Propaganda Wars - Vol. 007, Pt. 2

It's hard to stay involved in international politics when it sometimes seems impossibly inane, and the rest of the time it seems like "cunts are running the world" (to take a phrase from Jarvis Cocker).

So the US has launched attacks on groupings of Somalian "Islamists", purported supporters of Al Qaeda. And even though they deny that these air raids are continuing, eye witnesses claim that more attacks have been launched in the same area.

Given that there are three or four battleships off the cost of Somalia, which is roughly the size of Texas, my bet is that they plan to carry on for a while.

Funny that they're back to Somalia, since Afghanistan and Iraq are (almost) complete failures.

And why does the reporting from Al Jazeera look exactly like the stuff on the BBC?

These articles are nearly identical. Word for word. Disturbing? Or just bad reporting? Or just no reporting, perhaps?

I'd also like to note the use of a few interesting phrases:
"first overt military action in Somalia since 1994" - OVERT?
"they were targeting suspected al-Qaeda leaders" - SUSPECTED?
"accuses the Islamists of having links to al-Qaeda..." - ACCUSES?
"...charges they deny" - What can I say? Guilty before proven...anything other than Islamist?

And then, of course, the NY Times:

January 9, 2007
U.S. Airstrike Aims at Qaeda Cell in Somalia
By DAVID S. CLOUD
WASHINGTON, Jan. 9 — United States Air Force gunships have struck against suspected operatives of Al Qaeda in southern Somalia, according to a senior Pentagon official and news agency reports.

On Monday night, the official described the first raid, which was carried out Sunday night. A report by Reuters today said there was apparently a new strike today.

The latest attack by American warplanes apparently came in a remote area of southern Somalia and killed between 22 and 27 people, according to an elder from a neighboring town, who spoke to Reuters by telephone from the Kenya-Somalia border crossing at Liboi.

The American involvement complicates matters for the transitional government of Somalia, which is struggling to establish order after suddenly winning control of most of the country from Islamic forces in recent weeks.

The country’s transitional president, Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, said today that he had given American forces permission to carry out the strike on Sunday.

That attack, by an AC-130 gunship operated by the Special Forces Command, is believed to have produced multiple casualties, the Pentagon official said. It was not known immediately known whether the casualties included members of a Qaeda cell that American officials have long suspected was hiding in Somalia.

Special Forces units operating from an American base in Djibouti are conducting a hunt Qaeda operatives who were forced to flee Mogadishu, the Somali capital, when the Islamic militants who formerly dominated the capital were driven out by an Ethiopian military offensive last month.

The Special Forces attack Sunday night was the first American military action in Somalia that Pentagon officials have acknowledged since United States forces pulled out of the anarchic country in the wake of the infamous “Black Hawk Down” episode in 1993, when 18 American soldiers were killed in street fighting in Mogadishu.

Many Somalis were angered by news of the new American intervention, and some said it reminded them of the troubled aid mission that ended with the 1993 incident.

American officials have suspected for years that a handful of Qaeda suspects who were responsible for the 1998 bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania have been hiding inside Somalia, which has not had a central government since 1991.

The search for the terrorism suspects has been the driving force in American policy toward Somalia for several years.

Earlier this year, the Central Intelligence Agency began making cash payments to a group of Somali warlords who pledged to help hunt down members of the Qaeda cell.

After Islamist militias took control of Mogadishu in the summer, officials in Washington charged that the Islamists had ties to the terror suspects, and made demands for their handover to American custody.

The Ethiopian military offensive that began last month recently drove the Islamists from the seaside Somali capital, raising hopes in Washington that the Qaeda operatives might surface as they fled. The Islamists have retreated to areas around the southern port city of Kismayo. Ethiopian officials have said they have intelligence reports that members of the Qaeda cell were hiding near the city.

The transitional government had been accused of being a pawn for Ethiopia and the United States, both roundly disliked and viewed with suspicion by many Somalis.

The AC-130 gunship is a heavily armed propeller plane that, because of its slow speed, operates primarily at night. It can direct an immense barrage of gunfire onto a target as it circles overhead.

The attack against suspected Qaeda operatives is the sort of targeted operation that senior Bush administration officials have been pressing the Special Operation Command, based in Tampa, Fla., to undertake in recent years.

But officials have said that Special Operations forces have had difficulty carrying out targeted strikes in the past because of the difficulty establishing the whereabouts of wanted terrorists or getting forces in place when a suspected militant is located.

The Central Intelligence Agency has killed a small number of suspected Qaeda members, using a pilotless drone armed with a missile. Among them were five people killed in Yemen in 2002.

Jeffrey Gettleman contributed reporting from Mogadishu and Mark Mazzetti from Washington.