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"Trump's Benghazi?" Americans Were Deployed to Niger Under Obama

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Congresswoman Frederica Wilson is really gorging on her diet of media attention. And she's come up with a new gimmick."Trump's Benghazi."

The Florida Democratic congresswoman who clashed with President Donald Trump over his call to the widow of a soldier killed in an ambush in Niger wants Congress to investigate what she’s calling “Mr. Trump’s Benghazi.”

“The circumstances are similar,” Wilson said. She said in Niger, the four soldiers providing counterterrorism training “didn’t have appropriate weapons where they were. They were told by intelligence there was no threat. They had trucks that were not armored trucks. They were particularly not protected. Just like in Benghazi, they were given the impression that everything was fine.”

Wilson is predictably wrong and ignorant about everything.

1. The Niger deployment of special forces dates back to Obama. The preference for missions of this type where American forces were helping train the locals was very much a key part of Obama era counterterrorism. And they do carry risk when the men come under fire. If Wilson doesn't like it, she had plenty of opportunities to speak up under Obama.

2. Here's how the actual attack appears to have gone down.

"U.S. officials described a chaotic assault in a densely wooded area, as 40-50 extremists in vehicles and on motorcycles fired rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine guns at the patrol, setting off explosions and shattering windows. The soldiers got out of their trucks, returning fire and calling in support from French helicopters and fighter jets that quickly responded to the scene, according to officials. It's unclear if the French aircraft were armed or if they fired on the insurgents."

This nullifies most of Wilson's objections.

3. Wilson doesn't seem to know what happened in Benghazi. The attack there was extraordinary because it was an American mission rather than soldiers in the field. And there had been numerous threats but no real security. That's fundamentally different than soldiers deployed in an area that has terrorist issues being killed in an ambush. 

There are questions to be answered about the attack, but there were far more disturbing attacks under Obama, like Extortion 17, that have never been properly accounted for.

A decorated retired Air Force officer who witnessed one of the most deadly attacks on Navy SEALs in U.S. history is breaking her silence, saying the government covered up evidence detailing that the 2011 downing of a Chinook helicopter gunship that killed 38 fighters in Afghanistan could have been prevented had it not been for restrictions to the military's rules of engagement that were changed under the Obama administration. 

But Congresswoman Wilson doesn't care about any of that. Neither does the left which has suddenly rediscovered an interest in the military.


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