A secret US task force killed an innocent woman and her 4-year-old daughter as they ran from the site of a drone strike. The Americans got even the most basic facts wrong but said that the rules of engagement were not violated. My latest @theintercept 🧵theintercept.com/2023/11/12/som… For all their supposed expertise, the Americans were confused and inexperienced according to a Pentagon investigation obtained by @TheIntercept via #FOIA. The inquiry is the first such document to be made public about a U.S. drone strike in Africa.

"The U.S. is committed to... accountability for atrocities."

Is this only for Nazi atrocities, @SecBlinken? Or is this satire?

I've spent my professional life chronicling U.S. efforts to buck accountability for atrocities and civilian harm.

🧵below...

https://twitter.com/SecBlinken/status/1707826104759705760

Civilian Killings Went Unpunished latimes.com/news/la-na-vie…

U.S. government officials and fellow travelers who parrot their talking points are aggrieved by this reporting. I claim that the Nigerien general palling around with this US special ops commander helped to overthrow Niger's democratically-elected govt
theintercept.com/2023/07/27/nig… I also mention the 11 coups by US trained officers in West Africa, alone, since 2008. But I do NOT claim causation.

The Pentagon has plans for dealing with China, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and terrorists. @DeptofDefense is happy for you to pay for it all, but doesn't want you to know about them. #FOIA #FOIAfail

Kissinger’s Killing Fields

Interviews with 75+ witnesses and survivors of U.S. attacks and an exclusive archive of documents show that Henry Kissinger is responsible for more civilian deaths in Cambodia than was previously known. My latest @theintercept
theintercept.com/series/henry-k… Henry Kissinger is responsible for more civilian deaths in Cambodia than was previously known, according to an exclusive archive of U.S. military documents and groundbreaking interviews with Cambodian survivors and American witnesses theintercept.com/2023/05/23/hen…

It's worth mentioning that is exactly what happened with the Vietnam War. A cottage industry of revisionist histories of U.S. "success" in Vietnam began creeping onto bookshelves in the 1970s, with works by Guenter Lewy et al. 🧵

https://twitter.com/MMazarr/status/1556822648788844547

Lewy attempted to show the American War in Vietnam in the best possible light. In some respects, the book is unbelievably false and stilted. But, oddly enough, the horror and truth of the war keeping seeping through. Nobody put in better than the late, great Kevin Buckley...

The US has conducted almost 400 military interventions since 1776 -- half of them between 1950 and 2019, according to new, blockbuster report by @SiditaKushi and @monicaduffytoft. More than 25% of them have occurred in the post-Cold War era!

journals.sagepub.com/eprint/NSBIKPX… The post-9/11 era "appears to be the third most active for US interventions of relatively higher hostility levels... usages of force are overwhelmingly commonplace. Since 2000 alone, the US has engaged in 30 interventions at level 4 (usage of force) or 5 (war). "

I've been trying for the last 10+ years...🧵

Pentagon’s Own Map of U.S. Bases in Africa Contradicts Its Claim of “Light” Footprint
theintercept.com/2020/02/27/afr…

https://twitter.com/nyeusi_waasi/status/1556641009899110400

Revealed: The U.S. military's 36 code-named operations in Africa ca.news.yahoo.com/revealed-the-u…

Did President Biden read the letter that he sent to Speaker of the House and President pro tempore of the Senate last month?

https://twitter.com/asmamk/status/1545950529104367616

While the White House refuses to talk about it, the U.S. has run so-called 127e counterterrorism programs in Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen
theintercept.com/2022/07/01/pen…

“We got the wrong guy. I had just killed someone’s dad,” said Bennett Miller, an Air Force intelligence analyst. “I had watched his kids pick up the body parts. Then I had gone home and hugged my own kids.”🧵nytimes.com/2022/04/15/us/… The Pentagon insists that it rarely kills the wrong people. Survivors of air strikes and those that plan and carry out those attacks, like Bennett Miller, often tell a very different story. theintercept.com/2021/06/03/pen…

“I try to address the soul fatigue, the existential questions many people have to wrestle with in this work,” said Capt. James Taylor, a chaplain at Creech Air Force base. The “work” in question is killing people via drone strike. 🧵nytimes.com/2022/04/15/us/… Coincidentally, drone strike victims and survivors have proposed a solution to drone pilots chronic “soul fatigue”: stop killing us.

The strike killed Zemari Ahmadi, three of his sons — Zamir, 20, Faisal, 16, and Farzad, 11; three children of his brother Romal — Arween, 7, Binyamin, 6 and Ayat, 2; Malika, 3, the daughter of another brother, and a cousin’s infant daughter, Sumaiya

https://twitter.com/AP/status/1455969128280469510

It's important to learn all the names.

In 2019, at age 25, Malana had just given birth to a son. Her relatives were driving her to a clinic in Afghanistan’s Khost Province when their vehicle was attacked by a U.S. drone, killing Malana and four others. nytimes.com/2019/12/01/wor…

During this, no doubt fleeting, moment when Americans seem to care desperately about Afghan lives, it’s a good time to look back on some earlier coverage that some may have missed…. 🧵 This one by @andrewquilty theintercept.com/2020/12/18/afg…

I just want to flag this very important portion of a very important piece, "I Can’t Forget the Lessons of Vietnam. Neither Should You" by @viet_t_nguyen where he writes: "We were civilians, but this was a war story."
nytimes.com/2021/08/19/opi…

🧵 "It is in civilian experiences... that we truly find war stories," writes @viet_t_nguyen

I've done a bit of conflict and post-conflict reporting, including in Vietnam, and I've found this to be the ultimate truth of war.

A former @RoyalAirForce drone pilot tells @thetimes about the impact on his mental health and how he was “sickened” by the “morally questionable” deaths and injuries of civilians caused by coalition aircraft. (Thread) thetimes.co.uk/article/1d4397… “My nightmares are about watching people burn to death and watching women and children lying dead in the street. You sit and watch these things and you are then told . . . that is not going to make you ill,” said the
ex-MQ-9 Reaper pilot.

The U.S. "launched a two-month Joint Combined Exchange Training (JCET) to "train Mozambican marines for two months to support Mozambique’s efforts to prevent the spread of terrorism and violent extremism." (h/t @JasonPatinkin)
mz.usembassy.gov/u-s-government… Did @USSOCAF forget that JCETs aren't for training foreign forces but for training U.S. forces? Or are we all finally dropping this pretense? mz.usembassy.gov/u-s-government…

Napalm? Yep, napalm.

Lonnie Coffman, 70, an Alabama grandfather drove to Washington to attend Trump’s “Save America Rally” in a pickup packed with an assault rifle, three handguns and 11 Mason jars filled with homemade napalm, according to court filings. apnews.com/article/electi… Cleveland Meredith Jr., a Georgia man texted friends: “Headed to DC with a (s—-) ton of 5.56 armor-piercing ammo." The following day, he texted: “Thinking about heading over to Pelosi (C——’s) speech and putting a bullet in her noggin on Live TV.” apnews.com/article/electi…

With the attack on Camp Simba, the U.S. base in Manda Bay, Kenya, you may have questions about what the U.S. has been doing in Kenya -- and Africa more generally (thread)

https://twitter.com/HarunMaruf/status/1213805645327216643

Camp Simba (Manda Bay) is just one of 34 bases (mostly clustered in the north and west as well as the Horn of Africa) that have recently been used by U.S. troops conducting missions across the Africa continent theintercept.com/2018/12/01/u-s…

The U.S. spent years building a $110 million drone base in Niger -- a project beset by scores of setbacks, delays, and cost increases. Now, it may be abandoned along with U.S. assistance to French forces battling militants in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso. nyti.ms/2ZuClwd It's worth mentioning that the U.S. has a 10-year agreement, which ends in 2024, for use of the base in Agadez, Niger. If it's fully exercised, that $110 million drone base will actually cost about $280 million theintercept.com/2018/08/21/us-…