Pentagon confirms al-Shabab leader killed in airstrike in Somalia
Source: Washington Post
The Pentagon said Friday that it had confirmed the death of a key Somali militant leader allied with al-Qaeda who had been targeted in a U.S. airstrike earlier this week.
Ahmed Abdi Godane, a co-founder of a network blamed for its brutal tactics in Somalia and for the attack on an upscale Kenyan shopping mall last year, was killed Monday in an attack carried out by U.S. drones and other aircraft, the Pentagon said.
“Removing Godane from the battlefield is a major symbolic and operational loss to al-Shabab,” Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, said in a statement.
U.S. military officials had acknowledged that they were trying to kill Godane in Monday’s air assault on a Shabab compound in southern Somalia. But they had been cautious about asserting the mission was successful, mindful of reports of other al-Qaeda leaders who had been killed in drone attacks, only to resurface later.
Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/pentagon-confirms-al-shabab-leader-killed-in-airstrike-in-somalia/2014/09/05/fc9fee06-3512-11e4-9e92-0899b306bbea_story.html?wpisrc=al_national
Addition by subtraction. This is what drones are supposed to do.
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Purveyor
(29,876 posts)was some speculation the other day that ISIS would fill the leadership void. I'll see if I can find copy on that after I go and let the neighbor's dog out.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)will further degrade their efficacy.
Al-Shahab, Boko Haram , ISIL--same shit, different piles.
louis-t
(23,295 posts)It seems to water down the gene pool if we can keep hitting them fast enough.
OnlinePoker
(5,722 posts)People are sick of hearing about all the leaders of Al-Qaeda that have been killed in the past so now they have ISIS (or is it ISIL...I'm confused) as the new villain on the block. The good thing with this bogeyman is there is no figurehead to get rid of like Bin Laden. Once he was dead, the public panic over Al-Qaeda was much reduced. By putting up ISIS, you have an organization that can keep the war drums beating indefinitely.
denbot
(9,900 posts)“You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!”
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)to the MIC to be safe from people somewhere over there. Eventually we will be the safest idiots in the soup lines.
OnlinePoker
(5,722 posts)I'm saying that every time one "enemy" seems vanquished, another comes along to take its place and the media hops on board to ratchet up the fear campaign. This time, there's no leadership figureheads so the fight can go on indefinitely. I often think of the quote from Ben-Hur..."You can break a man's skull, you can arrest him, you can throw him into a dungeon. But how do you control what's up here? How do you fight an idea?" No matter what the west has tried, nothing has worked to stop the fundamental onslaught of the jihadists. You can't reason with them, and for every one you kill, there's another one taking their place.
951-Riverside
(7,234 posts)
Renew Deal
(81,861 posts)951-Riverside
(7,234 posts)geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)onenote
(42,714 posts)Whatever Samantha Lewthwaite may be now, she isn't the teenage schoolgirl you chose to depict her as. She's a 30 year old woman who has managed to marry two ruthless terrorists and is accused of playing a signficant role in the mall attack in Kenya that killed over 60 people (albeit there are those who claim that at most she played only a "support" role).
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)a terrorist is should not matter in such decisions.
Response to 951-Riverside (Reply #4)
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Wellstone ruled
(34,661 posts)All or most of these so called groups of Islamic Militants are funded by the wealthy Royals of the Mid East. Until this is exposed,nothing will change,yes,this will shake the financial markets,but,the real money supporters have to be outed. Then this shit will settle down. It's control of strategic Oil and Minerals and the continuation of world dominance by the 1%ers.
heaven05
(18,124 posts)not far from the truth.
samsingh
(17,599 posts)cosmicone
(11,014 posts)So much so that they will have to live in the 11th century which they so crave.
It will kill a few innocent people surrounding them but it is either their innocents or our innocents getting hurt.
We should also create draconian laws so that their sympathizers in the West who help with money, intelligence and logistics are thrown in jail for a long long time.
Response to cosmicone (Reply #13)
rhett o rick This message was self-deleted by its author.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)EX500rider
(10,849 posts)rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)the UN charter. Unilaterally killing people around the world with air strikes is not what we should be doing. Who do we think we are?
kwassa
(23,340 posts)The President has considerable war powers, like it or not.
Air strikes have been very effective at killing some very bad and dangerous people. I, for one, have no problem with this action or many of the other strikes, drone or otherwise.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)bad people. And you are willing to mortgage our children's future based on that trust. Would you be ok if Bush was doing this?
You say, "Air strikes have been very effective at killing some very bad and dangerous people". But you only know what the media tells you.
Our Constitution does not give the President this power. But I am guessing you are willing to give up the Constitution as long as your govement tells you they are taking good care of you.
kwassa
(23,340 posts)I don't inherently distrust the government or the media. The media is certainly not a monolith, and I turn a skeptic's eye to all media. The biggest problem I have with the media is that miss major developments, but so does our government and our intelligence agencies.
That said, drones have been able to reach the heads of terrorist organizations that pose very great threats to us, without risking the lives of our troops.
As to your characterization of war powers re the Constitution, it is an area of some disagreement.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/war_powers
War Powers
Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the U.S. Constitution grants Congress the power to declare war. The President, meanwhile, derives the power to direct the military after a Congressional declaration of war from Article II, Section 2, which names the President Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. These provisions require cooperation between the President and Congress regarding military affairs, with Congress funding or declaring the operation and the President directing it. Nevertheless, throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, Presidents have often engaged in military operations without express Congressional consent. These operations include the Korean War, the Vietnam War, Operation Desert Storm, the Afghanistan War of 2001 and the Iraq War of 2002.
....................................................
The questions of whether the President possesses authority to use the military absent a Congressional declaration of war and the scope of such power, if it exists, have proven to be sources of conflict and debate throughout American history. While some scholars believe the Commander-in-Chief Clause confers special powers on the President, others argue that, if the President does have these powers, the Constitution does not provide how far the President may go. These scholars wish to construe the Clause narrowly, claiming that the Founders gave the President the title to preserve civilian supremacy over the military, not to provide additional powers outside of a Congressional authorization or declaration of war.
.................................................................
Emergency Powers
The Constitution does not expressly grant the President additional powers in times of national emergency. However, many scholars think that the Framers implied these powers because the structural design of the Executive Branch enables it to act faster than the Legislative Branch. Because the Constitution remains silent on the issue, the courts cannot grant the Executive Branch these powers when it tries to wield them. The courts will only recognize a right of the Executive Branch to use emergency powers if Congress has granted such powers to the President.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)You have to trust somebody, so you rationalize that the Pres is only killing bad people. And if innocent people are killed, too f'n bad for them. We are not in a national emergency.
kwassa
(23,340 posts)Do you think you have a clue? And where exactly does your clue come from?
Who do you think is being killed by drones, and how do you come to that conclusion? In other words, what factual evidence do you have to support your view?
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)the information we are fed is most likely to support an agenda. I do not believe the President has authority to unilaterally kill people anywhere without Congressional approval and even then, I do not believe the President should be killing people in sovereign nations we are not at war with. I challenge the effectiveness of using airstrikes in sovereign nations to kill people.
Now it's your turn. Are you convinced that the President is only killing terrorists and not innocent people? If so, is that based on blind trust? If so, is blind trust a Democratic value?
kwassa
(23,340 posts)I also believe innocent people are being killed. Missiles that kill very bad guys also kill anyone in proximity with them, which might be other very bad guys, or wives and children.
but, declaration or not, we are at war with these people, and until drones, we had no effective method of even touching them without a major troop commitment. Now all we need is good intelligence as to where they are, and that is a hard enough goal to achieve. We have done it in numerous circumstance. Innocents have died, too, but it is the cost of achieving an important goal. It is also worth nothing that those to choose to associate and spend time with very bad people are voluntarily putting themselves in a risk situation.
As to sovereign nations, these terrorists and murderers only exist in weak or virtually non-existent states, where those states are utterly incapable of handling the threat that is in front of them. ISIS has taken over a huge section of northern Iraq and western Syria, where both governments are incapable of effective resistance. This is not about usurpation of sovereignty. Iraq welcomes our involvement, and probably secretly Syria does, too.
