review.

One local man, Sadeq al-Jawfi, was monitoring the battle from his village about 3 miles away, in constant telephone contact with men from his tribe who were visiting the Dhahab family.

A Saudi-led airstrike in Sanaa, Yemen's capital, destroyed a funeral hall in October.

American officials described the raid as an attack on a compound. But Jawfi's description was of a family house in a village with similar houses, albeit one with guard posts, where people were well-armed.

The Dhahabs and other families fought against the American raiders, who called in air support. The bombardment struck houses in which families were sheltering.

Jawfi told NPR that 24 people were killed and provided a list of names including nine men, six women and nine children. He has served on a body known as a de-escalation committee, which works with the U.S.-recognized Yemeni government in coordination with the United Nations to try to quell violence in the troubled country.

NPR previously reported the death of the 8-year-old daughter of Yemeni-American terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki. She lived with her grandfather in the capital, Sanaa, but was visiting her mother, who is Abdelraouf al-Dhahab's sister.

The fighting also claimed the life of a Navy SEAL, Chief Special Warfare Operator William Owens. Other U.S. troops were injured when their aircraft crash-landed as part of the operation. On Wednesday, President Trump flew to Dover Air Force Base to take part in the transfer of Owens' body from the military to his family.

The casualties were the military's first under Trump, who approved the special operations raid after planning began in November under his predecessor, Barack Obama.

The battle and its aftermath, described to NPR by U.S. national security officials as well as the local witnesses, are the subject of a new investigation by the U.S. Central Command, which oversees American military operations in the Middle East.

Although the Americans are continuing to look into what happened, CENTCOM Wednesday acknowledged "regrettably that civilian non-combatants were likely killed."
By around 5 a.m. Sunday, the raiders were gone and the skies were clear, locals said. Abdullah al-Taissi, a tribal sheikh who lives in the village and confirmed much of Jawfi's account, watched the attack from his house.

"I walked out of my house when it was over and began burying the dead," he said. "By noon, we were done."

Taissi said he counted about 28 bodies. Abdelraouf was among the dead, as was his brother, Sultan, and a tribal sheikh named Saif al-Jawfi.

In Washington, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said the raid — which he called "very, very well thought out and executed" — had yielded valuable intelligence about al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.

The local witnesses disputed that, saying the special operations troops never entered any buildings to take any computers or documents.

Spicer said 14 of those killed were AQAP terrorists. Sadeq al-Jawfi also disputed that Abdelraouf al-Dhahab was a member of AQAP — though he did not deny family connections with the group.

"Look," Jawfi said, "there were brothers who had connections to al-Qaida, this is true." But the three Dhahab brothers he named were already dead before Sunday's raid — two killed by drone strikes and one by a fourth brother.

Jawfi said Dhahab was working with the displaced Yemeni government that the U.S. and its allies have been supporting against Houthi rebels, who are armed and supported by Iran.

In fact, Jawfi said, Dhahab had just returned from a trip to Maarib province to collect money to pay the salaries of pro-government fighters.

The Yemeni government's foreign minister condemned the attack. A spokesman for the armed forces confirmed to local news media that Dhahab had been working for them.

"Abdelraouf al-Dhahab was not a terrorist or connected to any radical group," said Mohsen Khasrouf, the spokesman. "We are surprised this has happened."

Reuters, on the other hand, reports that AQAP called Abdelraouf a "holy warrior."

Also conflicted: Women in the compound may have started out as bystanders but became combatants when they took up weapons from the dead men, said one senior U.S. military official. Thus they would have posed a threat to the special operations raiders, complicating the issue of which casualties were civilian.

Central Command may answer some of these questions in its investigation, but given the highly sensitive nature of U.S. special operations, the information may not become public.

Trump has criticized Obama for being overly cautious against al-Qaida, and Trump's national security advisers have suggested that he could lift current restrictions intended to avoid civilian casualties. Spicer suggested Thursday that the loss of life in Sunday's raid was justified.

"When you think of the loss of life throughout America and institutions and in terms of the world, in terms of what some of the individuals could have done, I think it is a successful operation by all standards," he said.

The complex and risky nature of such raids is underscored by the death of a senior American special operator, the deaths of children and the fine line between being a legitimate tribal sheikh and one allied with a U.S.-backed government.

Yemen has been in chaos since the fall of its government in 2011. As the poorest Arab country, it had always struggled, but its civil war has reduced it to the level of a failed state in which its onetime government, Iranian-supported Houthi rebels, al-Qaida and other groups all are struggling for power.

The U.S. has continued its years-long series of counterterrorism operations against AQAP throughout the conflict, while supporting a campaign of Saudi and other Arab airstrikes against the Houthis.

But human rights groups have called the Saudi operations brutal, causing indiscriminate deaths of civilians as well as combatants. And a Saudi blockade of Yemen has created one of the world's worst food crises, putting millions of people on the brink of famine.

So far, Trump has not outlined a plan to try to put Yemen on a sustainable footing over the long term. Administration officials are, however, focused on the security dangers they see there, including the threat to the West from AQAP and the local danger posed by Iran's use of the local Houthis.

A suicide boat attack this week damaged a Saudi warship in the Red Sea, and last year, Houthis using Iranian-supplied weapons launched missile attacks on United Arab Emirates and U.S. warships. On Wednesday, National Security Adviser Michael Flynn cited these and other "malign actions" by Iran when he announced the United States was putting Tehran "on notice."

The next time the Iranians launch a ballistic missile, attack ships or engage in similar actions, a senior administration official warned, the United States will take unspecified "appropriate action."
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Amiga · Feb 3, 2017

Bobbythegreat said: ↑

What are you arguing here, that a plan that was built over the course of months by the Obama administration and enacted by the Trump administration was a bad one.....and that's somehow Trump's fault?

You do understand that those kinds of raids are very dangerous right? I mean, just inherently. You also realize that this raid was MUCH less risky or dangerous than the one that took out OBL?

You also realize that if not for the timing of the lunar cycle your boy Obama would have been the one to okay this EXACT mission right?

What point are you trying to make here?
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Potentially very dangerous always, which is why when the military call out the POTUS for approving a raid without sufficient intel and military support, it should get attention.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-commando-idUSKBN15G5RX

U.S. military officials told Reuters that Trump approved his first covert counterterrorism operation without sufficient intelligence, ground support or adequate backup preparations.

The U.S. officials said the extremists’ base had been identified as a target before the Obama administration left office on Jan. 20, but then-President Barack Obama held off approving a raid ahead of his departure.

One of the three U.S. officials said on-the-ground surveillance of the compound was “minimal, at best.”

“The decision was made ... to leave it to the incoming administration, partly in the hope that more and better intelligence could be collected,” that official said.
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I'm making some observations and points, but not any concrete argument at this point concerning his use of the military.

From Trump's past records and his first two weeks of actions in office, we have a good glimpse into what and how he does thing. He actually meant what he said. He's serious. He operates at the edge, pushing boundary, and even defining new one. He operates without involvement of the usual pertinent departments while relying on a few. He is not prepare, make mistakes, act rashly, and without much consideration of the impacts and consequences. He's a high risk taker, is unpredictable and does not rely on information and data, because he is smarter than everyone else.

Does that translate over to how he handle the military? This first military operation suggest so and that's troubling given Trump history of sticking with his ways and not changing. But it's just one operation and many more will tell us. Why is it important - because he is in command of the most powerful military in the world and his actions have great consequences.

And of course, as commander-in-chief, he is ultimately responsible for the military actions and the consequences of it.

Trump a few months ago.

“They won’t refuse. They’re not gonna refuse me. Believe me.”

Baier said, “But they’re illegal.” Trump brushed it off.

Trump insisted, “I’m a leader, I’ve always been a leader. I’ve never had any problem leading people. If I say do it, they’re going to do it.”
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Amiga · Feb 3, 2017

TheresTheDagger said: ↑

So the question is did Trump demand this action take place immediately despite the risks or did someone lower down the chain of command screw up by not getting the intel and support lined up first. The article seems to infer the former but I'd be surprised if Trump got that involved in the details of the raid.
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A bit more below. It indicates he took a big risk.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-commando-idUSKBN15G5RX

U.S. military officials told Reuters that Trump approved his first covert counterterrorism operation without sufficient intelligence, ground support or adequate backup preparations.

The U.S. officials said the extremists’ base had been identified as a target before the Obama administration left office on Jan. 20, but then-President Barack Obama held off approving a raid ahead of his departure.

One of the three U.S. officials said on-the-ground surveillance of the compound was “minimal, at best.”

“The decision was made ... to leave it to the incoming administration, partly in the hope that more and better intelligence could be collected,” that official said.

JuanValdez · Feb 3, 2017

ipaman said: ↑

You're dear leader Obama has blood on his hands. You better get to work because you gotta a lot of threads to create so you can bring awareness. I'm not kidding, every president has innocent blood on their hands and we need to know about it! Good luck with your efforts, I look forward to the awareness you'll be providing.
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He does have innocent blood on his hands. I wonder if there was ever a president who didn't. But, the left on the bbs has been talking about it in relation to Obama all along the way. The left here has criticized him for his drone war, for targeting citizens, for spying on Americans inside the US, for getting involved in Libya and Syria, and alternately for overcommitting and undercommitting to our various proxy wars. You have a selective memory if you think this is the first time in the better part of a decade that there have been misgivings about the foreign adventures of our presidents.

across110thstreet · Feb 3, 2017

YEMGHAZI

Mr.Scarface · Feb 3, 2017

LOL....So Trump was convinced to do a Raid that Obama rejected for being too risky.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry...s_5893c79ee4b0406131361541?zadne655ua1rr7ldi&

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