U.S. warplanes fly missions over Somalia(intelligence-gathering)

[maddezmom]

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - In a further escalation of American involvement in Somalia, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower arrived off the war-ravaged country's coast and its aircraft have begun flying intelligence-gathering missions over Somalia, the military said Tuesday.

The U.S. Central Command reassigned the aircraft carrier to Somalia last week from its mission supporting NATO-led forces in Afghanistan, said U.S. Navy spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Charlie Brown in Bahrain, where the Navy's Fifth Fleet is based.

The announcement comes a day after at least one U.S. Special Forces AC-130 gunship carried out a strike against several suspected members of al-Qaida in Somalia. Brown said the Navy had no supporting role in the attack.

The carrier joins three other U.S. warships — two guided-missile cruisers and an amphibious landing ship — already conducting anti-terror operations off the Somali coast.

more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070109/ap_on_re_af/somalia_u_s__warships

An attack by a U.S. gunship intensified an attempt to capture or kill suspected terrorists in Somalia.


WASHINGTON - Under cover of the Ethiopian move into Somalia, U.S. officials launched an intensive effort to capture or kill three key suspects in the bombings of U.S. embassies in African more than eight years ago that killed 224 people.

Monday, a U.S. Air Force Special Operations gunship struck a location in southern Somalia where the suspects were believed to be hiding, a U.S. defense official said. U.S. military and counterterrorism officials said they did not yet know whether any of the three fugitives had been killed.

''It's not clear what the outcome is at this point,'' said the counterterrorism official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the operation was classified.

U.S. officials have secretly been negotiating with Somalian clans who are believed to have sheltered the three men, hoping to obtain information about their locations. It could not be determined Monday whether the airstrike was based on information provided by the clans.

more:http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/world/16415078.htm?source=rss&channel=miamiherald_world

[rodeodance]

1. well, i suspect bush will make the terror connection to Irag and

is africa horn issue


yup,

[maddezmom]

2. Somali officials: it was a success...but don't know who was killed

spoken like a good puppet:eyes:

~snip~

At least two villages in southern Somalia were hit in Monday's US raids that Somali officials said were appropriate in the global war on terrorism and had killed many people whose identities were not immediately clear.

~snip~
Interior Minister Hussein Mohamed Aidid echoed those comments, saying the United States "has the right to defend itself and has an international obligation to support a legitimate government under threat by terrorists."

"Many people were killed and I think the terrorists were eliminated," Information Minister Ali Jama told AFP.

"Absolutely, a lot of people were killed," government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari told AFP. "So many dead people were lying in the area, we do not know who is who, but the raid was a success."

more:http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070109/wl_afp/somaliaunrestethiopia_070109104338

[DoYouEverWonder]

3. George just love killing lots of people

All this to get maybe get 3 bad guys and in the end they're not even sure they got them.

Heck of a job, Georgie, heck of a job.

How much longer before he starts bombing neighborhoods in the US because he thinks there might be an al Qaeda cell there?

[ClintonTyree]

4. Well, as long as we killed someone.........

that makes it a huge success. No matter what the "collateral damage", our "smart weapons" have done their job and pulverized scores of people into a fine red mist. Three cheers for the U.S.A. :sarcasm:

[C_U_L8R]

5. Isn't Congress supposed to approve

before we go bombing the shit out of other countries ????

[Joffan]

6. My thoughts exactly

I was thinking there might be some kind of non-war aggressive military action definition that the executive will use but thinking again they'll probably just ignore the idea altogether.

Congress should write their own definition of war which explicitly includes dropping bombs. I can't recall what Congress said before Kosovo and I don't really care, the rules should be the same.

[newyawker99]

11. Hi Joffan!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[Joffan]

7. Oh - maybe this is a recess war

So George can give himself permission.

[BayCityProgressive]

8. So now will we attack

Somalia to make everyone forget about iraq? The only reason Somalia is a failed state without a stable government is because the west is fighting over who gets the oil and the somali's don't want to give it to us.

[Nihil]

9. Errr ... two teensy weensy points on this ...

1)
> at least one U.S. Special Forces AC-130 gunship carried out a strike
> against several suspected members of al-Qaida in Somalia.

The US "Special Forces" gunship has committed an act of murder and
maiming against an unknown number of unidentified civilians who were
in a sovereign country who are not at war with America.

Hope that the names of the crew and the officers up the chain of command
are files safely in the Hague for future use in war-crimes prosecutions.


2)
> Navy crews aboard the Bunker Hill, Anzio and Ashland have been boarding
> and searching commercial ships off the Somali coast, Brown said.
> No terror suspects have been found aboard any of the ships, he said.

In the civilised world the unauthorized boarding of ships is called
"piracy". Still, it's nice to know that they haven't hauled off any
of the innocent victims to Guantanamo (yet).

Piracy, (more) war-crimes, acts of aggression ... tell me again how
Bush's America is different from a certain European country in the
late 1930s?

[saigon68]

10. They dropped a few Bombs too