[lbo-talk] U.S. Strike in Somalia: the failure update

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On 1/17/07, Dwayne Monroe <idoru345 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Financial Times
> Somalia strike 'missed al-Qaeda targets'
> By Andrew England in Cairo
>
> Published: January 11 2007 18:40 | Last updated:
> January 11 2007 18:40
>
> The controversial US air strike in southern Somalia
> missed all three top al-Qaeda members Washington
> alleges are hiding out in the country, a senior US
> official said on Thursday.
>
> The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity,
> said eight to 10 "al-Qaeda affiliated terrorists" were
> killed in Monday's attack, but gave no details.
>
> On Tuesday the Pentagon confirmed that an AC130
> aircraft was used to target "the principal al-Qaeda
> leadership in the region". The attack marked the first
> overt US military intervention in the Horn of Africa
> nation since its doomed invasion in the 1990s.
>
> The strike was criticised by the European Commission,
> as well as the Arab League which claimed it had killed
> "many innocent victims" and demanded that Washington
> refrain from further attacks. There were no accurate
> casualty figures.
>
> [...]
>
>
> link -
>
>
> <http://www.ft.com/cms/s/e629d56a-a18b-11db-8bc1-0000779e2340.html>
>
> Missed all three you say?  Imagine that.
>
> Funny how this sort of thing always manages to slip,
> like a rat into a crawl space, right on through the
> conveniently placed cracks in the US' info-structure.

Washington has ceased to exhibit any concern about al Qaeda aside from
occasional resurrections of it solely for propaganda purposes as in
the case of the strike against Somalia.  If anything, what al Qaeda is
said to be doing in Iraq -- bombing Shi'i mosques and civilians above
all, beginning with the bombing of Samarra, a key turning point in the
Iraq War -- is very useful for Washington, for it helps stoke Shi'i
sectarianism in turn and prevents any formation of a national
liberation front that includes both Shi'is and Sunnis.
-- 
Yoshie
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