At least Obama put a stop to it. Except for the CIA facility at Mogadishu's airport where they held people in an underground dungeon and comforted them with some electric current through the genitals. Yeah, except for that.

Also, let's not talk about the torture camps run by the military, by contractors or by the Iraqi forces trained and instructed by folks like Colonels James Steele, who had already run Salvadoran death squads. And while we're at it, let's not talk about the outsourcing of torture to the goons of Gaddafi, Assad and Mubarak.

By the way, Brazil just published documents about 20 years of torture. Who trained the torturers? The usual suspects...

Between wars of aggression (Iraq, Afghanistan) and the violation of national sovereignty (Pakistan, Libya, Syria, Jemen, Somalia), the running of gulags (Gitmo, Baghram) and torture facilities (airport in Mogadishu), the NDAA and the war on whistleblowers on the one hand and the entire corporate corruption (too big to fail/jail in particular) on the other hand, there's plenty of reason to take a good look at what the latest administrations have been responsible for.

But hey, Benghazi and the IRS are the real scandals, right?

Not Thomas Drake, John Kiriakou and Bradley Manning or Anwar al-Awlaki, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki and Samir Khan. Certainly not HSBC or Gitmo. And neither nightly JSOC raids nor cruise missile attacks, much less torture and kidnapping.

It's true that pure capitalism works for some, it's very popular in Mogadishu and amongst warring species of coral.

As for Europe, were you thinking of Berlin, Athens, Oslo or Copenhagen? Because those last 2 are the closest thing to a non-vampiric success story in human social construction.

>> ^quantumushroom:


That's not my viewpoint, however I am extremely skeptical of the so-called "Third Way". Socialism always fails, and capitalism fails when oversaturated with socialism. Look at Europe.

I hope we did the right thing...however saying we know everything and that the evidence is overwhelming at this stage is just stupid.

Stop it with that already. I never said we know everything. I said we know ONE thing. Our actions could still precipitate WW3 for all we know.

My support for the intervention is simple. A genocide was clearly going to occur, and YES the evidence of that is overwhelming. The world had the choice between stopping it or ignoring it. I'm glad the choice was made to stop it. That it was made by the UN at the urging of the Arab League leaves us a lot of confidence that it won't precipitate into WW3 either...

Your entire argument seems to be that if we don't know everything our only rational course is to ignore whats happening. I'm afraid that doesn't get you out of responsibility for the dead. It is undeniable that in this case, there would be more dead Libyans today than there are if we had ignored the problem.

Your entire argument is EXACTLY what was plead for during the Rwandan genocide. The urgings of unintended consequences in an African civil war and the specter of Mogadishu's recent casualties kept everyone claiming the same arguments you are today, and 800,000 Rwandans died because the world listened and waited.

Oh Winstonfield, yet again building straw man arguments with your facetious logic. When will you learn.

This guy is clearly talking about the post-9/11 war in Iraq and how Amurica responded to the attacks in such a hateful way. He specifically states that in many of the cases in which he interrogated terrorist (of which he interrogated over a thousand, IIRC) the number one stated reason for them coming to attack US soldiers, the number one stated reason for them joining the terrorist army, is because of the abuse they have witnessed of their fellow man.

ALSO, and I think this is actually a MORE important point than recruitment, one of the stated goals of those in charge of the 9/11 attacks (and whose lose organization probably perpetrated Mogadishu and Cole) is that these people are attempting to prove that the US is _not_ a civilized nation. Your rhetoric about torture being okay just works grandly into their plan. Can you not see that? I just don't believe that you can't. Perhaps you choose not to see that, but I implore you, as a fellow human, try.

"that's even more messed up."

The Life magazine cover shown at 3:24 says, "Negro Revolt". The scenes shown seem more like Mogadishu than an American city.

Yes, they do still burn portions each year. They call the night before Halloween "Devil's Night", and traditionally run amok.

bcglorf, there are better ways of influencing change then military incursion in the shape of troops, tanks and bombs. Whatever you can say doesn't absolve the current administration of undertaking cowboy misadventures in Iraq.

The incursion could have been better planned and carried out, but it wasn't because they were inept and didn't consider the long term implications of invading a nation, the same way the past administrations didn't consider how their strategy in Afghanistan would blow back into creating extremist Islamic terrorists like Osama Bin Laden.

There is so little thought put into this whole affair. But then again who cares. No one. The public is asleep on the War issue, there was more attention given to the Battle of Mogadishu in 1994.

Implemented, but the Battle of Mogadishu and essentially everything that spurred McCain's comment on the topic occurred during the Clinton Administration.

>> ^doremifa:
"...Somalia happened under a Democratic administration..."

Actually, the mission was implemented during George HW Bush's term.

Let's impeach Bush for the war and killing soldiers. Hell lets go back in time into our impeachment time traveling devices and impeach Lyndon B Johnson, and John Kennedy for Vietnam. Or lets impeach Clinton for what happen in Mogadishu. Even though that all the presidents I mentioned before were acting on the ideal to make it a better place for that country. Vietnam was tearing itself apart. Iraq had a dictator killing millions. And in Mogadishu we had people starving. You know those presidents that even though it wasn't our war we were trying to make a difference because we were the only ones who could. We should stand back and let a country tear itself apart. We should never help those in need. Let's listen to all the actors especially the genius of Sean Penn to tell us what to believe and follow. Because and I quote from Team America World Police, Sean Penn said "Last year I went to Iraq. Before Team America showed up, it was a happy place. They had flowery meadows and rainbow skies, and rivers made of chocolate, where the children danced and laughed and played with gumdrop smiles."

Yeah that is all. Here is how you make an angry American, by showing bullshit. This happened in the 30s,40s,50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and now, and guess what, it's probably going to keep happening as long as war exist. America is full of idealist and was founded by idealist. But whatever I guess we all forgot about American History. I mean QM did mention hippies. The hippies did say and act the same way against Johnson because of the Vietnam war. Just saying is all.

While it would be ill advised to train low rank troops on these issues of questioning orders, it's clear that the officer corp should integrate this into their curriculum for future conflicts. Not only on moral, ethical grounds but on grounds of sound military strategy and force loss reduction (a vital thing for an all volunteer force). Enough autonomy must be allowed to factor in the safety of deployed forces.

US intervention in Somalia, the Mogadishu incident is one example where military leaders conceded with a lack of forces and lack of information. Am sorry but its terrible when politics run military operations, any military strategist would have told you back then that Somalia is a country filled with militias that have been fighting a civil war for decades. Not factoring that vital piece of information cost 18 lives. Always know the lay of the land. Vietnam should have taught the administration and military that, but they came off too proud from successes of an air war in the Gulf War.

I say this because I frankly don't understand why the US army has to at times undertake duties not within their mission objectives on the ground, why previous plans for re-construction of Iraq are thrown out with nary of a protest (see Bob Woodward), disbanding the Iraq army created an unemployed army for hire. Or worse when they come under equipped into a combat zone they have been drilling for (See Red Flag & OPFOR engagements). War is seriously horrible business and should be taken as such. If you are going to do it. Do it properly, do it with minimal civilian losses (civilians are the eyes and ears in a guerrilla war), do it with minimal force loss, do it when it has the backing of the people. Because morale is affected by how a conflict is seen. This is why by the way there is no longer the raw Vietnam era style of reporting of conflict but embedded reporters.

[Understand that my comment applies to unilateral military engagements in a no-other option scenario]

The problem with these is that kevlar wont stop such rounds. Even soldiers are warned to be careful what they're shooting at with .50 cals (referring to Mark Bowden's book on the battle in Mogadishu regarding civilian areas), as they will continue on through wall after wall. These are incredible powerful light arms.

But quite right Fletch, you dont need a big one like this to beat body armour. Even 7.62mm rounds will break most vests (except the modern gear, I think).

I think thats how they took out those Blackhawks in Mogadishu, Somalia. Though am not suprised to see it fly so low, at the start of the 2nd Gulf War the largest helicopter attack force moved into Iraq from bases in Kuwait. They moved in pack formation hugging the ground about as low as seen here avoiding SA2s, SAMs and the like.

However flying so low does have it's dangerous, an Apache helicopter was taken down in Iraq early in the war, I don't know if you guys remember that famous photo of a Iraqi farmer next to it in a low level lake surrounded by green reeds.