The first covert military operation carried out under Trump's watch was a complete disaster and "almost everything went wrong" according to an official quoted by NBC News.
A member of SEAL Team 6, an 8-year-old American citizen, and other civilians were killed during the raid in Yemen.
An MV-22 Osprey experienced a hard landing near the site, injuring several SEALs, one severely. The tilt-rotor aircraft had to be destroyed. A SEAL was killed during the firefight on the ground, as were some noncombatants, including females. [...]
The senior military official said the 8-year-old girl, Nawar al-Awlaki, also known as Nora, was among the noncombatants killed in the raid, which also resulted in the death of several Yemeni women. U.S. officials said some of the women who were killed, however, were combatants and had opened fire on the SEALs as they approached the al Qaeda camp.
That's the official story offered to NBC News, which is bad enough on its own, but the story shared by Nora's grandfather tells a different but not necessarily contradictory story.
According to the girl's grandfather, Nora was just one of a group of children that were killed in their home along with all of the women who were inside at the time. "Numerous" civilians were killed according to the official cited by NBC News, while local witnesses say as many as 59 were killed.
So what really happened? It's an open question, one that we may not have an answer for anytime soon.
The goal of the mission was to capture "computer equipment" which could mean anything from hard drives to cellphones. It's not clear, based on NBC's report, if they actually obtained anything.
The name al-Awlaki may sound familiar because, as you may recall, Anwar al-Awlaki was killed by the Obama administration in 2011. al-Awlaki's death was used by the likes of Glenn Greenwald and Code Pink to make all manner of wild accusations against the Obama administration. Some went so far as to claim President Obama may launch drone strikes against Americans at Starbucks coffee shops.
I'm not going to do that in this case because we just don't know enough about what happened yet, but it certainly doesn't look good. It's notable that the military's official story and the story of witnesses don't necessarily contradict each other. In both cases, they acknowledge that "numerous" civilians including women and at least one child were killed.
To be clear, this was not a"holdover mission" approved by President Obama according to NBC News. This was approved by the Trump regime.
It remains to be seen if the far-left in this country will make as big of a stink about this as they did six years ago. It remains to be seen if the fiercest critics of the drone program under President Obama will acknowledge that putting boots on the ground is just as if not more dangerous as more humans, and hence more opportunities for error, poor judgment and collateral damage, are introduced.
I suspect this will be the first of many botched operations and calamities that will leave people reminiscing about the steady hand of the Obama administration.