January 09, 2007

Somalia : The "Stealth" Presence

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross has a good post on the often-ignored U.S. presence in Somalia:

U.S. ground forces have been active in Somalia from the start, a senior military intelligence officer confirmed. “In fact,” he said, “they were part of the first group in.”

These ground forces include CIA paramilitary officers who are based out of Galkayo, in Somalia’s semiautonomous region of Puntland; Special Operations forces; and Marine units operating out of Camp Lemonier in Djibouti....

...A senior military intelligence source says that some of the gunships earlier described as Ethiopian were in fact U.S. aircraft. This has been confirmed by Dahir Jibreel, the transitional government's permanent secretary in charge of international cooperation, who said that U.S. planes and helicopters with their markings obscured have been striking targets since December 25.

Payback's a bitch, ain't it?

H/t : James Joyner.

UPDATE by Rusty: Have I not been saying for months that al Qaeda is in Somalia? And haven't I also been saying that the U.S. has a presence there as well? Yeah, I don't have a perfect track record, but I'll take the self-congratulations when I can get them.

I love A.J. Strata's headline for this: Bush Finishes Clinton’s Unfinished Job

Posted by: Ragnar at 10:54 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 202 words, total size 2 kb.

1 .
absurd thought -
God of the Universe says
don't fight wars to win...
.

Posted by: Hard To Swallow at January 09, 2007 01:58 PM (zH7OF)

2 Wasn't it quite a while back that Osama, in one of his little made for TV interviews, stated that AQ had a presence in Somalia in 1992?

Posted by: Improbulus Maximus at January 10, 2007 02:02 PM (6zYAC)

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