Niger another nameless war

[Rory]

Your attributing Obama as being responsible for crimes against humanity, committed before his parents were born, is irrelevant to the discussion at hand

[seemslikeadream]

Thanks, Obama

[Rory]

Thanks, Obama

Finally, you get it.

[seemslikeadream]

your words not mine

now you get it

Finally, you get it

now if you could only remember what year it is

thanks for doing what you do best derailing is your strong point after 2 years of this it is beginning to show a pattern and I am keeping track of your disruptions ..it is quite a long list

you could take to the quote thread and derail that one too...someone has got a head start on you though...but of course it is not my thread so I imagine you are not interested in playing these games with anybody else

This is the title of this OP back to the subject of the thread and what year it is

Niger another nameless war

Report: Deadly U.S. Niger Operation Was Not Approved by Senior Officials

Report: U.S. Niger Mission Was Not OKed by Senior Officials

JOE SKIPPER/REUTERS

A botched U.S. military operation in Niger last fall that left four soldiers dead was reportedly not approved by senior military officials, according to preliminary findings cited by The New York Times on Monday. A report from a Defense Department investigation into the Oct. 4 operation is said to reveal the raid was not approved by top officers, but instead ordered by a junior officer on the ground—the latest finding to raise red flags about the ill-fated mission. Four U.S. soldiers—Staff Sgt. Bryan Black, 35; Staff Sgt. Jeremiah Johnson, 39; Sgt. La David Johnson, 25; and Staff Sgt. Dustin Wright, 29—were killed after being ambushed by militants. Senior military officials were reportedly only aware of the men embarking on a daylong reconnaissance mission, but at some point a junior officer gave the unit an order to target an ISIS-linked militant. The leader of the unit had initially objected, citing insufficient intelligence and equipment, but he ultimately obeyed the orders, according to the report.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/report-de ... -officials

[seemslikeadream]

Soldier in disastrous U.S. mission in Niger had warned of gaps in readiness, defense officials say

WASHINGTON — The leader of an ill-fated team of U.S. soldiers in Niger last fall warned before the mission that his troops did not have the equipment or intelligence necessary to carry out a kill-or-capture raid against a local militant, according to preliminary findings of a continuing Defense Department investigation.

In a departure from normal lines of authority, the report concludes, the Oct. 4 mission was not approved by senior military officials up the chain of command in West Africa and Germany. Instead, it was ordered by a junior officer, according to two Defense Department officials. Four U.S. soldiers and five Nigeriens were killed when the unit was ambushed.

The twoofficials said Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are troubled that low-level officers are being blamed for the botched mission instead of senior commanders who should be aware when U.S. troops are undertaking a high-risk raid.

The mission began as a routine patrol before Operational Detachment-Alpha Team 3212 was redirected to the operation against the militant, Doundoun Cheffou, who has been linked to the Islamic State.

The orders to the unit normally would have been issued by senior military officers up the chain of command — from Niger to Chad to Stuttgart, Germany, where U.S. Africa Command is based. If they were issued by a junior officer — the same rank as the leader of Team 3212 — it would signal a systematic breakdown in a mission that has ignited widespread criticism of the United States' shadow war in Niger.

The two Defense Department officials, both of whom have knowledge of the preliminary findings, spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation has not yet been released. One official cautioned that the findings could change as Mattis and Dunford review them.

"This is not consistent with the approval for this type of re-mission," said Brig. Gen. Donald C. Bolduc, who retired shortly after handing over command of Special Operations forces in Africa in June.

"Captains do not have this authority," said Bolduc, referring to the rank of the junior officers. "Plus, if the ground commander pushes back on the mission, this should be a red flag for everyone in the chain of command."

A third Defense Department official said the leader of Team 3212, Capt. Michael Perozeni, had filed a "concept of operations" document — or Conop — that showed he planned only a daylong trip to meet with tribal elders when he and his soldiers left their base in Ouallam, Niger, on Oct. 3.

Instead, the team was rerouted miles away, toward the Mali border. Its repeatedly changing overnight mission targeted Cheffou, a former cattle herder believed to be involved in the kidnapping of an American in Mali.

The preliminary findings, according to the first two Defense Department officials, imply that senior officers up the chain of command believed Team 3212 was embarking only on the daylong reconnaissance mission, as Perozeni outlined in his Conop document. That trip, of 11 Americans and some 30 Nigerien soldiers, described a "civil reconnaissance" mission meant for "key-leader engagement meetings."

Before he left Ouallam, those officials said, Perozeni received the order to join the kill-or-capture mission against Cheffou, to be led by a separate assault force flying out of the town of Arlit. The order came from another junior officer, who was filling in for a regional commander on paternity leave.

Perozeni pushed back against the change of mission, citing concerns over insufficient intelligence and equipment available to his team on the high-risk raid. But he did not resist orders to back up the separate assault force, the officials said.

As it turned out, that mission was later scrapped because of bad weather. Team 3212 was still on its reconnaissance mission, near the town of Tiloa, when U.S. intelligence officials concluded that Cheffou and a handful of fighters had left their desert encampment near the border with Mali. The team was ordered to press on to that location, hoping to collect any information left behind that might offer clues about Cheffou's hideouts and network.

But the preliminary investigation indicates that senior officers at the Africa Command headquarters and its Special Operations component in Stuttgart were not informed of the change of plans. Nor were senior leaders at a Special Operations regional command in Chad, according to the findings.

However, according to the third Defense Department official, a lieutenant colonel in Chad had approved both the helicopter raid based from Arlit, which was scrapped, and Team 3212's original reconnaissance mission, which had taken it just 15 miles from the ambush site outside the village of Tongo Tongo.

Additionally, that official said, Col. Bradley Moses, the head of 3rd Special Forces Group in Germany, was informed of the two missions. The official was not authorized to discuss the missions or the investigation publicly.

Current and former military officials said they found it highly surprising that the captain who was filling in for the regional commander in Niger — Maj. Alan Van Saun — would have been empowered to redirect Team 3212 without higher approval. They also said it would be extraordinary that senior officers and their staffs, in Chad or in Germany, would not have been aware of or involved in that decision.

Had it changed missions, the team would have been required to send in new routes — in part to be protected with medical evacuation support or other assistance if needed. Through a communications channel that was tethered to commanders at a base in Niamey, Niger's capital, the team's position would have been sent by either a satellite radio or phone and typed into a chat room monitored by the chain of command stretching from Niger to Germany. The team's GPS tracker would also be monitored in Germany.

In short, the mission change should have been duly reported — and noted — by military officials from West Africa to Stuttgart.

Team 3212 came under fire on Oct. 4, as the soldiers headed back to Ouallam from Cheffou's encampment. After stopping in Tongo Tongo for water, the U.S. and Nigerien forces were ambushed and overpowered by militants who officials believe were linked to the Islamic State.

Perozeni and Sgt. 1st Class Brent Bartels, the radio operator for Team 3212, were shot and wounded early in the Oct. 4 ambush. Four Americans — Staff Sgt. Bryan C. Black, Staff Sgt. Dustin M. Wright, Staff Sgt. Jeremiah W. Johnson and Sgt. La David Johnson — were killed.

Initially, Pentagon officials said the results of the lengthy inquiry would be released in January to Congress, the American public and the families of the slain soldiers.

Speaking last week with reporters traveling with him to the Middle East and Afghanistan, Mattis said he expected aides to provide him with answers to several of his questions by no later than Monday. The secretary said he was also expecting Dunford's advice on the report soon.

In December, two months after the ambush, a separate team of Green Berets operating in a different part of Niger killed 11 Islamic State militants in a firefight. That battle was reported last week, by The New York Times, as one of at least 10 other previously undisclosed attacks on U.S. troops in West Africa between 2015 and 2017.

Together, they indicate that the deadly October ambush was not an isolated episode in a nation where the United States is building a major drone base. No U.S. or Nigerien forces were harmed in the December gunbattle.

The U.S. military did not disclose the December firefight or the others until pressed by The Times. "We don't want to give a report card to our adversaries," said Dana W. White, the Pentagon press secretary.
https://www.adn.com/nation-world/2018/0 ... cials-say/

[seemslikeadream]

Pentagon Cites Multiple Missteps That Led To Ambush Of U.S. Troops In Niger

Greg Myre
April 25, 201811:15 PM ET

A U.S. Army team transfers the remains of Staff Sgt. Dustin Wright, 29, of Lyons, Ga., at Dover Air Force Base, Del., on Oct. 5, 2017. Wright was one of four U.S. troops killed in an ambush in Niger.

Staff Sgt. Aaron J. Jenne/U.S. Air Force via AP
A Pentagon report has found that Islamist extremists ambushed and killed four U.S. troops in Niger last October after a series of missteps left the Americans exposed and vulnerable in a remote corner of the African nation.

The Pentagon has sent the classified report to Congress and military officers have started to brief the families of the soldiers who were killed. The report has not been released publicly, but an official who has seen it described it to NPR Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman.

The mission began on Oct. 3, when 12 Americans, led by Green Berets, joined with a larger force of Nigerien troops on a routine patrol in the southwest part of the country, near the border with Mali.

The Americans have been in Niger since 2013 to train, advise and assist the Nigerien military in its battle with extremists linked to the Islamic State. The Americans are not supposed to take part in combat unless they come under fire.

On the mission, the Americans and the Nigerien forces were meeting with village leaders.

The troops spent the night, and instead of returning to their base the next day, they were given a new mission. They were called to look for intelligence in a place where a militant leader had apparently fled.

According to the official, who has seen the report, a lower-level officer signed off on this new mission, and higher-level officers were not kept abreast of it or were not aware of the change in plans.

The U.S. team was not anticipating any contact with the militants, and didn't have proper planning, training or heavy firepower.

Ambushed by 50 extremists

But the American and Nigerien forces ran into an ambush and were overwhelmed by some 50 fighters in a two-hour shootout in the village of Tongo Tongo.

The four Americans killed were Staff Sgt. Bryan Black, Staff Sgt. Dustin Wright, Staff Sgt. Jeremiah Johnson and Sgt. La David Johnson. Two more Americans were wounded, and five Nigerien soldiers were killed.

The report says the soldiers fought bravely. There was helmet-camera video that showed some of the soldiers pulling wounded comrades to safety behind an SUV.

The report does not cast blame or call for punishment. But it does say there were failures at multiple levels, and calls for them to be addressed by the Army and the Special Operations Command.

President Barack Obama sent the U.S. troops to Niger five years ago, and around 800 are believed to be in the country. The Americans are building a base for drones, but do not have a large airfield for manned aircraft that could mount a rescue mission.

Niger and other African countries want U.S. training and expertise to deal with security threats, but they do not want a large, visible American presence.

Until the American deaths in Niger, the U.S. military presence there received little attention.

The New York Times reported that on Dec. 6, two months after the October ambush, another group of Green Berets and Nigerien forces killed 11 militants in a shootout. The U.S. military did not announce the fighting at the time. But the Times reported it on March 14, calling it one of 10 previously undisclosed clashes in West Africa since 2015.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way ... s-in-niger

Lawmakers planning hearings over deadly Niger attack

Two House committees are planning hearings in upcoming months to investigate the deadly ambush of U.S. soldiers in Niger, CNN reports.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the House Armed Services Committee are both planning sessions to investigate whether the mission that left four U.S. service members dead was properly planned and supported.

Congressional sources told CNN that the ambush raises questions as to whether U.S. soldiers are operating in areas without sufficient air support or the capability to evacuate dead or wounded troops.

The October 2017 attack in a remote area of Niger by forces aligned with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) resulted in four U.S. service members' deaths. A 12-member U.S. force was overwhelmed by ISIS fighters despite U.S. intelligence assessing a low possibility of enemies in the area.

A spokesperson for the House Armed Services Committee declined to comment on the possibility of hearings. Press aides for the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

President Trump became embroiled in controversy after the Niger attack when a Florida lawmaker accused the president of being insensitive during a call with the widow of Army Sgt. La David Johnson, who died in the ambush.

During a call with Myeshia Johnson, Trump reportedly told her that her husband “knew what he signed up for ... but when it happens it hurts anyway.”

“She has just lost her husband, she was just told that he cannot have an open casket funeral which gives her all kinds of nightmares about what his body must look, what his face must look, and this is what the president of the United States says to her,” Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.) told CNN.
http://thehill.com/policy/defense/38487 ... ger-attack

In total there are 101 users online :: 1 registered, 1 hidden and 99 guests (based on users active over the past 5 minutes)

[seemslikeadream]

emptywheel Retweeted
Joe Gould
Joe Gould
@reporterjoe
NEW Exiting the classified Niger brief on Capitol Hill, @timkaine called it “explosive” and that DoD was “hiding” its activities. Questions whether NDAA-authorized “train-and-equip” mission was “a fig leaf.” Not the first lawmaker to seem visibly moved.

CNN Politics

After attending a classified briefing on the ambush in Niger that killed four US soldiers, Sen. Kaine says he believes they "were engaged in a mission that they were not authorized by law to participate in and that they were not trained to participate in"

[seemslikeadream]

Pentagon Report: Multiple Failures Led To Deaths Of 4 Troops In Niger

Greg Myre
May 10, 201812:10 PM ET

A carry team of soldiers from the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment carries the transfer case during a casualty return for Staff Sgt. Dustin M. Wright, of Lyons, Ga., at Dover Air Force Base, Del., Oct. 5, 2017. U.S. and Niger forces were ambushed on Oct. 4 and Wright and three other American soldiers were killed.

Pfc. Lane Hiser/U.S. Army via AP
The Pentagon said Thursday that an investigation into the deaths of four American soldiers in Niger last year found "individual, organizational and institutional failures." But it said no sole reason was responsible for the tragedy.

The four Americans were part of a U.S. contingent that's been assisting Niger's military since 2013 in a battle against extremists linked to the Islamic State. A dozen Americans, along with members of Niger's military, were ambushed by extremists on Oct. 4 of last year outside the remote southwestern village of Tongo Tongo.

The Americans left their base a day earlier, Oct. 3, on a routine mission to check in with village elders. But then the mission changed and became more dangers as the Americans were directed to a site recently vacated by an extremist leader and his fighters.

However, the Americans "did not conduct pre-mission rehearsals or battle drills with their [Nigerien] partner force," the report said.

In addition, "this mission was not approved at the proper level of command," the Pentagon report said, adding that the change needed authorization at a U.S. battalion-level command, which is based in neighboring Chad.


Members of the 3rd Special Forces Group, 2nd Battalion, salute the casket of U.S. Army Sgt. La David Johnson at his burial service in Hollywood, Fla., on Oct. 21. Johnson and three other U.S. soldiers were killed in an ambush in Niger on Oct. 4.

Gaston De Cardenas/AFP/Getty Images
After spending the night in the field, the U.S. forces began returning to their base on Oct. 4. They stopped in Tongo Tongo to get water and meet with village leaders. Shortly after the drove off in several military vehicles, the Americans and their Nigerien partners were ambushed by a much larger force.

"The American and Nigerien forces fought courageously despite being significantly outnumbered by the enemy," the report said.

The report cites multiple failures that include "a lack of attention to detail" in planning the mission and "inadequate notification" of higher levels of command. This contributed to a "general lack of situational awareness and command oversight at every echelon."

French Mirage jets showed up as the ambush was coming to an end, made several low passes and scattered the extremists, but did not fire. The report says that's because the pilots could not distinguish between friend and foe.

The four Americans killed were Staff Sgt. Bryan Black, Staff Sgt. Dustin Wright — both Green Berets — and Staff Sgt. Jeremiah Johnson and Sgt. La David Johnson. Two Americans were also wounded and five Nigerien troops were killed.

NPR Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman spoke with a retired U.S. officer with experience in Africa. He said the American team should have planned better, should have had heavier firepower, and needed to be in touch with a medevac helicopter and a quick reaction force in case something went wrong.

The U.S. forces in Niger are there to assist the national army, but are not supposed to be directly involved in combat. However, missions can and do take them into dangerous areas where fighting breaks out.

The U.S. has some 20 military missions in Africa, mostly in the northern half of the continent. The one in Niger is one of the largest, with roughly 800 U.S. troops based there.
https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/ ... s-in-niger

Senators riled after closed-door briefing on Niger investigation
BY REBECCA KHEEL - 05/08/18 01:52 PM EDT 265

Senators riled after closed-door briefing on Niger investigation
© Getty Images
Senators emerged from a closed-door briefing Tuesday on the investigation into the ambush in Niger that killed four U.S. soldiers questioning the broader mission there, including whether the Pentagon has concealed from Congress the true nature of its operations in Africa.

“That was a very explosive briefing,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) told reporters. “I have deep questions on whether the military is following instructions and limitations that Congress has laid down about the mission of these troops in Africa, and I’ve had those questions, and I think this hearing raised a lot more in a pretty explosive way.”


Calling the idea that the troops were on a train-and-equip mission a “fig leaf,” Kaine added that the briefing “raises questions about why people are hiding from us what they’re doing.”

Asked directly if he thinks the military was hiding from Congress what it was doing, Kaine said simply, “Yeah.”

The comments came after the Senate Armed Services Committee received a briefing from Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, commander of U.S. Africa Command; Maj. Gen. Roger Cloutier, who led the investigation into the ambush; Robert Karem, assistant secretary of Defense for international security affairs; and Owen West, assistant secretary of Defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict.

In January, a team of about a dozen U.S. soldiers was ambushed near the Nigerien village of Tongo Tongo by a local affiliate of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

The United States has about 800 troops in Niger, with about 6,000 across Africa.

Questions have swirled since the attack about what their mission was, whether they had the proper authorities to carry out that mission and whether they were given the proper resources to protect themselves.

Africa Command (Africom) wrapped up its investigation in March, and Defense Secretary James Mattis gave his approval last month.

The families of the soldiers killed have been briefed, and now Congress is getting briefings. The Pentagon has said it will brief the press after Congress.

Still, details of the investigation have leaked, including that the mission was intended to kill or capture the leader of the ISIS affiliate.

Senators on Tuesday would not discuss details specific to the Niger ambush, though one appeared to confirm it was a kill-or-capture mission.

“If we’re putting our highest value trained soldiers on capture and kill missions, they should be individuals who threaten the country,” Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) said.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said the briefing showed “clearly some things, in terms of their concept of operation, they made mistakes.”

Sullivan said the briefing left him questioning whether the U.S. presence in Africa needs to be drawn down, especially given the administration’s stated National Defense Strategy of moving from counterterrorism to so-called great power competition.

“Do we need to look at the appropriate lay down of those forces globally,” he said. “I mean, how many drones do we have in Africa versus the Korean peninsula? How many intel? So there’s a big question here, in my view. To me, I think this should be an opportunity to look at broader strategic issues, not just the tactical operational aspects of what happened, how we lost soldiers.”

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), though, came away from the briefing with the opposite takeaway. Inhofe previously asked the Army to send a special brigade of about 500 soldiers to Africa and said Tuesday the briefing, particularly a 21-minute video that was shown, reinforced his position on the need for that.

“This is a tragedy, and this may end up achieving that,” he said. “It shows, you can surmise, that we need to have more activity there.”

Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) indicated the briefing raised questions about whether Congress is giving Africa Command enough assets.

“I think it calls into question the strategy with Africom, in terms of not having — we are authorizing, but we are not necessarily setting up and providing them a specific series of assets, where they have to borrow the assets,” he said.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) said the briefing “raises a lot of questions about future operations.” Asked further if the military is changing anything as a result, Shaheen replied, “Well, they say they are.”
http://thehill.com/policy/defense/38672 ... estigation

[seemslikeadream]

Missing for 48 hours: Pentagon details Army sergeant’s final moments in Niger


Myeshia Johnson kisses the casket of her husband, Army Sgt. La David Johnson, during his burial service on Oct. 21, 2017, in Hollywood, Fla. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
No figure in the ambush in Niger has commanded more attention than U.S. Army Sgt. La David T. Johnson, who fell off the military’s radar for nearly two days during a hectic search and whose widow accused President Trump of stumbling over her late husband’s name during a condolence call.

How the 25-year-old trained Army mechanic from Florida went from being deemed “missing” by the U.S. military to “killed in action” became a central question in the months after the incident, which also killed three other U.S. soldiers and marked the single deadliest military operation for U.S. forces in Africa since the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu.

An official version of events released Thursday by the Pentagon described a harrowing scene in which Johnson and two of his partner soldiers from Niger were attempting to get back in their vehicle to flee enemy fire, only to end up running into the brush as Islamic State fighters blocked them from escaping and pursued them to their deaths.

The 11 American soldiers in Johnson’s unit were traveling with a larger group of Nigerien partner forces when they were ambushed on the way out of a meeting with local leaders in the village of Tongo Tongo. Islamic State affiliates were known to operate in the region, but U.S. forces were unaccustomed to having direct contact with them, let alone with an organized group including about 100 combatants.

“They had never seen anything in this magnitude — numbers, mobility and training,” Gen. Thomas D. Waldhauser, commander of U.S. Africa Command, said in a briefing at the Pentagon on Thursday. “It was a total tactical surprise in how that took place.”

[Military investigation of Niger disaster finds numerous failures in planning]

In the middle of the ambush, Johnson was caught under enemy fire with three other members of his U.S. team and about 25 partner Nigeriens, as Islamic State fighters began to envelop them from the east and south, according to a summary of the Pentagon investigation of the incident.

As it became increasingly clear that the troops were overwhelmed by the enemy, the U.S. team’s commander gave an order to break contact and retreat.

By then, according to the Pentagon, Johnson had emptied a vehicle-mounted M240 machine gun on the Islamic State fighters and switched to an M2010 sniper rifle while taking cover at the rear of his vehicle. He acknowledged the order before attempting to climb into the driver’s seat and get away with two Nigerien partner soldiers.

But as the other vehicles in the convoy took off, the three soldiers found themselves pinned down. They “were driven back to their prone positions by accurate and heavy enemy fire,” the Pentagon report said. “Unable to reach the vehicle and with enemy forces rapidly closing on their position, they were forced to evade on foot.”

In other words, they set off running. Islamic State fighters were in pursuit.

The first Nigerien soldier ran west for about 460 meters before he was gunned down by the combatants. The second Nigerien soldier made it another 110 meters but was also picked off.

Johnson continued running, eventually finding cover under what the U.S. military described as a thorny tree three-fifths of a mile from the vehicle.

But Johnson was outnumbered. First, the enemy fighters fired on him with a vehicle-mounted heavy machine gun. Then, they zeroed in on the young sergeant with smaller firearms, killing him alone in the West African brush some 5,300 miles from his Florida home.

On Thursday, the Pentagon sought to dispel earlier accounts in the media, including The Washington Post, offered by Nigerien villagers suggesting that Johnson had been captured alive or found with his hands tied.

“The enemy did not capture SGT L. Johnson alive,” the report said. His “hands were not bound and he was not executed but was killed in action while actively engaging the enemy.”

A U.S. military official with knowledge of the investigation said that investigators based the conclusion that Johnson was not bound or executed on several pieces of evidence, including an examination of his remains. No ligature marks were found on his wrists or hands, and they were not bound when his remains were recovered by U.S. troops, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the investigation.

The official said Johnson was shot as many as 20 times, including at least once in the head. The military based its conclusion that he was not executed on a lack of powder burns to the head, which would have indicated that he was shot with a gun to his skull.

But the official acknowledged that Johnson was indeed killed at a relatively close range as Islamic State fighters closed in on him. Video released by the militants appears to show them shooting at least one other U.S. soldier in the head at close range after he had been hit by gunfire, though it wasn’t clear which shots were fatal. The video was captured on a helmet camera of one of the Americans killed.

Senior U.S. military officials did not provide that level of specificity Thursday during a news conference, but Maj. Gen. Roger L. Cloutier Jr., the senior investigating officer, said Johnson’s body was “treated like all the other remains, both U.S. and Nigerien.”

“His serviceable equipment was stripped and taken from him,” Cloutier said. “But he was never in enemy hands alive. They did have access to his remains and took his equipment.”

The U.S. military said its investigators interviewed 143 witnesses, including survivors of the attack, in researching the report. It cautioned that the depiction of Johnson’s final moments wasn’t based on witness accounts but rather “solely on evidence recovered during the course of the investigation.”

A national scandal erupted after Johnson’s widow, Myeshia, expressed her concerns about her phone call with Trump. But what also made Johnson’s case so exceptional was the time it took the U.S. military to locate his body after the attack.

A Nigerien quick-reaction force identified the remains of the three other American troops who died in the ambush the same day and immediately transferred them to American custody. The militants had attempted to take their remains away in vehicles, but abandoned the effort when French fighter jets roared overhead in a show of force, according to U.S. military officials.

[Here are the other U.S. soldiers killed in Niger]

Nigerien and American forces continued to search for Johnson through the night of the attack until nearly 6 a.m. the following morning, but they couldn’t find him and returned to their base.

Rumors started circulating that the Islamic State fighters might have taken someone hostage north of the village. The U.S. military was still looking for signs that Johnson was alive or possibly captured.

“There was some reporting that indicated there could be a soldier held hostage somewhere north of Tongo Tongo,” Cloutier said. “Of course, that report was taken seriously and assets began looking there for signs of life or anything like that. It turned out to be an errant report. But the search for Sergeant La David Johnson never stopped.”

According to the Pentagon, Johnson was found about 48 hours later. Cloutier said the Army sergeant had run a long way — some 960 meters — from where he was last seen by his fellow soldiers, complicating the efforts to determine the whereabouts of his remains.

After the attack, Tongo Tongo’s chief and another man from the village provided accounts of the aftermath of the ambush to The Washington Post. They said they found Johnson’s body with his hands tied behind his back. The U.S. military disputed that at the time, saying there was no evidence his hands were tied.

Reached by phone late Thursday, the two villagers — Mounkaila Alassane and Adamou Boubacar — stood by their story but declined to say more.

The military reemphasized its account on Thursday, saying his body wasn’t treated any differently from the other soldiers killed in the attack.

Aspects of what happened to Johnson’s remains are still unclear. The Pentagon did not address Thursday why, more than a month after he was killed, it announced last November that more human remains of Johnson had been found separately.

Rep. Frederica S. Wilson (D.-Fla.), who is close with Johnson’s family, said in an interview Wednesday that they were told he was shot 16 times, including several times in the back, probably while he was fleeing. When Army officials first notified the Johnson family about the attack in October, they told them that he might be held captive, she said.

Efforts to reach Johnson’s family in recent days have been unsuccessful.

The Pentagon removed all references to Johnson’s recovery in a video recreation it released to the media Thursday. When the unclassified video was shown to Congress earlier, it was about 21 minutes long. But it was cut by about half before publication Thursday, defense officials acknowledged under questioning. As presented, it ends with Johnson’s death, rather than his recovery.

Waldhauser said the longer video “goes into a lot of specific activities right there on the ground.”

As for why the Pentagon withheld it, Waldhauser said it might have been “too much information” for the briefing Thursday, leaving less time for questions.

The video, however, was not shown during the news conference at all. It was shown before it, in a separate setting.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/na ... 85c385111a

[seemslikeadream]

“Not a laughing matter”: In Omarosa tape, Trump jokes while discussing terrorists killing US troops
White House staff can be heard laughing as Trump jokes that “I don’t think I’d want to be a terrorist right now”


ERIC W. DOLAN

SEPTEMBER 10, 2018 11:00PM (UTC)

Former White House aide Omarosa Manigault-Newman shared a new recording with MSNBC on Monday, which features President Donald Trump discussing the attacks on U.S. troops in Niger.

In the audio recording, Trump says terrorists had moved to Africa because he had “forced them out” of the Middle East. White House staff can be heard laughing as Trump jokes that “I don’t think I’d want to be a terrorist right now” despite the deaths of U.S. service members.

“They were laughing because he’s like, making light of the situation,” Manigault-Newman told MSNBC. “He’s saying, I wouldn’t want to be a terrorist and then you hear the laughter and he continues on to talk about ‘I don’t want to be in that business’ — but it is not a laughing matter. We lost four American soldiers and four of our allies.”

The troops were killed in ambush on a joint patrol in southwest Niger in October 2017. Trump faced criticism last year after telling the widow of one of the fallen soldiers that “he knew what he signed up for.”

Manigault-Newman said the recording was from shortly after the attack. She accused Trump of giving “misinformation” to his communications team.
https://www.salon.com/2018/09/10/new-om ... r_partner/