The United States runs a global military empire whose workings are effectively unknown to the American people. Congress is supposed to conduct oversight of the armed services but it doesn’t.
When the Senate held a hearing about the weekly U.S. attacks on Somalia–47 drone strikes in 2018 that killed hundreds of people–only Elizabeth Warren asked any serious questions about the nature and purpose of this little war.
Now military analysts Nick Turse and Sean Naylor report in Yahoo News on 36 code named military operations in Africa.
The code-named operations cover a variety of different military missions, ranging from psychological operations to counterterrorism. Eight of the named activities, including Obsidian Nomad, are so-called 127e programs, named for the budgetary authority that allows U.S. special operations forces to use certain host-nation military units as surrogates in counterterrorism missions.
One operation cost $780 million and did not achieve its objective.
OBSERVANT COMPASS: An operation to capture or kill Joseph Kony and eradicate his Lord’s Resistance Army, a militia that has committed atrocities since the 1980s. In 2017, with around $780 million spent on the operation, and Kony still in the field, the United States wound down Observant Compass and shifted its forces elsewhere. But the operation didn’t completely disband, according to the Defense Department. “U.S. military forces supporting Operation Observant Compass transitioned to broader scope security and stability activities that continue the success of our African partners,” Pentagon spokesperson Cmdr. Candice Tresch told Yahoo News.
Source: Revealed: The U.S. military’s 36 code-named operations in Africa
