Intelligence vs. Donald Trump?

[Mark]

I abridged the following from antiwar.com:

Last weekend U.S. Special Forces killed many civilians and one US soldier – with four others injured (plus a helicopter crashed) – in a Yemen attack.  Al-Qaeda seemed to have foreknowledge of the raid.  Their redoubt was fortified and they were ready and waiting.  The Special Forces team, on the way to the target, realized this but decided to go ahead anyway. The result was that an entire village was wiped out and the U.S. sustained losses.  The mission was a disaster.

Why had the military proposed this raid?  Presidents don’t make these decisions in a vacuum. One has to assume that the military said they had intelligence that augured success.

Who is responsible for supplying the President with intelligence in situations like this?  It’s the same “intelligence community” that has been conducting a rather open war on Trump.

Which brings to mind Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s warning to Trump: “You take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday to get back at you.”

This whole incident screams “set up”: do the Never Trumpers in the CIA have blood on their hands?

Who knows?  Whatever the intelligence these attacks are stupid.  Trump needs to focus on what got him elected, and it wasn’t to murder people on the other side of the earth.

Mark
ARIwatch.com
 

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

"The result was that an entire village was wiped out..."

What next, the entire country was wiped out?

Fighting spin with spin doesn't work.

I don't know what the hell happened over there. It's certainly not the way the mainstream media is reporting it. I already didn't trust the mainstream media to give correct information, but now there's this...

Apropos, I decided to go to antiwar.com and follow the links to see how and what was reported on this wiping out of an entire village spin. And, yup, it was pure trading up the chain spin.  One antiwar.com article linked to another antiwar.com article (which qualified the passage by saying "virtually destroying") which linked to a New York Times times artice that said "destroyed much of the village," which finally linked to a Washington Post article that didn't mention anything of the sort. And the ultimate source of the 15 women and children killed number in the WaPo article was the Yemeni government (so the article says without a specific source other than "Yemeni officials"). What got wiped out was a rescue vehicle in the desert that lost power and the marines destroyed it with a missile to keep it from falling into enemy hands.

In other words, these crappy writers are not journalists. They are parrots playing the telephone game where one person tells a story to another, who then repeats it to another with embellishments, then that person tells that version with new embellishments to another, etc. And when you get to the last person, the original story has been so distorted, it's no longer recognizable.

These so-called journalists need to go out, find facts of their own, and report those, not just parrot each other and make shit up as they go along.

When I, who am very friendly to the idea of criticizing war and civilian casualties, have to go through these kind of hoops just to get a basic fact, I am not only NOT persuaded by the wiping-out-entire-village rhetoric, I am pissed off at the press that says these things as fact. I don't believe a goddam word they say.

So now, in order to get info, we need to rely on the fucked up lazy-ass manipulative press or the government, which probably does not want to give out correct info.

That's just great.

I, personally, think there are moles in the intelligence community. That would explain the foreknowledge of the attack by Al Qaeda. And if they were forewarned, I say the mission was even more of a success, not a failure. A slew of bad guys got taken out under overly-adverse conditions from betrayal by a mole. Mole or no mole, everybody seems to agree that a slew of bad guys are now not walking the earth. At least those bad guys will no longer murder innocents going about their daily lives.

I see no problem killing the leaders of an evil group of terrorists that is hellbent on killing me (and others) and working to make that happen. Radical Islamism needs to be wiped out, or at least killed with as much frequency and competence as the US military can muster until the fanatical Islamists give up their quest for world domination by force and terrorism. 

Michael

[Mark]

Nice work tracing the “chinese whispers” starting with “much” and ending with “total” but my two points remain:  (1) Trump shouldn’t have authorized the raid, successful by military standards or not, (2) Given the CIA’s hatred of Trump (remember the campaign) they may have known the raid would be a failure and set him up.

By the way, the “much” however less than total included women and children. 

35 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

I see no problem killing the leaders of an evil group of terrorists that is hellbent on killing me ... Radical Islamism needs to be wiped out, or at least killed with as much frequency and competence as the US military can muster until the fanatical Islamists give up their quest for world domination by force and terrorism.

You’re beginning to sound like Yaron Brook and other neocons.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

5 minutes ago, Mark said:

You’re beginning to sound like Yaron Brook and other neocons.

And you're starting to have reading challenges.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

6 minutes ago, Mark said:

By the way, the “much” however less than total included women and children. 

From some accounts, the women were shooting guns themselves.

Sorry, crude manipulation techniques like appealing to "women and children" as an automatic oxytocin trigger will not replace reason with me.

Besides, who killed them?

Americans? Or the bad guys?

Nobody is saying so far. And, from the tenor of your agenda, you're down with believing Americans did it even though you don't know either.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Just to be clear, Trump ran on a campaign of wiping radical Islamism off the face of the earth.

Not spreading freedom. Not nation-building. Not endless war for profit. Not any of those Neocon values.

And, frankly, not intimidating Muslims. He doesn't care what religion or philosophy a person follows, just so long as it is peaceful. His beef is with the violent bad guys.

Also, for belligerent violent countries that the US goes to war with, Trump ran on taking their oil (when they have it) to pay for making them stop.

I supported him in the full knowledge of all this and with my full approval. I can supply plenty of quotes if anyone is in doubt.

Michael

[Mark]

I didn’t misread the paragraph I quoted from your post.  It sounds exactly like something Brook or other neocon would write.

Yes, the raidees could have killed the children either by mistake or in order to make the raiders look bad.  And yes some, but not all, of the women were combatants (I should have prefaced “women” with “non-combatant” in my post).  Here is the relevant sentence from
www.nbcnews.com/news/world/seal-american-girl-die-first-trump-era-u-s-military-n714346

“The senior military official said the 8-year-old girl, Nawar al-Awlaki, also known as Nora, was among the noncombatants killed in the raid, which also resulted in the death of several Yemeni women. U.S. officials said some of the women who were killed, however, were combatants and had opened fire on the SEALs as they approached the al Qaeda camp.”

11 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Just to be clear, Trump ran on a campaign of wiping radical Islamism off the face of the earth.

I didn’t support him for that.  Keeping them out of the U.S. is sufficient.  Again, you are in the same camp as Brook on this.

 

 

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Just now, Mark said:

Again, you are in the same camp as Brook.

Bullshirt.

Not in the "same camp."

If Brook believes in wiping terrorists out, we agree on that point. Just like if he likes ham and eggs. We can agree on that point. That does not make me part of his "camp."

Once again, you are having reading challenges. I've only been writing my views on this stuff for years.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

40 minutes ago, Mark said:

Nice work tracing the “chinese whispers” starting with “much” and ending with “total” but my two points remain:  (1) Trump shouldn’t have authorized the raid, successful by military standards or not, (2) Given the CIA’s hatred of Trump (remember the campaign) they may have known the raid would be a failure and set him up.

By the way, the “much” however less than total included women and children. 

You’re beginning to sound like Yaron Brook and other neocons.

Why shouldn't he have done what he did when you don't know what happened or why?

--Brant

or do you?

[Brant Gaede]

There are two contexts it seems: present day context and how to deal with it and proper comportment of foreign policy respecting ideology.

You get to the latter by properly addressing the former.

Trump may or may not be doing this. He is, however, dealing with the former.

--Brant

hope for more than coincidence

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Instead of making shit up, here's a suggestion for anyone who wants to see part of the backoffice of the US military.

I just finished reading The Pentagon's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top-Secret Military Research Agency by Annie Jacobsen.

The unintended benefit of reading this book is that it explains formative aspects of US wars going back to Vietnam and before. 

I thought the world was a relatively safe place before reading this book. Now I don't sleep as well as before.

But after reading through this thing, all these propaganda statements seem so amateurish. Seriously.

Incidentally, one of the items that pissed me off about the Vietnam war is that a couple of folks went over there to see how the Vietnamese thought and why they were so susceptible to communism. They brought back the news that the Vietnamese peasants didn't understand and couldn't care less. They were pissed because they were being uprooted from lands where their ancestors were buried and relocated to "strategic hamlets," where, even then, the Diem government stole their wages. Chemicals sprayed from planes were killing their crops. Etc. The communists said they wouldn't do those things. It was that simple.

But when the dudes made their report in Washington, they got to talk to the back of a chair. The Washington elite wanted to hear that the Vietnamese were stupid, lacking ambition, and easily swayed by communist ideas.

This book goes all the way up to 2016. Forget about massive surveillance (which is still a huge problem). In today's world, artificial intelligence is not just a buzzword anymore. DARPA is literally trying to meld the human mind with computers to make superhuman soldiers. 

Here's another point I think is part of present-day military thinking, including Obama's administration on back. Certain, but not all, Muslim communities (only the more primitive ones)--and less civilized communities in other cultures--only respond well to honor killings. Responding well means stopping their aggression and becoming friendly and/or willing to negotiate. This honor killing awareness, and where honor killing is practiced, is in official Pentagon reports going all the way back to Vietnam (according to this book). Although nobody explicitly says it, this means the ancient habit of killing off an entire bloodline for the sins of one family member.

The US would never cop to doing this, but I believe it might be doing it at times.

Michael

[KorbenDallas]

1 hour ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

In today's world, artificial intelligence is not just a buzzword anymore. DARPA is literally trying to meld the human mind with computers to make superhuman soldiers. 

Truncquote!

http://fusion.net/story/204316/darpa-is-implanting-chips-in-soldiers-brains/

[...]

But Jacobsen’s warning is that while helping soldiers suffering in the aftermath of war may seem inherently benign [but isn't], we must not forget that DARPA is in the business of defense. The question that should punctuate everything DARPA does, Jacobsen suggests, is “How can this be weaponized?”

DARPA’s spokesperson told Fusion that the main goal of its brain-related work is not offensive military applications, but to develop therapeutic devices for soldiers and veterans.

“Suggesting that we aim to develop ‘super soldiers’ or that our brain-related research is being conducted to ‘unlock the secrets of artificial intelligence’ is patently false,'” he said.

[...]

[Brant Gaede]

9 hours ago, Mark said:

I abridged the following from antiwar.com:

Last weekend U.S. Special Forces killed many civilians and one US soldier – with four others injured (plus a helicopter crashed) – in a Yemen attack.  Al-Qaeda seemed to have foreknowledge of the raid.  Their redoubt was fortified and they were ready and waiting.  The Special Forces team, on the way to the target, realized this but decided to go ahead anyway. The result was that an entire village was wiped out and the U.S. sustained losses.  The mission was a disaster.

Why had the military proposed this raid?  Presidents don’t make these decisions in a vacuum. One has to assume that the military said they had intelligence that augured success.

Who is responsible for supplying the President with intelligence in situations like this?  It’s the same “intelligence community” that has been conducting a rather open war on Trump.

Which brings to mind Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s warning to Trump: “You take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday to get back at you.”

This whole incident screams “set up”: do the Never Trumpers in the CIA have blood on their hands?

Who knows?  Whatever the intelligence these attacks are stupid.  Trump needs to focus on what got him elected, and it wasn’t to murder people on the other side of the earth.

Mark
ARIwatch.com
 

I was in Special Forces and I don't believe this.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Korben,

Another gotcha?

Jeez...

Read the book. But before you do, here's a suggestion. Reread what the DARPA spokesperson said with your lawyer's hat on. See how carefully parsed the words are. Let me help you. Here are the words from the Fusion article:

Quote

DARPA’s spokesperson told Fusion that the main goal of its brain-related work is not offensive military applications, but to develop therapeutic devices for soldiers and veterans.

“Suggesting that we aim to develop ‘super soldiers’ or that our brain-related research is being conducted to ‘unlock the secrets of artificial intelligence’ is patently false,'” he said.

This is way too easy.

1. The term "main goal" does not exclude other goals.

2. The "aim" of DARPA is not to develop super-soldiers. It is to get the brain physically connected to computers and make it work, especially on injured soldiers. What comes out of that is for later. 

3. Their "aim" is, also, not to "unlock the secrets of artificial intelligence." It is to integrate brain and computer. That--human brain+computer with the human in control--is not artificial intelligence, mah mahyann... A computer acting like a brain is, meaning the computer is in control. That, at least, is one very popular meaning within this context.

DARPA developed a publicity policy of having one story for the public and another inhouse for what it really does. The reason this exists is so the brainstorming and testing by the scientists can unfold without a lot of yelling in public that would threaten funding and legalities. Scientists need quiet and relative stability to do creative work. That sounds simplistic, but it's what it is. 

Sometimes politicians abuse this policy for their own dastardly ends, but those ends are not why the policy exists. In that arena, from the DARPA side, sometimes they want misinformation out in the public to mislead military enemies. But that's still not the main reason for the policy.

The examples of this policy abound in The Pentagon's Brain going back decades and they are well-documented with FOIA requests and even openly public information. I just finished reading the book, but I didn't take notes and I don't feel like looking for a detail like this to answer a Google-war kneejerk gotcha by a Mighty Hero on a Mission from God to try to debunk everything that seems like it might be a conspiracy theory.    

So I am going on memory for the following. I think this policy (one story for the public and the true or complete story for inhouse) started during the Vietnam war with McNamara's billion dollar boondoggle electronic fence for the Ho Chi Minh trail. (That's quite a story, by the way.)

When Hillary Clinton talked about having different public and private stories for the same thing, this was not just political hackery. As Secretary of State, she would have been intimately familiar with this policy.

But let me take your gotcha at face value and pretend their public story was not as well-crafted and parsed as it was. Do you know anything about DARPA? The purpose of DARPA is not to build weapons. Does that surprise you?

It's purpose is speculative technology related to defense issues. That might mean weapons or not. And there are plenty of times when it is in the "not" category. In other words, a specific problem is given to DARPA, or it brainstorms scenarios (war games with awe-inspiring virtual reality) to see what specific problems arise. Then it turns its scientists loose on developing technology to address those problems and possible solutions.

There is a point in time where it turns over its technology, with recommendations, to the armed forces. THEY are the ones who build the weapons, generally through subcontractors. 

In other words, the DARPA spokesperson did not lie. DARPA is legitimately trying to help soldiers with brain injuries. But when the research is done, it will say to the the other branches of the military, here are our goodies and they are operational (meaning the technology works). By the way, here is our research on robots, too. And drones. And even our research on storytelling and neuroscience (the program called "narrative networks"). Once DARPA turns over all this technology of how soldiers can operate a whole lot of shit only with their minds, it will probably say, now don't let the brass and subcontractors use this for evil like building supersoldiers, 'kay? 

 

This is like giving a warehouse of bananas to a tribe of monkeys with a recommendation of not eating.

You can charge at that windmill, my dear Quixote, but don't be surprised when you find yourself whirling around on the blade.  

Jacobsen did not say what the inside story is on this current project because it is not yet available to the public, especially investigative journalists like her. There is generally a large time lag on reveals when deception is used as official policy (and stamped "classified").

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

2 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

I was in Special Forces and I don't believe this.

Brant,

I don't know what part you don't believe (I know what part I don't  ), but here is a discussion by Rush Limbaugh of leftovers from Obama in Trump's administration. Rush doesn't point the finger at an internal saboteur for sure, but he does say some people hate Trump so much, they would be willing to do a thing like this. 

I agree. 

The Truth About the Yemen Raid

I also agree that the mission should have been called off the moment the Seals found out they were blown. But that is at a huge distance. I am not a military man. I believe the Seals know a little bit more about these things than I do.

 

Michael

 

[KorbenDallas]

2 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Do you know anything about DARPA?

Yes!

2 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Does that surprise you?

No!

2 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

The purpose of DARPA is not to build weapons.

I know!  (That's how I caught the conspiracy theory..)

2 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

In other words, the DARPA spokesperson did not lie. DARPA is legitimately trying to help soldiers with brain injuries. But when the research is done, it will say to the the other branches of the military, here are our goodies and they are operational (meaning the technology works). By the way, here is our research on robots, too. And drones. And even our research on storytelling and neuroscience (the program called "narrative networks"). Once DARPA turns over all this technology of how soldiers can operate a whole lot of shit only with their minds, it will probably say, now don't let the brass and subcontractors use this for evil like building supersoldiers, 'kay? 

 

'k!

I've actually heard this conspiracy theory before, and I think we're a while away from superhuman soldiers being assisted by computer implants in their brains, if it can be done at all.  It is interesting, though.

[KorbenDallas]

17 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Rush doesn't point the finger at an internal saboteur for sure, but he does say some people hate Trump so much, they would be willing to do a thing like this. 

I agree. 

The internal saboteur didn't sound likely to me.  Rush says in the article that the mission should have been called off, but I don't know he could make that judgment call from his standpoint.  I don't think Trump is 'to blame'.  I think this mission shows that there is going to be an adjustment period with the American public on hearing news about Trump actually using our military, where Obama, generally, did not.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

2 minutes ago, KorbenDallas said:

Rush says in the article that the mission should have been called off, but I don't know he could make that judgment call from his standpoint.

Korben,

Don't forget this is spoken without a script. So you have to keep context to get the full meaning. Here's the quote by Rush:

Quote

But this mission should have been called off. The minute they found out they were compromised, the minute they found out that the targets knew we were headed for them, they should have pulled the plug and gone the other way.

I might be wrong, but it doesn't sound to me like he was saying Trump should have called off the mission period. It sounds like he was saying the soldiers (their commander, whoever) should have called it off the moment they perceived they were blown.

That's a reasonable conclusion and doesn't need special knowledge.

That makes me curious as to why they kept on. I have a feeling this story is not well-told. And I also have a feeling these American warriors were superb under great duress.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

6 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Brant,

I don't know what part you don't believe (I know what part I don't  ), but here is a discussion by Rush Limbaugh of leftovers from Obama in Trump's administration. Rush doesn't point the finger at an internal saboteur for sure, but he does say some people hate Trump so much, they would be willing to do a thing like this. 

I agree. 

The Truth About the Yemen Raid

I also agree that the mission should have been called off the moment the Seals found out they were blown. But that is at a huge distance. I am not a military man. I believe the Seals know a little bit more about these things than I do.

 

Michael

I have no direct Seal experience. The story had no army SF sense to it.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

2 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

I have no direct Seal experience. The story had no army SF sense to it.

Brant,

LOL...

Do the Seals normally do things that don't make any sense in the Special Forces world? 

I should have said "attack force." I don't really know who all was attacking. Rush and others said Seals, so I ran with that. From my distance, trained warriors with weapons is my mental model whether Seals, SF, Air Force or just plain old grunts.

 

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

1 hour ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Brant,

LOL...

Do the Seals normally do things that don't make any sense in the Special Forces world? 

I should have said "attack force." I don't really know who all was attacking. Rush and others said Seals, so I ran with that. From my distance, trained warriors with weapons is my mental model whether Seals, SF, Air Force or just plain old grunts.

 

Michael

Seals are much more focused on specific types of missions. Army SF is more flexible and autonomous and deals with the indigenous populations by positive interaction with them. This is not to say SF couldn't mount a Seal type operation or that SF hasn't been improperly used especially in these oil wars, but that story reads like SF is being used as a convenient slapped-on label to give the story more oomph.

50 years ago SF was all army. Today it's multiple branches of service including navy seals, but the default meaning is the army's.

--Brant

[william.scherk]

18 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Certain, but not all, Muslim communities (only the more primitive ones)--and less civilized communities in other cultures--only respond well to honor killings. Responding well means stopping their aggression and becoming friendly and/or willing to negotiate. This honor killing awareness, and where honor killing is practiced, is in official Pentagon reports going all the way back to Vietnam (according to this book). Although nobody explicitly says it, this means the ancient habit of killing off an entire bloodline for the sins of one family member.

"Honor killings" in this context means what? I don't completely follow the reasoning, can you expand on this usage?

20 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

I don't know what the hell happened over there.

I know what happened here. "Mark" took a Justin Raimondo article from Antiwar.com, rewrote the content of several paragraphs ('abridged'), poked that up to OL without attribution, and then field-tested a conspiracy theory about the decision process that led to the military action in Bayda province. 

The theory, abridged, is that the Spooks in intelligence either botched the military plan to harm the President's reputation, or Spookily 'tipped off' the Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to fuck with Trump, via a 'mole.'

20 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly (with expanded links by WSS) said:

One antiwar.com article [http://news.antiwar.com/2017/02/02/us-defends-yemen-raid-as-death-toll-rises/]

linked to another antiwar.com article [http://news.antiwar.com/2017/02/01/us-raid-destroyed-most-of-yemen-village-fm-blasts-extrajudicial-killing/ ]

(which qualified the passage by saying "virtually destroying") which linked to a New York Times times artice that said "destroyed much of the village," which finally linked to a Washington Post article that didn't mention anything of the sort. 

The first link does not correspond to the sloppy un-citation and paraphrase above. The editing by "Mark" leads to the Raimondo's actual words only once one searches for its un-abridged counterpart, since all the internal links were excised. This edit is of a fragment of yesterday's article called Our Lying Media: “Fake news” and Trump Derangement Syndrome, and this is the passage "Mark" vamped up in service of the second-hand theory, next to the original:

 

Last weekend U.S. Special Forces killed many civilians and one US soldier – with four others injured (plus a helicopter crashed) – in a Yemen attack.  Al-Qaeda seemed to have foreknowledge of the raid.  Their redoubt was fortified and they were ready and waiting.  The Special Forces team, on the way to the target, realized this but decided to go ahead anyway. The result was that an entire village was wiped out and the U.S. sustained losses.  The mission was a disaster. Why had the military proposed this raid?  Presidents don’t make these decisions in a vacuum. One has to assume that the military said they had intelligence that augured success. Who is responsible for supplying the President with intelligence in situations like this?  It’s the same “intelligence community” that has been conducting a rather open war on Trump. Which brings to mind Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s warning to Trump: “You take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday to get back at you.” This whole incident screams “set up”: do the Never Trumpers in the CIA have blood on their hands?

And then there’s a more sinister development, exemplified by the latest news about the Special Forces raid carried out against an alleged al-Qaeda target in Yemen, in which a large number of civilians were killed in addition to one US soldier (four others were injured). What we are hearing now is that al-Qaeda had foreknowledge of the raid, either because drones were flying much lower prior to the raid or for other reasons: in any case, their redoubt was fortified, and the terrorists were ready and waiting. On the way to their target, the Special Forces team realized all this, but decided to go ahead anyway. The result was a slaughter: an entire village was wiped out, we sustained losses (including a crashed helicopter) and the mission, in retrospect, seems like it was a disaster. We are also hearing that the mission was disapproved at least twice by the Obama administration, and that Trump approved it when it was brought up again. Which raises the question: why was the military reiterating this proposal when it had already been rejected at least twice? Presidents don’t make these decisions in a vacuum. One has to assume that the military said they had intelligence that augured success rather than what actually occurred. And intelligence is the key word here. Who is responsible for supplying the President with intelligence in situations like this? Why, it’s the same “intelligence community” that has been conducting a rather open war on Donald J. Trump. Which brings to mind Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s ominous warning to Trump: “You take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday to get back at you.” In short, this whole incident screams “set up”: do the Never Trumpers in the CIA have blood on their hands?

Why Mark would hack Raimondo like this instead of simply linking/excerpting, I have no idea.

Quote

In other words, these crappy writers are not journalists.

I agree, in part. Mark and I are not journalists, though we churn out commentary. Raimondo is an opinion-journalist, or a commentator. I never accept his fact claims without investigation. He has some strange views about wars, at least in my eyes. He is on the side of Assadists in Syria, for example, when all is said and done. He swallowed the Sy Hersh line on responsibility for the Damascus Sarin attack.  At some point I expect him to finger the CIA as accessory to that war crime.

In the end, I find that the details we now more or less accept as true (in re the Yemen action) come from the reporting put together by the Washington Post (along with secondary fact-checking).  What I find odd and unfounded is the notion that a rogue CIA consequentially altered the military attack plans to 'taint' Trump with the design error. In reading the original reporting, it becomes more likely to me that the reason Obama did not approve the action last month was that it was slated to occur after he left office. 

I'll speculate here -- against some wild opinion/speculation I have read -- that Obama did not reject it as too dangerous, but as an action that straddled the transition to a new administration.

In support of that speculation, I cite the report of Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Missy Ryan in the Washington Post, In deadly Yemen raid, a lesson for Trump’s national security team

Quote

According to current and former officials with knowledge of the operation, military officials had proposed it weeks before, under the Obama administration, as part of an attempt to compensate for intelligence losses caused by Yemen’s extended civil conflict.

Since 2015, Saudi Arabia has led a coalition of Arab nations launching air attacks on Shiite Houthi rebels in Yemen. The United States has provided some support to those air operations but has distanced itself over allegations of repeated attacks on civilian targets.

After considering the operation for several weeks, Obama officials concluded that the raid would not be possible before the president’s Jan. 20 departure. They began to prepare a detailed assessment of the Pentagon proposal in anticipation of a final decision by Trump’s top advisers, said one former senior U.S. official who, like other current and former officials, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

The operation, the first U.S.-led ground raid in Yemen since 2014, comes as the United States tries to rebuild a counterterrorism mission that has been severely curtailed since 2015. Last year, the United States established a tiny Special Operations presence in coastal Yemen, working alongside Emirati troops to keep tabs on AQAP activities.

The group has been one of the most potent branches of the global militant network and has been involved in multiple plots to attack the West.

“Undoubtedly DOD is focused on steps that make up for the current gaps in our knowledge in Yemen,” the former senior official said.

The operation may also be a sign of things to come. The Pentagon, according to two defense officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, is drawing up plans to be considered by the White House that, if approved, could delegate decision-making for operations in Yemen to a lower level and accelerate activities against AQAP.

While that would seemingly be indicative of a more aggressive stance by Trump, one official described the raid and the proposal as an outgrowth of earlier Obama-era operations that have pushed al-Qaeda militants from their sanctuaries and provided more opportunities for U.S. strikes.

“We expect an easier approval cycle [for operations] under this administration,” another defense official said.

The same model was applied after an extended U.S. air campaign in Libya that pushed Islamic State militants into desert camps, where they were eventually pursued and destroyed by stealth bombers.

A former senior defense official familiar with prior operations in Yemen said Saturday’s raid and the potential for expanded operations were “overdue.”

“We really struggled with getting the White House comfortable with getting boots on the ground in Yemen,” the former official said. “Since the new administration has come in, the approvals [at the Pentagon] appear to have gone up.”

Raimondo got some items a bit wrong. It wasn't a 'vehicle' or a 'helicopter' that the US military says crash-landed and was later destroyed. It was one of these unique tilt-rotors  ... a steal at 70 million greenbacks.

Fans of alarmist commentary from Raimondo can read either last December's Stop the CIA Coup or Trump Against the World.

Another aircraft reportedly in action but unscathed in the Yemen raid was at least one of these amazing things: 

For fans of tendentious articles regarding The Joo, an excursion to ARIwatch.  Did you know that a couple handfuls of Yemeni Jews hang on in this sad, war-ravaged land?

Edited February 4, 2017 by william.scherk
WGAF about Yemen

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

27 minutes ago, william.scherk said:

"Honor killings" in this context means what? I don't completely follow the reasoning, can you expand on this usage?

William,

I'm using a more expanded meaning, not just the one kind the media promotes about fathers killing daughters. 

This was discussed in one of the chapters in The Pentagon's Brain. I don't recall the details (I could look it up, I suppose, but it's not all that important to clarifying my meaning). The idea was that the Americans were totally culture-blind in a war setting with another culture. (I think it was with Vietnam, but I need to look it up--I have a good mind for remembering this kind of thing principle-wise, but just like with names, I have a terrible memory for details without going over it a few times.) The Americans were trying to teach the local people how to fight and treat prisoners. But they could not get much compliance, learning or enthusiasm. Then the ARPA (or DARPA?) psychologists went in to try to understand why and were told by the locals that the Americans were prohibiting honor. The Americans in charge at the time understood, turned a blind eye, and not only were the prisoners mysteriously killed, their families were, too. Then the sought enthusiasm appeared.

I can't say for sure, but I believe this is a lesson the more shadowy side of the American fighting forces learned and assimilated. When a message has to be sent that will be heard by certain kinds of enemies, they send it in the only form the other side will pay attention to. This might be (and, please, might be, not is) an explanation of the reason for the death of Anwar al-Awlaki’s little girl. Not that the Americans killed her (apparently there were Kuwaiti forces along and in a gunfight, all kinds of things happen), but they allowed it to unfold by looking the other way because they knew how the message would land on the other Al Qaeda folks--the message being that they would be subjected to the same or similar honor code they practiced. 

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

42 minutes ago, william.scherk said:

I'll speculate here -- against some wild opinion/speculation I have read -- that Obama did not reject it as too dangerous, but as an action that straddled the transition to a new administration.

William,

The official reason the government is giving is that they needed a clear moonlit night to pull it off. And one didn't appear while President Obama was still in office. It seems like he wanted this to happen under his watch but the weather did not accommodate him.

But one such night happened right after President Trump was sworn in and this entire project was locked and loaded and waiting to be unleashed. It wasn't a decision Trump could ponder for a few days. Any delay would involve weeks for the next clear-moon night, and by then the opportunity might be lost since the terrorists might go elsewhere.

So President Trump made the call.

That sounds reasonable to me about why he did it. I also find it reasonable to suspect there might have been inhouse sabotage to make his first military mission fail and be a PR disaster. I base my opinion on the sheer amount of vitriol aimed at Trump by some people in the government. Hell, he even had to fire his acting AG for instructing government employees to not comply with his Executive Order. 

Michael

[KorbenDallas]

About the internal saboteur, I think it is more reasonable that the drones flew too low,  http://dailycaller.com/2017/02/02/seals-knew-they-were-screwed-from-beginning-in-fatal-yemen-raid-went-into-battle-anyway/

[...]

Local tribal elders speculated that the [al-Qaida terrorists] group was suspicious because U.S. drones were flying lower than normal, and emitting audible engine noise.

[...]

This is all the forewarning they would need to be put on alert.