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Bernardo de La Paz

(60,320 posts)
4. Yakla: Trump committed his first war crime in only 9 days (decision was made on day 5)
Sun Feb 19, 2017, 09:40 PM
Feb 2017
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakla_raid

Further, Kahl stated, "Obama made no decisions on this before leaving office, believing it represented escalation of U.S. involvement in Yemen."[15] In a report for the Washington Post, multiple defense sources stated they expected the Trump Administration to more readily approve similar operations.[16]

The raid
Secretary of Defense James Mattis and General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, presented the plan over dinner at the White House, on 25 January 2017, to President Trump, his son-in-law Jared Kushner, and his political strategist Steve Bannon. President Trump approved the plan then and there.[7] Michael Flynn, National Security Advisor to President Trump, was also at the dinner, but the decision did not go through the normal National Security Council (NSC) channels, through which heads or deputy heads of all agencies with a stake in the operation would be convened.[17] US military officials stated that the assault went forth “without sufficient intelligence, ground support, or adequate backup preparations.”


In the view of retired Lt Gen Mark Hertling, "The mission was a success by all accounts."[33] New York Times journalist David Sanger, who covered the raid, said on February 2, "It’s hard to call this much of a success yet, because we don’t know what the value was of the information they were trying to exploit, which came mostly from computers and cell phones. And from everything we have heard, they haven’t had a chance to assess that yet."[34]

The International Crisis Group's senior analyst on the Arabian Peninsula, April Longley Alley, described the raid as "a good example of what not to do": "The raid ignores the local political context, to the detriment of an effective counter-terrorism strategy."[35]

Karen J. Greenberg, the director of Fordham University's Center on National Security, said that Nawar al-Awlaki's death will be used by al Qaeda propagandists: "The perception will be that it's not enough to kill al-Awlaki — that the U.S. had to kill the entire family," she said.[32][36]


U.S. citizen Nawar al-Awlaki, also known as Nora, the eight-year-old daughter of Al Qaeda preacher Anwar al-Awlaki, killed in a 2011 drone strike, was among those killed.[30] The grandfather of the girl, Nasser al-Awlaki, said she was hit by a bullet to the neck and died two hours later.


Two hours of agony.

Trump said we must kill the families. The one promise he has kept.

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