Somali insurgents fire mortars at visiting U.S. congressman

[cali]

13 Apr 2009 13:17:47 GMT
Source: Reuters
MOGADISHU, April 13 (Reuters) - Somali insurgents fired mortars towards U.S. congressman Donald Payne as he left the Somali capital on a rare visit by a U.S. politician to the anarchic Horn of Africa nation, police said.

"One mortar landed at the airport when Payne's plane was due to fly and five others after he left and no one was hurt," Abukar Hassan, a police officer at Mogadishu airport, told Reuters. (Reporting by Ibrahim Mohamed; Writing by Jack Kimball; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)
http://www.alertnet.org/

[slackmaster]

1. Sounds like they want a war

Bad idea.

[atreides1]

4. Not really

The US attacks Somalia, Somalia surrenders then the US pays for reconstruction. In the meantime people die.

[HughMoran]

2. Let's not hang out in Somalia any time soon

mmm'k? :)

[Renew Deal]

13. Survivor should be filmed there.

Anarchy, pirates, islamic extremists, interventions by other African nations, and great beaches. Should make for great ratings!

[HughMoran]

14. "Survivor Somalia - Teabag This!"

"Can you stomach this reality"

:rofl:

[dipsydoodle]

3. Which ones are the insurgents

The warlords or the Islamic militia ?

[atreides1]

5. The insurgents

Are the ones with the membership cards, like all of the insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq.

[Uzybone]

6. How often do mortars fly around in Mogadishu?

is this a case of them saying it rained because we went outside, or were you outside and it just happened to rain?

[NNN0LHI]

7. How can there be insurgents in a country with no functioning government?

And who in the hell was this congressman "visiting" with?

Don

[slackmaster]

9. Both excellent questions, NNNOLHI

:shrug:

[seafan]

8. More fallout from the Bush Catastrophe.

Mortar shells fired at US congressman in Somalia, April 13, 2009

MOGADISHU (AFP) — US congressman Donald Payne came under mortar fire Monday as he was leaving in a plane from Mogadishu airport, but no one was injured in the attack, an African Union official told AFP.

"The plane of the congressman was leaving and the mortars started falling. There were no casualties, but the attack was aimed at the congressman. He flew out safely," the AU official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Payne, congressman from New Jersey and a member of the foreign affairs committee, arrived in Mogadishu hours earlier for talks with President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed and his prime minister on rampant piracy off the country's coast.
His visit came the day after US forces shot dead three of four Somali pirates who had been holding an American captain hostage for five days in the Indian Ocean.

A Somali pirate chief earlier Monday threatened to target Americans in revenge for the rescue of a US captain in a dramatic operation that saw naval snipers kill his captors.

.....

Eight squandered years.

February 19, 2002

....

I was stunned. This was the first time I had been informed that the decision to go to war with Iraq had not only been made but was being implemented, to the substantial disadvantage of the war in Afghanistan.

Franks continued, "We can finish this job in Afghanistan if we are allowed to do so. And there is a set of terrorist targets after Afghanistan. My first priority would be Somalia--there is no effective government to control the large number of terrorist cells. Next, I would go to Yemen. Its president is willing to help in the war on terrorism, but has no capabilities to do so. Iraq is a special case. Our intelligence there is very unsatisfactory. Some Europeans know more than we on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction..."

General Franks wasn't complaining; he was making a statement of fact. but the fact was damning. Here, General Franks, a four-star general and the commander of CENTCOM, was laying out for me how he would fight a true war on terrorism. Instead, his men and resources were being moved to Iraq, where he felt that our intelligence was shoddy. This admission was coming almost fourteen months before the beginning of combat operations in Iraq, and only five months after the commencement of combat in Afghanistan.

The more I thought about it, the more furious I became. Victory against al-Qaeda was in our grasp, and we were releasing the pressure. The redeployments were a tangible statement that not only did we not have the military or intelligence capability to simultaneously win an ongoing war in Afghanistan and take on Saddam Hussein in Iraq, but also that someone in the White House had put Saddam Hussein ahead of Osama bin Laden.


----Senator Bob Graham in Intelligence Matters, Chapter 12, pp. 122-128, published September 7, 2004.

George W. Bush should be stripped of his freedom.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

10. Going back further, isn't this exactly what Clinton wanted to stop in Somalia?

And weren't Republicans the ones that fought him every step of the way on it?

[seafan]

11. Yes. And right there were Republicans sabotaging his efforts.

From the LAT via MIT:


October 8, 1993

President Clinton Thursday ordered 5,300 new combat troops and an aircraft carrier to Somalia "to protect our troops and to complete our mission," and at the same time he announced that he would bring all American combat forces home by March 31.

He said the objective of the new deployment was to give the Somalis a reasonable prospect of survival in conditions of near-anarchy and factional warfare. Regardless of the success of the new mission, he vowed to end the U.S. military presence in Somalia in six months.

In his first public explanation of why American troops were in that lawless land and when they would be getting out, Clinton said he had rejected calls from Congress and elsewhere to "cut and run" from Somalia because he believed that both Somali lives and American credibility were at stake.

"We face a choice," the president said. "Do we leave when the job gets tough or when the job is well done? Do we invite the return of mass suffering or do we leave in a way that gives the Somalis a decent chance to survive?"

Clinton argued that the United States had an obligation to try to complete a humanitarian effort begun 10 months ago. "We started this mission for the right reasons and we're going to finish it in the right way," Clinton said.

He also said he would not withdraw now with American soldiers in Somali hands or listed as missing. One American serviceman is known to be held by the forces of warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid, and six others are missing from an encounter on Sunday in which 13 U.S. soldiers were slain.

.....

The Left Coaster

March 29, 2007

GOP Ordered Clinton Out Of Somalia And Haiti


John McCain, Mitch McConnell and other GOP senators say it is unprecedented for Congress to dictate troop withdrawal dates to the Commander in Chief, or to limit funding for such operations.

Wrong. Travis Sharp of the Iraq Insider blog discovered that there are in fact nine (9) current GOP senators who voted three times in the 1990’s to slap such limits upon Bill Clinton to end the Somalia and Haiti deployments:

Bennett (R-UT)
Bond (R-MO)
Cochran (R-MS)
Domenici (R-NM)
Hutchison (R-TX)
Lugar (R-IN)
McConnell (R-KY)
Specter (R-PA)
Warner (R-VA)

Ted Stevens voted not once but twice to cut off funding for the Somalia deployment and the withdrawal of troops by a date certain. John McCain voted to order Clinton out of Haiti.

It was obvious then, as it is obvious now, that Republicans DO NOT WANT ANY DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENT TO SUCCEED.

[redqueen]

12. Your last two posts would make an interesting OP. (nt)