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Born at the Crest of the Empire

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Who failed in Somalia?

After watching that excellent Frontline episode last night (catch a reply if you can,) I find myself wondering about the recent failure in Somalia. Frontline told a story of the CIA placing assets and establishing the contacts and strategy for the Afghanistan operation, only to be followed by a takeover of the operation by Rumsfeld.

I've written a fair bit about the Department of Defense taking over the CIA's traditional in the field intelligence and operations roles since that time(1, 2,) and there is reporting noting the DoD's deployment in Djibouti was specifically targeted at Somalia.

So, after watching that Frontline episode last night which detailed the efforts in Afghanistan, I find myself wondering if Somalia was the DoD's attempt to create an Afghanistan-type operation completely on its own. Although it was not the overthrow of a government, the basic parallel of forming, bribing, supporting a coalition of warlords was strikingly similar.

To support this idea that Somalia was a DoD operation I offer evidence of dissent from the two Departments who would have traditionally taken the lead in such an operation, CIA and State.

So, my question is this. Is the failure in Somalia, which is now becoming an Al Qaeda safe zone, because Rumsfeld felt it was more important to win the turf battle with the CIA? Did Somalia fall under the control of the Islamic Courts Union because this was DoD's first attempt at such an operation rather than "leaving it to the pros?"

I don't know. I just found myself thinking about it last night.

2 Comments:

  • I did catch a little of that last night (no cable, bad reception) and was amazed how Cheney and Rumsfeld make the CIA look trustworthy and reliable. It also made me wonder how hard it's going to be to remove these people from the positions of power they've strived for all their lives.

    By Blogger Lew Scannon, at 5:45 PM  

  • So long as Bush is in charge, they are safe. To fire either one of them would be to admit that his policies have been a failure.

    Oh, and that episode will be online at pbs.org in the near future.

    Mike

    By Blogger mikevotes, at 6:36 PM  

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