The mission to assign blame for a botched U.S. military raid in Yemen — which Trump authorized while eating dinner with Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner at the White House — has now arrived at a resolution. The unusual “boots on the ground” raid (the first such Yemen mission in years) ended with the first-known combat death of his administration and also killed several non-combatants while failing to strike its (secret) intended Al-Qaeda target. Now, the head of CENTCOM, General Joseph Votel, has accepted blame for the operation in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee:
“I am responsible for this mission. I am the Centcom commander, and I am responsible for what’s done in my region and what’s not done in my region. So I accept responsibly for this.”
The Hill spoke with Votel and asked whether, as commander-in-chief, Trump should accept responsibility for the raid’s failure. Votel did not waver:
“I think that might be — that’s — that — this was a military operation, and I’m responsible for military operations in this region, so I’m taking my responsibility.”
During multiple White House press briefings, Sean Spicer has insisted that this raid was a “successful” one that gathered lots of intelligence (which Spicer claimed was the real objective), but U.S. military officials have revealed that “no significant intelligence” was yielded. Further, the women and children of the Yemeni village that was struck during the raid are now telling their horrific stories, which are heartbreaking and deserve to be read.
In addition, Votel told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he’s closing the book on an “exhaustive” review into the raid and — because he believes no poor decisions were made — he sees no reason for further investigation. The botched mission continues to draw criticism with the father of the slain Navy SEAL refusing to meet with Trump. And the president has reportedly been removed from future authorization decisions on counterterrorism raids while deferring to the Pentagon.
Meanwhile, boots are on the ground in northern Syria to fight ISIS.