Saturday, May 19, 2012

Is the U.S. Conducting Covert Air and Naval Strikes in Yemen and Somalia?

File under: Adventures of the Empire

An innocuous-seeming U.S. Air Force press release. A serendipitous satellite image in Google Earth. Snapshots from a photographer on assignment at a Spanish air base. The crash of an Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle fighter-bomber in the United Arab Emirates. These are some of the fragments of information that Italian aviation blogger David Cenciotti has assembled to reveal the best picture yet of the Pentagon’s secretive war in the Arabian Peninsula and East Africa, reports Wired.

In a series of blog posts over the past two weeks, Cenciotti has described in unprecedented detail the powerful aerial force helping wage Washington’s hush-hush campaign of air strikes, naval bombardments and commando raids along the western edge of the Indian Ocean, including in Yemen and Somalia. Cenciotti outlined the deployment of eight F-15Es from their home base in Idaho to the international air and naval outpost at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, north of Somalia.

Among those blog posts Cenciotti notes:
...on Mar. 11, 2012....local residents reported that planes bombarded the town and a senior Yemeni official confirmed the U.S. inolvement by saying that “The U.S. did not inform us on the attacks. We only knew about this after the U.S. attacked” to the CNN;...on Mar. 18, when an air strike was claimed by the Yemeni government, [despite the fact that] the local Air Force was unable to launch an aerial bombardment as most of its personnel was on strike.

Via Cencioitt's web site,  a screen dump from Google Earth showing six F-15Es on the apron at Camp Lemonnier, Djibouti International Airport, on Oct. 29, 2011.

1 comment:

  1. This is simply impossible!

    The U.S. has NEVER conducted a secret air attack against ANYBODY!! EVER!

    To say otherwise means you must be with the TERRORISTS!!

    ReplyDelete