Donald Trump's White House says 5-year-old boy was 'handcuffed' because he was a 'security threat' https://t.co/bbVEFQ5GvK
— The Independent (@Independent) January 31, 2017
“Look, it’s not like we bombed the little terrorist. That’s strictly a foreign-soil tactic… for now.”
Trump's first strike in Yemen: women, children and 2 Americans died, including a Navy SEAL and an 8-year-old girl https://t.co/PO4TEW7yWz
— Liam Stack (@liamstack) January 31, 2017
This story hasn’t (yet) gotten much attention from the center-left media / blogs that I read… not least, I suspect, because the immediate ‘rebuttal’ from the usual Trump-supporting sources has been But President Obama! Even back in the dead past, some of us thought But President Obama! was a less-than-irreproachable defense, because Obama wouldn’t be President forever, and we couldn’t blithely assume his successors would be as wise and well-informed…
The NYTimes, today — “Questions Cloud U.S. Raid on Qaeda Branch in Yemen“:
… As it turned out, almost everything that could go wrong did. And on Wednesday, Mr. Trump flew to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to be present as the body of the American commando killed in the raid was returned home, the first military death on the new commander in chief’s watch.
The death of Chief Petty Officer William Owens came after a chain of mishaps and misjudgments that plunged the elite commandos into a ferocious 50-minute firefight that also left three others wounded and a $75 million aircraft deliberately destroyed. There are allegations — which the Pentagon acknowledged on Wednesday night are most likely correct — that the mission also killed several civilians, including some children. The dead include, by the account of Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen, the 8-year-old daughter of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born Qaeda leader who was killed in a targeted drone strike in 2011…
In this case, the assault force of several dozen commandos, which also included elite soldiers from the United Arab Emirates, was jinxed from the start. Qaeda fighters were somehow tipped off to the stealthy advance toward the village — perhaps by the whine of American drones that local tribal leaders said were flying lower and louder than usual.
With the crucial element of surprise lost, the Americans and Emiratis found themselves in a gun battle with Qaeda fighters who took up positions in other houses, a clinic, a school and a mosque, often using women and children as cover, American military officials said in interviews this week.
The commandos were taken aback when some of the women grabbed weapons and started firing, multiplying the militant firepower beyond what they had expected. The Americans called in airstrikes from helicopter gunships and fighter aircraft that helped kill some 14 Qaeda fighters, but not before an MV-22 Osprey aircraft involved in the operation experienced a “hard landing,” injuring three more American personnel on board. The Osprey, which the Marine Corps said cost $75 million, was badly damaged and had to be destroyed by an airstrike.
With the crucial element of surprise lost, the Americans and Emiratis found themselves in a gun battle with Qaeda fighters who took up positions in other houses, a clinic, a school and a mosque, often using women and children as cover, American military officials said in interviews this week.
The commandos were taken aback when some of the women grabbed weapons and started firing, multiplying the militant firepower beyond what they had expected. The Americans called in airstrikes from helicopter gunships and fighter aircraft that helped kill some 14 Qaeda fighters, but not before an MV-22 Osprey aircraft involved in the operation experienced a “hard landing,” injuring three more American personnel on board. The Osprey, which the Marine Corps said cost $75 million, was badly damaged and had to be destroyed by an airstrike.
The raid, some details of which were first reported by The Washington Post, also destroyed much of the village of Yakla, and left senior Yemeni government officials seething. Yemen’s foreign minister, Abdul Malik Al Mekhlafi, condemned the raid on Monday in a post on his official Twitter account as “extrajudicial killings.”…
After initially denying there were any civilian casualties, Pentagon officials backtracked somewhat on Sunday after reports from the Yemeni authorities begin trickling in and grisly photographs of bloody children purportedly killed in the attack appeared on social media sites affiliated with Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen…
On a “postive” note, the President-Asterisk’s visit to Dover Air Base may have been the least globally embarrassing / potentially disastrous thing he did Wednesday… at least until he decides to tell us all about it…
TenguPhule
You’ve got double-post on the NYT story.
And yeah, it sucks. Morale must be in the toilet when their new boss doesn’t give a shit about little things like the Geneva conventions.
? Martin
Reuters piece is a bit more damning:
I think we know what the right would be screaming right now had this happened under Clinton…
amk
First they came for the
jewschildren.The horrible thing is that wh minion doubling down on it.
Emerald
I’m not surprised that Reuters was harder on Twitler. Yesterday they issued a statement saying that they are going to cover this administration essentially the way they cover authoritarian regimes elsewhere in the world. They have plenty of experience doing that. They emphasized that diluting their coverage just to get access within the government wouldn’t work, that they had plenty of sources and didn’t need to suck up to the authoritarians.
So I would trust Reuters before any of our domestic media, and hope they will become at least as influential as the NYT.
Damien
I’m convinced real bad shit is coming. I’ve started firearms training and actual PT, because my family already saw this movie in the original German, and we’re a few dozen members shy now.
Darkrose
@? Martin: The BENGHAZI!!! crowd is oddly silent…
Morzer
@Darkrose:
Well, that’s because they were silenced like Vince Foster by YOUKNOWWHO….
Darkrose
There was a wee problem with the visit to Dover, aside from the weirdness of Ivanka going with him. Spicer apparently mentioned the full name of the dead SEAL’s widow. No surprise from the guy who twice retweeted his Twitter password, but still, clown show.
sharl
I just ran across some chatter today from folks who have worked closely with military commands in the past, and maybe still do; maybe the kind of people who would cross paths with Adam at a meeting/conference.
See threads surrounding tweets here and here, and note that neither tweeter is a fan of the new guy.
Their basic point is that, while any POTUS ultimately owns something like this, the kind of screw-ups being cited suggest poor work by military operations folks, and this post-disaster leaking seems like just so much ass-covering. Having a new POTUS who has already proven his incompetence makes the blame-shifting even more readily accepted by the general public.
Obama had the “advantage” – if you can call it that – of having been severely burned over the Libya intervention, which apparently he had agreed to very reluctantly in the first place. After Libya descended into utter chaos, I imagine he asked a lot of hard questions whenever a military action was pitched to him, and quite rightly and properly made the military folks provide strong justifications for their recommendations. I wouldn’t be optimistic that the thin-skinned child of privilege we have now would be a quick study on something like this; these are not the kind of situations solved by yelling at them, or that involve cheating someone out of money owed, or reneging on the terms of a contract.
Emerald
I’m actually beginning to think this guy won’t last six months, if that, because of his breathtaking incompetence.
OK, the Rethugs don’t care that he wants to be a dictator. They don’t care that he intends to destroy the Constitution, the rule of law, and whatever vestiges of our democracy that still remain. The Republicans since Nixon/Reagan have no interest in such things. Plus, he’s popular with their base, he’ll sign their legislation repealing the 20th century, and that’s all that usually matters to them.
But he is so astonishingly incompetent that he’s going to start embarrassing them sometime really soon. I mean, it hasn’t been two weeks yet! No doubt McConnell and Ryan will be far more comfortable with Pence. I also imagine they’re as worried about his nuke obsession as any of us are, and they can’t control that. I’m betting they’ll take him out pretty soon. I also imagine they’ll use the 25th Amendment to do it, rather than a long impeachment process.
I mean, if it’s this bad now . . .
JordanRules
@? Martin: And Bannon is happy, toasting to himself and chaos regardless of the outcome.
amk
@sharl: Yup. US military, with all those billions and hitech weapons/gadgets/whatev, hasn’t exactly covered themselves with glory with any war since WWII.
Mothra
@TenguPhule: Per Trump, the problem is “the Geneva”!
I had always seen it as a solution
TenguPhule
@Damien: I have found that common household chemicals, mixed in the right proportions, to be very effective. And with the added benefit that they don’t stick out like guns do. And Iraq resistance against US occupation is quite an educational read, tactics and hardware wise.
TenguPhule
@? Martin: IOIYAR.
Remember, Military deaths don’t count unless a Democrat is in charge.
Fire, blood and tears. Its all going to burn.
jl
I don’t know if it’s good or bad, but everyone seems to hate Trump and hold him in contempt.. Dishing dirt is like a hobby of anyone in federal government (edit: or other governments) who has the misfortune of having to deal with him in any way.
Some horrible goofs happened under Obama. And God knows, well, everybody knows, they sure happened a hell of a lot more with Dub.
But I don’t remember the instant dishing of criticism and dirt.
Not that Trump doesn’t deserve it more than the others. He does. Might help if have to push for an effort to remove him from office asap soon.
Edit: transition team should have really got cracking on those nondisclosure forms. I guess we see why they are so important to the Trumpster. Oh well, I guess too late now.
JordanRules
Nice headline.
Malcolm Turnbull’s approach vindicated by President Donald Trump’s madness
Origuy
Some good news, Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) is withdrawing HR 621, which would have put 3.3 million acres of federal land on the auction block.
J Michael Neal
@JordanRules: Ethan Rayne sure has put on a lot of weight and changed his accent.
Debbie(aussie)
@JordanRules:
I think to a certain degree I agree with that article. I would add a caveat that the writer Mark Kenny has been known to lean a little too far to the right.
Debbie(aussie)
Good night juicers. Been an interesting day. Not to often the great Aus gets so much attention on the world stage, outside of sporting events. (Please don’t bomb us.)
Peale
@Origuy: I don’t know why. That land has been earmarked for sale since Clinton. I’m curious to find out why it wasn’t sold for these past 20 years. No buyers?
opiejeanne
@Origuy: Do we know why he’s withdrawing the bill? Did he hear from constituents or have an upwelling of decency?
hilts
I’ll bet that 5 year old boy who was handcuffed has more self-control than Donny Doofus Trump.
J Michael Neal
@Debbie(aussie): I think you need to be more worried for your safety if Trump decides to bomb Austria.
M. Bouffant
High-tech clusterfuck. How effin’ dense are the cretins in charge of the drones & the entire operation?
Aussie Sheila
@J Michael Neal:
Well one thing is for certain, tRump has just done for the US/Oz alliance what 70 years of left wing anti US agitation has hitherto failed to do.
Even Bob Carr an ALP US tragic has spat the dummy over the treatment of loyal little Oz . Can’t wait to read the press tomorrow, especially Murdoch rags.
Well done donny. One day, and Oz centrists are rushing to defend a conservative PM from a US President.
M. Bouffant
@Debbie(aussie): Not to worry: Y’all get a pass from Randy Newman.
montanareddog
This administration is so pathetically insecure that they cannot back down on anything.
TheMightyTrowel
It’s been a super surreal day to be an american in australia.
#Auspol twitter has been really fucking funny today. Mostly I’ve been entertained watching US principled centrists/liberals with a rightwards lean (James Fallows I’m looking at you) falling all over themselves to talk about how much they like Turnbull. Fallows referred to his sense of ‘nobless oblige’ (I shit you not) on twitter.
The context. Turnbull is widely hated by pretty much everyone in Australia. His party hates him because he’s perceived as caving to the right wing he said he’d stand up to whilst the right wing of his party thinks he’s not enough of a god bothering panty sniffer. The ALP (Labor – centre left) hates him because he’s still more charismatic than the current leader of the opposition (Bill Shorten, aka, wet cardboard). The Greens hate him because he’s a loathsome right wing business man corporate hack who bought his way into leadership and believes corporations should have a greater voice than people (I agree with the Greens btw). The far right hates him because he likes living in cities with ferriners and non-white people and queers.
The three best tweets i’ve seen from the aussies today:
“I met Malcolm Turnbull once. It was at the beach. He’d washed up and started to dry out. Wait no that was a jellyfish.”
“that Fallows guy is right about him being nobless.”
“How dare Trump disrespect our Prime Minister and speak to him like a chickenshit. That’s our job. #auspol”
terben
@Debbie(aussie): It seems pointless to speak about left and right from an Australian perspective to an American audience. They think that the Democrats are a centre-left party but most Australians would regard them as centre-right.
greennotGreen
@J Michael Neal: Exactly what I was thinking. Except “Band Candy” was much more entertaining and had fewer actual monsters.
Taylor
When the NYT says “Questions Cloud …”, I tune out.
That brand is dead to me.
Seth Owen
@amk: The First Gulf War was pretty glorious, despite the failure of political followthrough. But the military performed superbly.
NotMax
@Seth Owen
Reopening an old wound, but using earth moving equipment to bury people alive in the sand is neither glorious nor superb.
Hurling Dervish
You just know Trump was slavering at the thought of being able to announce “al qaeda deaths” in the first 10 days in office and any risk seemed worth it for that chance at glory.
Elmo
@J Michael Neal: At least we know now what the Initiative did with him.
Jean
The Pentagon points finger at Trump for the botched op, and two phone calls are leaked from the WH revealing Trump’s lack of control. Talk about not normal! The disloyalty two weeks into this admin is amazing. NDA’s are not doing the job for him. This can’t last much longer. The reports are too damning about his mental condition and competence.
sherparick
At the end of last week, Russia (that means Putin) sold a 19.5% stake in the Russian State Oil Company Rosneft to persons and persons unknown. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-rosneft-privatisation-insight-idUSKBN1582OH
A shell company in Singapore and another Qatar were the vehicles for the purchase. Of course Qatar is one of the countries not on the “travel ban” list.
Trump, Conway, and Bannon have all indicated sanctions on Russia are likely to be lifted soon.
That “Steele dossier” which our MSM pressed sniffed at as so much innuendo reported that Putin promised Trump an opportunity to purchase a 19% share of Rosneft in return for sanctions being lifted. As Trump says, if people are “nice” to him, he tries to be “nice” to them. http://www.businessinsider.com/carter-page-trump-russia-igor-sechin-dossier-2017-1
The value of this investment could be “Yoooge” if there is a 4th Gulf war with the U.S. and Saudi Arabia on one side and iran and Iraq on the other and the price of oil skyrockets.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Just occurred to me – Trump the Twat twitter in conversation with the Aus PM is going to be big deal internationally. Dumbshit thinks he is still running some crappy real estate company and not playing with the adults.
gratutious
How about never? Does never work on your schedule?
Sorry; just practicing for the right wing “outrage” sure to follow against the military for their initial report that there were no civilian casualties in Yemen. Why did the military say that there had been no civilians killed in this clusterfuck? I want to see no fewer than five congressional hearings into that question, culminating in an 11-hour grilling of Rex Tillerson, live on the electric teevee machine. I have tentatively slotted that for the 12th of Never.
A question that intrigues me, follows from the report that this raid had been planned for months but only carried out now. I wonder why the military held off asking for authority for the raid until after Obama had left office? Were there too many holes in the plan, holes they knew an experienced executive team would spot, but that a bunch of glory-hungry tyros would overlook in the first flush of the new administration? I truly don’t know, but the questions occur to me, some no-military-experience pacifist coastal elite. Would these questions occur to a career military man with hash marks all the way down his arm?
Ocotillo
There really are two Americas. Where I work, we were getting ready for a meeting. I never say anything about politics because everyone is a conservative Republican and I don’t want to say what is really in my head as I fear causing hard feelings and putting my job at risk.
Anyway, at the meeting they were raving, absolutely raving about how great Trump is doing. They loved the acting AG firing, they wanted some California rep thrown out of the Reserves because he supposedly said Trump must be stopped at all costs, they said he was pulling out of the Paris accords and that was good because this climate change stuff was just a way to tax us. Even if I had wanted to respond, the bull was so deep I was overwhelmed.
Not everyone thinks Trump is self destructing. He has a real cheering section out here.
PK
I had a conversation with someone at a Christmas party, where of course the talk turned to Trump (thankfully I did not meet a single Trump supporter). Someone there said “these guys are evil, but they’re stupid, and their infighting will do them in”. I’m beginning to believe him. Not that I ever thought that any of them were smart, but they’re really really stupid! So far we have:
arguments over the crowd size,
claiming that 3-5 million people voted illegally and not accepting the popular vote loss,
Muslim ban,
Quarreling with the Mexican President and threatening to send in the US Military
Fighting with the Australian PM,
A botched raid in Yemen,
Threatening UC Berkeley to cut off their funding over a right wing racist.
I don’t know if I’ve missed anything. Is this only the second week? It can’t continue like this. Something is going to have to give.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@PK:
Evil and stupid walk hand in hand. Look at Nixon – pretty bright guy himself but some real idiots working for him did him in.
D58826
@PK: TWO points
1. If DOD Mattis was in the room when Trump ap[proved the raid, why did he go along with a poorly planned operation? His reputation is going to be mud before long
2. Given what several folks have said here about the depth of Trumps support, a 25th amendment solution, no matter how well justified, would look like an elitist coup by his supporters. It will not end well.
PK
I don’t think Trump is the type who listens to Mattis or anyone else for that matter. He thinks he’s the smartest man ever. Think about it? He seems to have surrounded himself with yes men and sycophants. No sane, decent human being would choose to work with him. Is he the type of man who listens to reason. So it could be that he over ruled Mattis.
D58826
@PK: If that is the case and Mattis is the man of honor that everyone say’s he is, then he has only one option – resign
ding7777
@Peale:
Chaffetz caved to sportsmen and hunter protests. The Clinton era report just identified and ranked the lands – it did not offer them for sale.
In 1997, Congress required Secretary of Interior to rank federal lands that could be sold or exchanged to pay for the Everglades Restoration Project. The report cited 3.368 million acres in 10 states and carried the following footnotes:
Please note many lands identified appear to have conflicts which may preclude them from being considered for disposal or exchange
Conflicts include high disposal costs, critical natural or cultural resources and habitat, mineral claims and leases, and hazardous conditions
None of the lands were sold.
PK
@D58826:
I agree. And that’s how he’ll be left only with the worst of the worst type of people.
D58826
@PK: And they are the only ones he is listening to now. Good men/women will see their reputations suffer to no good effect.
TenguPhule
@D58826: Or go out in a blaze of glory in a murder-suicide that takes out Trump, Pence and as many Republicans as he can reach.
Sounds crazy, but then again, these are crazy times.
gbear
He brought it up at the prayer breakfast this morning.
After he’d prayed for Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ratings.
mds
@terben:
Really? Could you outline the policies that Bill Shorten supports which put him to the left of the current US Democratic Party? For that matter, since the Liberal / National Coalition is supposed to be center-right, could you outline how closely their agenda lines up with that of the current US Democratic Party?
(I think this characterization of the Democratic Party relative to other countries’ major parties of the left, while true in recent decades, has become less true of late.)