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Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin

(108,209 posts) Fri Feb 3, 2017, 02:45 PM Feb 2017

White House says a deadly raid in Yemen was long planned. Not true, say officials who served Obama.

The Pentagon and the White House on Thursday defended the execution of a U.S. Special Operations raid in Yemen that killed civilians along with a Navy SEAL, saying there was sufficient intelligence to carry it out and that it had been considered in Washington since December. But former Obama administration officials disputed the Trump administration’s version of events, saying the raid carried out Saturday was never specifically discussed in the White House when Barack Obama was president.

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White House press secretary Sean Spicer said that the plan for the operation was first submitted by U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations across the Middle East, to the Defense Department on Nov. 7, one day before the presidential election. A plan was approved by the Pentagon on Dec. 19 and turned over to the White House. Obama administration officials approved a plan for an operation during an interagency meeting Jan. 6, two weeks before President Trump’s inauguration, and decided it would be best to carry it out in the dark of a “moonless night,” Spicer said. That meant waiting until after Trump took office.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis reviewed a memorandum on the plan Jan. 24 during his first week on the job, and Trump was briefed on it by national security adviser Michael Flynn the following day, Spicer said. Trump met with Mattis and Marine Gen. Joseph F. Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and then authorized the mission one day later.

Colin Kahl, a national security official in the Obama administration, disputed Spicer’s description of the planning Thursday evening. Kahl, in tweets shared hundreds of times, said that the Defense Department worked up a general proposal that asked for the authorities to do raids in Yemen, but that the mission carried out Saturday was not specifically a part of that. Then-President Obama did not make any decisions because he thought it represented an expansion of the war in Yemen and believed the Trump administration should assess how to proceed, Kahl said.

“In a nutshell, Trump and his team owns the process and the ultimate decision — and the consequences,” Kahl tweeted.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2017/02/02/pentagon-and-white-house-defend-planning-in-deadly-seal-team-raid-in-yemen/?tid=pm_world_pop&utm_term=.fb5bfb49168a#comments

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White House says a deadly raid in Yemen was long planned. Not true, say officials who served Obama. (Original Post) Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin Feb 2017 OP

This comports with what I reported that Lisa Monaco (Nat'l Security Advisor to Obama) said frazzled Feb 2017 #1

frazzled

(18,402 posts)

1. This comports with what I reported that Lisa Monaco (Nat'l Security Advisor to Obama) said

Reply to Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin (Original post)

Fri Feb 3, 2017, 03:25 PM

Feb 2017

in a Charlie Rose interview last night.

I repost here:

She was asked about the Yemen situation, and she prefaced her remarks with two things: (a) that even though she was no longer in the government, she was not going to divulge internal discussions, and was certainly not going to discuss classified information; and (b) that, contrary to reports she had seen in the press .... (emphasis on the contrary) ...

They were handed a proposal in the final weeks of the administration that was of a much larger scope regarding potential military operations in Yemen--not a specific operation or attack. Between all of the cryptic and elided talk, what I gleaned was that it was felt that since the scope of this program would extend beyond that administration's tenure, that it should be passed on to the next administration to consider ... and that no decision was ever made on it.

That's, at least, what I understood her to be saying. So ... big big proposal to be considered, and he-whose-name-shall-not-be-spoken pulls the trigger after, like, 10 days, apparently with consulting no one.

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