I don't know. Somehow, I think this might have been something they could have - should have - kept quiet. It was already bad enough for his wife.Additional remains have been discovered of Sgt. La David Johnson who was killed in the October 4 ambush by ISIS fighters in Niger, according to a US official.
The remains were recovered by a US military and FBI team that traveled to the area. Johnson's family was notified on Monday the official said.
[...]
The remains were discovered at the site where Johnson's body was recovered.
CNN
In the past, AFRICOM has taken steps to withhold information and keep quiet embarrassing incidents and untoward activities by U.S. military personnel in Africa — from drink- and drug-fueled deaths and the shooting of an officer by an enlisted man, to soliciting prostitutes and sex crimes. The alleged killing in Mali of a Green Beret by Navy SEALs earlier this year, reportedly in connection to a shadowy money-skimming scheme, remained under wraps for months. The results of an inquiry into the torture and deaths of prisoners at a Cameroonian base frequented by American personnel, exposed by The Intercept this summer, have yet to be released.
The Intercept
Of course not. But, everyone reached the conclusion that he was probably captured and brutally treated because the Pentagon would not allow his wife to see the body.The body of Sgt. La David Johnson, one of four U.S. soldiers killed in an ambush by Islamist militants in Niger last month, was found with his arms tied and a gaping wound at the back of his head, according to two villagers, suggesting that he may have been captured and then executed.
[...]
A U.S. military official with knowledge of the investigation into the ambush acknowledged that Johnson’s body appeared viciously battered but cautioned against reaching any conclusions until the probe is completed.
WaPo
Well, they probably didn't undress themselves during the ambush. I suppose they could have been caught sleeping when it occurred. We could answer that one easily enough by asking the soldiers who made it out.The two Tongo Tongo villagers said they also saw the bodies of the three other American soldiers — Staff Sgts. Bryan Black, Jeremiah Johnson and Dustin Wright — who U.S. officials say were killed in action. One was slumped inside the team’s pickup truck, they said. The bodies of the other two were on the ground, one clutching a walkie-talkie, they said.
They were wearing T-shirts and boxer shorts, the two men said. It was unclear whether the militants had stripped off their uniforms.
Did Dunford mention any of that in his press conference? Or was that just his mention that an alteration to the mission was being investigated?Their accounts, provided in separate interviews, raise questions about why a second, potentially more dangerous mission was tacked on late in the day even after a second team that was supposed to join them was unable to do so.
What was started as a reconnaissance mission to meet with local leaders turned into a kill-or-capture mission aimed at a high-value target, according to both sources.
ABC
Hmmmm...what about that business of US troops being forbidden to take on any mission that might lead to enemy contact?According to multiple intelligence sources, this target is one of the U.S.’s “top three objectives in Niger,” one that the U.S. has been “actively pursuing.”
But, do you want them to know what really happened to him?“They should have been up and back in a day. Because they were up there so f------ long on a mission that morphed, they were spotted, surveilled and ultimately hit,” the official said.
[...]
“He was the best kid you could ask for,” the survivor said of Johnson, who fought back the militants with machine gun fire from the back of a pickup truck, before grabbing a sniper rifle and continuing to shoot.
“The guy is a true war hero,” the survivor added. “I really want his wife and kids to know that.”
We knew somebody knew what happened. Even if the Pentagon - or the administration of The Most Notable Loser - didn't want Dunford to admit it.Their pre-mission threat assessment never considered the possibility of 50 to 60 enemy combatants attacking them, according to the official. That matches what Dunford told reporters on Monday.
[...]
On their way back, the team received a call from the base back in Niamey, asking them to turn around and kill or capture a high-value target who is a known al Qaeda and ISIS operative, according to two senior officials.
Somebody's going to get an earful. Well, most likely already has.There was “high confidence” that the target was in the area, the sources told ABC News. A second U.S. Special Forces team was directed to meet up with their patrol, but when they could not, the original 12-member team and their Nigerien partners were told to proceed anyway.
I don't think we've heard that sentiment before.The senior intelligence official credited the French forces who responded with “saving our bacon.”
“The French saved our men. Yes, we lost four. But we would have lost everybody if it wasn't for the French,” the official told ABC News.
So what the hell happened to him? This person knows, or he is being told what to say. Or both.The team arrived at the target location in the early morning hours of Oct. 4, but found nothing. They burned the remnants of the abandoned campsite and headed back south as the sun came up, stopping back through a nearby village called Tongo Tongo around 8:30 AM.
There, the Nigerien force requested they stop to eat, while U.S. soldiers met with a village elder, who was “obviously and deliberately trying to stall them,” according to the official.
“He was definitely stalling as long as he could to keep us there,” the survivor said, saying he had an entourage, showed the unit a child with an illness, and even grabbed a goat he wanted to prepare for them.
But the unit suspected something was definitely wrong when they saw two motorcycle riders watch them and race out of the village.
[...]
It was around midmorning or midday by the time the team departed the village. According to the survivor, they had only gone a few hundred yards when they came under fire from machine guns, mortars, and rocket-propelled grenades.
[...]
Exactly how and where Johnson died remains unclear
[...]
“Without a doubt, his courage and bravery in action that day were above and beyond expectation. He died fighting for his brothers on his team. You can quote that verbatim,” the survivor added. “He grabbed any and every weapon available to him. The guy is a true war hero.”
[...]
The survivor described an all-out effort to find Johnson during those 48 hours [until Johnson's body was found], saying he was missing, but presumed alive.
Yeah. And that was essentially zip. How can they be three weeks post-incident and have no answers? Was this a mission with no plan? No one in charge?Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he did not want to speculate about why service members took so long to call for backup.
[...]
Though [French] helicopters did not arrive until an hour after the troops called for help, a drone arrived overhead in minutes, General Dunford said, though he would not say whether it was armed.
[...]
General Dunford’s comments were the fullest explanation so far from the Trump administration about the ambush and what led up to it.
NYT
It was three weeks ago. Somebody knows these answers. Why trot out an old man who doesn't know anything?“I make no judgment about how long it took them to ask for support. I don’t know that they thought they needed support prior to that time,” General Dunford said. “I don’t know how this attack unfolded. I don’t know what their initial assessment was of what they were confronted with.”
How stupid do we look? Any "mission" could involve enemy contact. Any US soldier in the country could be subject to enemy contact.The mission’s planners had said that encountering enemy forces was unlikely, according to General Dunford. The Pentagon is investigating whether the mission was altered after the unit left its operating base, he said. American forces in Niger operate under strict rules that forbid them going on missions that could involve contact with an enemy.
They're forbidden to go on any mission that might involve enemy contact, but they had a plan that required French backup support. For what? Possible flat tires?General Dunford said that the French support was part of the mission’s plan and that French, Nigerien and American troops searched nonstop for Sergeant Johnson
Sounds like their "mission" was done. Not altered.According to General Dunford, the Americans and their Nigerien counterparts departed for the mission early on Oct. 3 and were attacked a day later while returning to base.
I'm giving the Pentagon a big fail on that.General Dunford said that the Pentagon owes answers to the families of all four American service members who were killed in the attack.
His hourlong news conference was part of the Pentagon’s latest effort to contain the political fallout from the ambush.
If my math skills serve me correctly, twice zero is still zero.“With regard to Congress and the criticism we’re not providing enough information, … if the Congress doesn’t believe that they’re not getting sufficient information, then I need to double my efforts to provide them with information,” Dunford added.
Politico
The other three.His widow still has a lot of questions for the Army.
“I want to know why it took them 48 hours to find my husband. Why couldn’t I see my husband? Every time I asked to see my husband, they wouldn’t let me,” Myeshia Johnson told Stephanopoulos, adding that the military told her the severity of her husband’s condition meant that she couldn’t view his body.
“I need to see him so I know that that is my husband,” Johnson said. “They won’t show me a finger, a hand—I know my husband’s body from head to toe, and they won’t let me see anything. I don’t know what’s in that box; it could be empty for all I know. But I need to see my husband.”
She told Stephanopoulos that the military has been reluctant to share details of her husband’s death with her.
“I don’t know how he got killed, where he got killed or anything,” Johnson said.
The Root
That may be all you're missing in this story.The natural resources of Niger include uranium, coal, gold, iron ore, tin, phosphates, petroleum, molybdenum, salt, and gypsum. Niger has some of the largest uranium reserves in the world. It also has a good amount of oil reserves.
AZO Mining: "Niger: Mining, Minerals and Fuel Resources"
Sure.Many Americans were surprised to learn this month that American troops are deployed to Niger at all, let alone so many of them — 800 at the time of the attack, according to the Pentagon.
But U.S. troops have been in Niger in increasing numbers since at least 2013, with part-time deployments for years before that, working with the Nigerien military as it fights insurgent and terrorist groups, and using the country to spy over other countries in the Sahel and Sahara regions of the vast continent.
[...]
Defense Secretary James Mattis told reporters Thursday [...] “Their job is to help the people in the region learn how to defend themselves."
Politico
Let's see - a military spokesman vs. a congressional source. Tossup? At any rate, somebody's trying to hide something there.Hundreds of Air Force personnel operate drones and other spy flights out of a growing American base in the country, and a smaller number of special operations troops train and advise Nigerien troops as they fight Islamist extremists.
[...]
"Africa Command is establishing a temporary, expeditionary contingency support location in Agadez, Niger."
But it doesn’t capture the whole picture.
For instance, the U.S. flies surveillance missions from Niger, which is twice the size of Texas, all over northern and western Africa — including over Libya, where the United States is conducting some of its most sensitive counterterrorism operations.
Part of the reason U.S. advisers were deployed to Niger in the first place was as a "quid pro quo" for allowing Washington to locate a regional surveillance hub there.
[...]
A military spokesman said on Oct. 6 that an unarmed surveillance aircraft was overhead during the mission [in which four American Green Berets were killed] — although NBC News, citing a congressional source, reported otherwise on Friday — but didn’t spot the attackers before the ambush.
Sgt. La David Johnson was found nearly a mile away from the central scene of the ambush in Niger that killed four US soldiers -- including Johnson -- and wounded two others, four administration officials familiar with the early assessment of what happened told CNN on Friday.
[...]
CNN previously reported that the French Mirage jets that arrived overhead within 30 minutes of the firefight to fly low passes in an attempt to disperse the attackers did not have permission to drop bombs.
But on Friday, US officials said that French jets did have authority to bomb but did not because pilots could not readily identify enemy forces in this firefight and did not want to risk hitting US and Nigerien troops.
[...]
There have been reports that some type of tracking beacon was emitting a signal possibly from Johnson. On Friday, officials said this is a detail they are still trying to verify -- it could have been one of the vehicles tracking devices that was emitting the signal.
CNN
S.O.P. The White House is constantly behind the eight ball with Trump.In the hours after President Donald Trump said on an Oct. 17 radio broadcast that he had contacted nearly every family that had lost a military servicemember this year, the White House was hustling to learn from the Pentagon the identities and contact information for those families, according to an internal Defense Department email.
[...]
Not only had the president not contacted virtually all the families of military personnel killed this year, the White House did not even have an up-to-date list of those who had been killed.
[...]
The email exchange, which has not been previously reported, shows that senior White House aides were aware on the day the president made the statement that it was not accurate — but that they should try to make it accurate as soon as possible, given the gathering controversy.
Roll Call
And when that wasn't accepted readily...“She also had quite a few comments that day that weren’t part of that speech and weren’t part of that video that were also witnessed by many people that were there,” Sanders said, referring to “what Gen. Kelly referenced yesterday.”
TPM
Seig Heil!“If you want to go after Gen. Kelly, that’s up to you,” Sanders said. “But I think that, if you want to get into a debate with a four-star Marine general, I think that that’s something highly inappropriate.”
That should be easy enough to prove. Surely there's video. And what in the world is he playing at, absolutely pulling a Donald Trump on this woman?The chief of staff said he was "stunned" by Wilson's public comments at the ceremony dedicating the building.
"And a congresswoman stood up, and in a long tradition of empty barrels making the most noise, stood up there in all of that and talked about how she was instrumental in getting the funding for that building, and how she took care of her constituents because she got the money, and she just called up President (Barack) Obama, and on that phone call, he gave the money, the $20 million, to build the building, and she sat down," Kelly said. "And we were stunned, stunned that she'd done it. Even for someone that is that empty a barrel, we were stunned."
CNN
Well, mission accomplished. The media's peewee soccer ball is now squarely at General Kelly's feet, and off The Most Notable Loser.Rep. Frederica Wilson said Friday that White House chief of staff John Kelly lied when he criticized her for allegedly taking credit for securing funding for an FBI field office two years ago.
[...]
"I was not even in Congress in 2009 when the money for the building was secured," the Florida Democrat said Friday on CNN's "New Day." "So that's a lie. How dare he. However, I named the building at the behest of (then-FBI Director James Comey) with the help of (then-House Speaker John Boehner), working across party lines. So he didn't tell the truth."
Which is not to say the FBI wouldn't also cover up whatever it is the Pentagon doesn't want to reveal, but it is an indicator of just how murky this mission was. And the bottom line could simply well be that the only thing they're trying to cover up is incompetence and the negative aspect of hiring private contractors.U.S. military officials said Thursday that they are trying to piece together a timeline of what happened, while lawmakers impatient for information criticized the Pentagon and White House for a lack of transparency.
[...]
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has joined the investigation into how a group of militants thought to be Islamists killed four American soldiers in Niger two weeks ago, a move that comes as U.S. officials face criticism over their struggle to answer questions about the incident.
[...]
The FBI has the authority to take over the investigation but hasn’t yet done so, the officials said.
WSJ
I don't think any soldier anywhere should feel properly covered when private contractors are involved in their missions. Sgt. Johnson sure couldn't.Questions about the operation, and the mission of the Green Berets in Niger, have been mounting. The questions center on whether the U.S. force had adequate resources and whether its mission was well-defined.
The U.S. troops in question depended on the French military for air support and used aircraft flown by contractors to evacuate the injured, Pentagon officials said.
That becon didn't give them a clue?Sgt. Johnson’s personal tracker, an emergency homing beacon, went off soon after the patrol was ambushed, defense officials said. The tracker alerted U.S. forces to his position for hours before the battery ran out, the defense officials said.
[...]
The Pentagon, which has provided few details because of the continuing investigation, said Thursday that a combination of French, Nigerien and U.S. forces had remained on the site of the ambush until Sgt. Johnson’s remains were found, saying he became “separated” from the patrol and hadn’t been left behind.
We can't question our troops' actions? This is what comes of having a retired general serving as Secretary of Defense, a position that's purposely set up to be held by a civilian.“The U.S. military does not leave its troops behind, and I would just ask that you not question the actions of the troops who were caught in the firefight,” Mr. Mattis told reporters Thursday.
You think, Lindsey?The U.S. force also relied on intelligence from a demoralized Nigerien military in communities where villagers feared that providing the government with information could lead to a death sentence from militants, a Nigerien official said.
“These four soldiers being killed and most people not knowing what they were up to is a game changer,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “I’m concerned that we’re not regularly briefed about operations.”
Of course it is. And it's also his set up for Trump to tweet this:Chief of Staff John Kelly just spoke during the White House press briefing about the entire military bereavement phone call controversy. It was volcanic. He mercilessly attacked Congresswoman Frederica Wilson, both for her comments a couple days ago and for an earlier incident (which frankly seemed like a cheap shot). Kelly took basically complete responsibility for everything President Trump had done, what he had said, how he handled the phone calls to the families of the four who died in Niger.
[...]
Kelly has walked the walk and suffered it. He rose to the highest ranks of the Marine corps and lost a son in Afghanistan. He speaks with great credibility and experience. But I must say that the fusillade he delivered turned things almost entirely upside down.
[...]
Kelly also said, in addition to his other criticisms of Rep. Wilson that he was stunned she had ‘listened in’ on a call from the President to a bereaved widow. It seems quite clear from everything we know that the family took President Trump’s call on speaker phone with Rep. Wilson there with them. My understanding is she had a personal relationship with the family. He made it sound like she was violating some trust, eavesdropping almost. That seems deeply misleading and dishonest.
TPM
And check out this part of his speech:[Congresswoman] Wilson made a very direct and damaging attack on the President. But this is a member of Congress, caring for and being with a bereaved family. Invited by them, sharing their pain. ‘Listening in’ is just an attack that turns everything on its head.
[...]
Kelly has a lot of credibility he has earned. I don’t want to question his motives simply because his description and comments seem so at odds with what I have seen over recent days. But the entirety of his comments seemed exploitative, an effort to turn people’s certainly reasonable (and I believe accurate) sense of being appalled at the President into an attack on military service and military sacrifice. [...] It’s a more emotion-packed version of Trump’s effort to turn the anthem/police brutality protests into dishonoring military sacrifice. He ended up by refusing to take questions from reporters who couldn’t say they personally knew a Gold Star Family.
[...]
I understand that he said this in a moment of peaked emotion. But we individuals or reporters don’t earn our spurs of civic freedom by being proximate to military service. [...] President Trump is a blowhard and a phony and a liar. Kelly isn’t. He brings prestige and a lifetime of military service to every remark. But at the end of the day this seemed like putting that wrapper of dignity around the most Trumpian of traits: never apologize, always attack, let the truth defend itself.
Bullshit. The man is a child of the 50s when women were relegated to the kitchen."You know when I was a kid growing up a lot of things were sacred in our country. Women were sacred, looked upon with great honor."
Daily Caller
Right. Because his son died in Afghanistan. I'd feel sorry for Kelly for that, except that he's the guy who mostly influenced his son's choices. What else could the boy do to live up to his father, the great general?"That’s obviously not the case anymore as we see from recent cases. Life, the dignity of life, was sacred. Religion, that seems to be gone as well. [...] I just thought the selfless devotion that brings a man or a woman to die on the battlefield, I just thought that might be sacred.”
The Most Notable Loser had to ask Kelly what to say because he himself has no human empathy. If you're going to tell a man like that what to say in times like this, you need to be very careful and give him something to say that nobody could take in a bad way. Kelly missed that point. He screwed up. And he knows it.“[Trump] called four people the other day and expressed his condolences in the best way he could and he said to me, ‘What do I say?'”
Kelly went on to say that he told the president what Kelly’s friend Marine Gen. Joe Dunford told him when Kelly’s own son died. “He said, ‘Kel, he was doing exactly what he wanted to do when he was killed. He knew what he was getting into by joining… that 1 percent. He knew what the possibilities were, because we’re at war. And when he died… he was surrounded by the best men on this earth, his friends. That’s what the president tried to say to four families the other day.”
Sorry, but Kelly knows all those things about Trump. He's out in front of the cameras giving that speech because he gave Trump the words to say, and they weren't the right ones. Because Trump got in trouble for saying what Kelly told him to say. So now, just like every other lickspittle in Trump's kingdom who has had to go in front of the cameras because of something that made negative news for The Most Notable Loser, Kelly has to "fix it".Take, for example, this line: "When I was kid growing up a lot things were sacred in our country. Women were sacred, looked upon with great honor."
Kelly was presumably referring with disdain to the myriad allegations against Harvey Weinstein, a prominent movie executive and major Democratic donor. But it's hard to square Kelly's call to venerate women with Trump's lewd comments made in an "Access Hollywood" tape. "Grab them by the pussy" isn't exactly treating women as sacred.
Or Kelly's plea that Gold Star families be off-limits from the political back-and-forth ...
Remember that Trump -- against the wishes and advice of virtually everyone in the Republican Party -- attacked Khizr Khan, a father who had lost a son in Iraq, following Khan's speech, which was heavily critical of Trump, at the Democratic National Convention. "Who wrote that? Did Hillary's script writers write it?" Trump said of Khan's speech at the time. "I think I've made a lot of sacrifices. I work very, very hard."
And it was also Trump who questioned the status of Arizona Sen. John McCain -- who was tortured and held in captivity in Vietnam for years -- as a war hero. "He's not a war hero," Trump said of McCain. "He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren't captured."
CNN
And?President Donald Trump’s decision to place Chad on his revised travel ban shocked experts and former U.S. officials who warned it could have major consequences for the fight against terrorism in Africa.
Newsweek
Niger - also where four Green Berets were recently killed in an ambush.Chad warned at the time the order could affect its security commitments - which include its involvement in the U.S.-backed fight against Boko Haram.
[...]
Chad has withdrawn hundreds of troops from neighbouring Niger, where they were helping local forces fight Boko Haram Islamist militants, humanitarian sources and officials said.
[...]
The pull-out over the past two weeks could weaken a region-wide struggle against the militants who have killed tens of thousands of people, forced many more to flee and triggered a humanitarian crisis.
Reuters
Apparently, that's what the "Democrat Congresswoman" Trump tweeted about this morning said. I suppose we could ask the grieving widow. I wonder what he said to the other three.U.S. Army Sgt. La David Johnson died in a deadly ambush in Niger on Oct. 4. It took the president nearly two weeks to reach out to Johnson’s widow, and when he finally did on Tuesday, Local 10 reports Trump told Myeshia Johnson, “He knew what he signed up for … but when it happens it hurts anyway.”
The Root
After being called out at a press conference for not writing or calling families of the four dead soldiers.Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Miami Gardens) witnessed Mrs. Johnson, who is the mother of a 2-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter, leaned over the American flag draping her husband’s casket and sobbed uncontrollably.
[...]
Trump called Mrs. Johnson at 4:45 p.m., shortly before her husband’s remains arrived at Miami International Airport.
And where have we heard that before?Three U.S. special forces soldiers were killed and two more injured yesterday while on a training mission with the military of Niger. The soldiers were Green Berets reportedly caught in an ambush near the village of Tongo Tongo, not far from the Malian border.
Al-Qaida and Islamic State militants are active in that area. U.S. and French commandos have been training and in some cases fighting alongside local forces around the region.
[...]
PETER PHAM, Atlantic Council: Well, we have for several years now had varying numbers, low several hundreds, U.S. personnel in Niger doing two things primarily, one, operating a drone base in Niamey, the capital of Niger, and building another drone base in Agadez, in the center of the country, which will be able to reach surveillance into Mali and Southern Libya.
[...]
JUDY WOODRUFF: So they are there because — who are they? Who is the enemy there?
PETER PHAM: Well, there are a — a nation of various Islamic extremists, roughly in two broad coalitions, one that was announced just this past March that is calling itself the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims, GSIM, in the region, which is made up of al-Qaida-linked groups, including those linked with the ethnic Tuareg, with ethnic Fula or Fulani, as well as former members of the Al-Mourabitoun, which is Mokhtar Belmokhtar’s group, as well as members of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb’s Sahara battalion.
And on the other side, we have this group that is calling itself Islamic State Greater Sahara, which was approved last year by the so-called caliph of the Islamic State.
[...]
JUDY WOODRUFF: Is this viewed as a successful mission, and is it believed that there are going to be more U.S. troops going there?
PETER PHAM: Well, it’s been successful, as far as we have stood up local partners who are now beginning to take the fight out. That’s the success.
PBS
"Advising." Pretty close to the action, apparently.Five Nigerien soldiers also were killed in the attack, according to a Nigerien security official.
The officials cautioned that this was still an early assessment. The Green Berets were part of a team advising and assisting local forces when they were attacked.
CNN
Yeah, we don't know who we're fighting.A US official told CNN that initial indications are the Green Berets were ambushed by up to 50 fighters who are thought to be affiliated with ISIS.
That ought to pour more fuel on the fire that is the feud between Trump and Tillerson.The US halted some military exercises with Gulf countries over the ongoing diplomatic row targeting Qatar, US Central Command told AP on Friday.
RT
Huh?“We are opting out of some military exercises out of respect for the concept of inclusiveness and shared regional interests,” US Central Command told AP.
I'm guessing he didn't pass that by Trump before he said it.“We will continue to encourage all partners to work together toward the sort of common solutions that enable security and stability in the region,” Colonel John Thomas, a Central Command spokesman, added.
So, what "Gulf countries" besides Qatar did we halt "some military exercises" with? I'm thinking it's just Qatar. And the "respect for the concept of inclusiveness" means "putting pressure on Qatar to toe the line laid down by Saudi Arabia."The Qatari government has repeatedly denied all charges related to terrorism, calling the Gulf states’ move a “campaign of incitement” which is “based on lies.”
[...]
In September, Saudi Arabia suspended all communication with Doha after Qatari media allegedly misreported the contents of the phone talks on the crisis between the two states.
Qatar hosts the US Al Udeid Air Base where over 10,000 American service members are stationed. Qatari soldiers regularly hold drills with US troops. The latest drills took place in June.
