The linked tweets definitely sound bad. Possibly a good example of what tends to happen when the White House directs the Pentagon to do whatever the hell it wants as long as it sounds muscular.
One other thing going around, however, is last night's Maddow suggesting the travel ban newly and inanely extending to Chad is also to blame, and that particular line of argument seems mistaken, since Chadian troops had been in a part of Niger 1100km+ away. Tweets on this subject.
(Also, Christ, so much military activity going on we have no idea about.)
I saw those tweets and thought it was interesting and intriguing and certainly plausible but poorly sourced. I want to see some real reporting on what went down and why.
As an illustration of the contrast, I had not heard anything about it until Trump made his comments about other presidents not calling families of KIA. I didn't realise it was in relation to a specific incident at first.
Yes. Paucity of information.
But overall it does not look good on several fronts. Nothing that doesn't happen in almost any admin given US military being so many places. But s it most certainly a factor in why Trump did not send the pro forma condolences that had been drafted. (Thus setting the stage for the last few days' shitshow culminating in Kelly's despicable white militaristic attack performance yesterday&*.)
*Just another black women in government smeared nothing to see here according to the drama critic fuckheads in most of the WH Press.
Another day in paradise in the race to see whether the nascent kleptocratic white supremacist regime will take a deeper hold or not.
4.2 is right. The Niger involvement long predates Trump (or Obama, I think), and whatever fuckups were caused by contractors or the French probably resulted from policies dating to Obama. The Trump admin very probably hasn't been sufficiently organized to change any of them.
Since a lot of the narrative from background sources is that the White House staff is trapped with an unserious person and are just trying to do the best they can guys, it's good to see more taking note that Kelly was always horrible too.
One of the worst parts of the Kelly show was his additional gratuitous denunciation at her speech dedicating an FBI building.
A video of her speech has been found and unsurprisingly it completely discredits Kelly's characterization of her remarks.
If you watch it you can see what are probably the seeds of his negative response (she had taken point on a rushed through a bill to name it after two slain FBI agents and describes that process as a small part of her speech). But if that was his overall impression at the time* it absolutely reveals a totally sexist/racist framing of the speech on his part.
Will see if the NYTimes can get over the sycophantic stenography it has demonstrated on this story so far.
But forgetting the Trump/Kelly drama queens of death show for a minute, I do not see much pressure from the media to find out what was really going on in Niger. (CNN has actually had some coverage.) This is the kind if thing that the Times (or WaPost sometimes) with its size and reach often does a pretty good job on. Surely they will be on it now.
Without in any way minimizing what hateful, evil assholes Trump and Kelly are, or the despicable performance by the media, I actually find myself thinking that on the very narrow issue of Trump's call to this particular woman, he is probably being treated unfairly.
Why would Trump say that Sergeant Johnson "knew what he signed up for"?
The obvious answer -- if we're going to give Trump the benefit of any doubt at all -- is the one that Kelly gave: That Trump was saying Johnson knowingly endangered himself in service to his country, and was thus heroic.
Not that I worry about Trump being treated unfairly. I just think a strict interest in factuality is good epistemic hygiene.
Certainly if a literal Nazi sympathizer called me up to offer condolences on the death of my African American son, I wouldn't sweat out whether I was being scrupulously fair to him. That poor woman. Fuck Trump.
9. Not holding my breath for the NYT. Here's PBS.
Left unstated is why US forces training Nigerian soldiers and deploying drones over among other places Nigeria are not based in Nigeria. Part of the answer on the Nigerian side is that Buhari's gov't would prefer US cooperation to be deniable. There may be US motivation as well, preferring to deal with Niger; I'd be interested to know more about that.
10.first: Agreed. I've been thinking it was probably clumsy but no worse than that. Callous by accident. And, agreed, I haven't bothered saying so at this point, even with people who know perfectly well how much I like to say, "well, actually..."
11: US SF went into Nigeria a few years ago in a training and mentoring role. This was widely reported at the time.
http://www.military.com/daily-news/2014/05/12/small-special-forces-unit-will-deploy-to-nigeria.html
They're still there. Here's a photo.
http://www.usaraf.army.mil/media-room/photo/28438/explosive-ordnance-disposal-nigeria
(Atletico Beautiful Hypotheses 0-2 Ugly Fact FC)
Just to be clear, is "Nigerian" being used here and in the PBS piece about Niger rather than Nigeria? (I thought one said "Nigerien" to disambiguate, but maybe not everyone does.)
The conclusion that Sergeant Johnson was left behind, alive, during the evacuation by mercenaries is an utter disgrace and should enrage every soldier. That should be the story, not Trump's cruelty to his bereaved family.
10, 12: Hm, no. He said "He knew what he signed up for, but I guess it still hurts." That was a stupid and offensive thing to say, denigrating his sacrifice and downplaying the family's suffering.
If he had said instead "he knowingly endangered himself in service to his country, and was thus heroic," that would've been quite different. But he's not getting treated unfairly because you can think of something else he might've said, but didn't, that would not have been offensive.
And then his reaction, on hearing that he exacerbated the grief of a new widow, is to say that she and her friends and family are lying! There's no part of this that is even slightly defensible.
10: I'd agree that the charitable interpretation is possible, but it doesn't generally pay to underestimate Trump's sociopathy. The (purported) exchange reminded me of his tweet regarding American doctors treating Ebola:
"The U.S. cannot allow EBOLA infected people back. People that go to far away places to help out are great-but must suffer the consequences!"
16: My rule of thumb is that any question regarding Trump's conduct -- or, indeed, any question at all -- can be correctly answered: "Fuck Trump!"
Q. Did Trump insult a Gold Star mother?
A. Fuck Trump!
Q. What is the weather going to be like this weekend?
A. Fuck Trump!
14: Coincidentally, I just stumbled on this for completely unrelated reasons. The relevant bit:
Not to be confused with its neighbor Nigeria... As it was colonized by France rather than Britain, Niger is actually pronounced "Nee-Jher", not "Nye-Jer", and Niger's citizens are referred to as Nigeriens, pronounced as "Nee-Jher-Ee-eins".
Honestly the Niger/Nigeria thing is maybe the biggest geographic-name confusion mistake in history. Only serious rival is Galicia/Galica/Galatia.
13. I know there are some troops in Nigeria, but I thought that a) no base there controlled by by the US
b) No Nigerian government mention of the US troops that are there, rather public statements against US bases, definitely by Jonathan I thought also by Buhari.
Guinea/Equitorial Guinea/Guniea-Bissau/New Guniea/Guyana is also pretty bad but not even in the same time zone as Niger/Nigeria.
When I was little I was 100% convinced that Austria and Australia had battled over the name. I no longer recall which country I believed had won.
North/South Dakota. What the even fuck.
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I was just initialing a line in some doctor forms about how you get charged $25 and must reschedule if you're more than 15 minutes late, when the secretary mentioned that the doctor is running 60-90 minutes late today. So that's nice.
(I totally get why it's asymmetric, and it's fine. But this particular doctor, of all my doctors, is always the worst by far. They rescheduled w me 3 times for today, or tried. I argued my way out of the 3rd rescheduling.)
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26: agreed, although I'm less sanguine about the penalties being so asymmetric. Seeing a doctor about my bike accident, the past two appointments, they were about an hour and a half late for both. It also took me about two hours to get x-rays taken, and they wouldn't even let me make an appointment for that, I just had to walk in and hope. My third appointment is in six days, and I scheduled it earlier in the morning, in hopes that they won't be as far behind by then.
Update about that: elbow is almost completely better. A little stiff, still somewhat limited range of motion, but not that bad. My finger, I still can't touch all the way to the palm of my hand. They said if I can't do that by my next doctor's appointment, they'll recommend physical therapy. I'm getting close, though, so we'll see.
I'm still waiting! A while ago they made me change spots and take my pants off. But no doc.
The thing that's fucking annoying is how helpful it would have been to have had the extra 2 hours at work. Why couldn't they call and tell me to delay when I show up?
Also, I was grading and being productive in the lobby, but not since they made me strip 45 min. ago.
Why isn't the free market solving my problems?!
Is no one going to point out the asymmetrically-enforced rule about no threadjacking before 40 comments?!
This morning I went for the health check that keeps all the dirty immigrants out. Paperwork, physical exam, blood draw, and chest x-ray in under an hour; no appointments needed; bloodwork back in 8 working days; total cost to me ~US$47.33.
A while ago they made me change spots
Ah, the old leopard test.
Understandable. I bet Texas hospitals get undocumented leopards all the time.
I'm sorry to hear about Cyrus' accident (and subsequent medical aggravation), but I'm so glad it led me to this comment.
Anyway, I actually think that WaPo and NYT probably are racing to be the first with the complete, detailed, well-sourced story on this, and that, when it breaks, it will actually be a story for a little while.
It occurs to me that this is a thing where those of us with reliably liberal reps can finally apply some useful pressure: if they hear from us now that we want to know what happened, they'll be poised to jump all over the story when it does break, and maybe something* really does come of it.
*not justice, and maybe not even hearings, but at least the sort of shitstorm that resonates with voters. It's a tragedy that this happened, but frankly liberals should be hanging this around the necks of Republicans until Final Judgment. In general we're terrible at this game, but hopefully the freshness of BENGHAZI will prompt us to be better.
35: Are you in the single-payer system, or is it one of those situations where the government keeps prices so low that that is full freight?
40: General medical stuff like that can be quite cheap, though. I paid like a third of that for the same thing across the water, out of pocket.
20. 23: The worst three seconds of my life occurred between the beginning of an NPR a report on a horrific terroristic/military attack in Palmyra, hundreds of casualties, and the point it became clear it was the one in Syria, not the one in New Jersey that my son's school bus was traversing at the moment.
20. 23: The worst three seconds of my life occurred between the beginning of an NPR a report on a horrific terroristic/military attack in Palmyra, hundreds of casualties, and the point it became clear it was the one in Syria, not the one in New Jersey that my son's school bus was traversing at the moment.
20. 23: The worst three seconds of my life occurred between the beginning of an NPR a report on a horrific terroristic/military attack in Palmyra, hundreds of casualties, and the point it became clear it was the one in Syria, not the one in New Jersey that my son's school bus was traversing at the moment.
20. 23: The worst three seconds of my life occurred between the beginning of an NPR a report on a horrific terroristic/military attack in Palmyra, hundreds of casualties, and the point it became clear it was the one in Syria, not the one in New Jersey that my son's school bus was traversing at the moment.
20. 23: The worst three seconds of my life occurred between the beginning of an NPR a report on a horrific terroristic/military attack in Palmyra, hundreds of casualties, and the point it became clear it was the one in Syria, not the one in New Jersey that my son's school bus was traversing at the moment.
A brief nightmare I am condemned to relive again and again . . .