{"id":332086,"date":"2017-10-25T22:33:26","date_gmt":"2017-10-25T21:33:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/slain-us-special-forces-troops-on-apparent-assassination-mission-in-niger\/"},"modified":"2017-10-25T22:33:26","modified_gmt":"2017-10-25T21:33:26","slug":"slain-us-special-forces-troops-on-apparent-assassination-mission-in-niger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/slain-us-special-forces-troops-on-apparent-assassination-mission-in-niger\/","title":{"rendered":"Slain US special forces troops on apparent assassination mission in Niger"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"content\">\n<h3 class=\"nomargin\">\u00a0<\/h3>\n<h2>Slain US special forces troops on apparent assassination mission in Niger<\/h2>\n<h5>\n<p>    By<br \/>\n    Bill Van Auken<br \/>\n    <br \/>25 October 2017<\/p>\n<\/h5>\n<p>Three weeks after four US special forces soldiers were killed in a firefight in the landlocked West African nation of Niger, information has surfaced indicating that the American troops and their Nigerien counterparts were involved in a \u201ccapture-kill\u201d mission aimed at the leader of a local Islamist militia operating on the Niger-Mali border.<\/p>\n<p>The White House and the Pentagon has provided only a trickle of information about the abortive October 4 operation. The incident came to the public eye largely because of President Donald Trump\u2019s initial failure to say anything about the largest loss of US military personnel since he took office, along with his subsequent lies about contacting families of slain troops and his shameful public confrontation with the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, one of the four Green Berets killed in Niger, over a callous condolence call.<\/p>\n<div class=\"imageFull\" style=\"width:480px; oveflow:hidden;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.wsws.org\/asset\/5d7fb024-431b-4fc5-a252-1b0084f804cI\/image.jpg?rendition=image480\"  width=\"480\" style=\"width:480px;\" \/><span>A map with Niger indicated by red border<\/span><\/div>\n<p>Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters Monday that the Green Berets had been engaged in a \u201csimple reconnaissance mission,\u201d and described the overall purpose of deploying some 1,000 US special operations troops in Niger as a \u201ctrain, advise and assist mission\u201d to support the Nigerien security forces.<\/p>\n<p>It appears that Dunford\u2019s comments were deliberately misleading on both counts.<\/p>\n<p>NBC News Tuesday cited \u201cmultiple US officials\u201d as recounting that the US detachment of 12 US special forces troops and 30 Nigerien soldiers had been on what was effectively an assassination mission, aimed at killing a senior leader of a local Islamist militia.<\/p>\n<p>NBC reported: \u201cOne theory, said an official with direct knowledge of&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wsws.org\/en\/articles\/2017\/10\/25\/nige-o25.html\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 Slain US special forces troops on apparent assassination mission in Niger By Bill Van Auken 25 October 2017 Three weeks after four US special forces soldiers were killed in a firefight in the landlocked West African nation of Niger, information has surfaced indicating that the American troops and their Nigerien counterparts were involved in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2526,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-332086","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2526"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=332086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332086\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}