Prometheus 6

U.S. Used Base in Ethiopia to Hunt Al Qaeda in Africa
By MICHAEL R. GORDON and MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON, Feb. 22 — The American military quietly waged a campaign from Ethiopia last month to capture or kill top leaders of Al Qaeda in the Horn of Africa, including the use of an airstrip in eastern Ethiopia to mount airstrikes against Islamic militants in neighboring Somalia, according to American officials.

The close and largely clandestine relationship with Ethiopia also included significant sharing of intelligence on the Islamic militants’ positions and information from American spy satellites with the Ethiopian military. Members of a secret American Special Operations unit, Task Force 88, were deployed in Ethiopia and Kenya, and ventured into Somalia, the officials said.

The counterterrorism effort was described by American officials as a qualified success that disrupted terrorist networks in Somalia, led to the death or capture of several Islamic militants and involved a collaborative relationship with Ethiopia that had been developing for years.

Bullshit. The USofA destroyed the nascent government that actually brought stability to the area because they needed a practice run for Bush's Iraq escalation 'plan.' Somalia's new government being of an Islamic bent, they wuz it. The "secret" involvement of the Bushista regime being so widely known, it is now necessary to reboot the storyline because  it got SO fucked.