US Rains Cruise Missiles On Somali Village

At least four Tomahawk cruise missiles ($575,000 per unit) smashed into the town of Dhusamareb, Somalia, early thursday morning. That much is concensus. But this all too frequent type of story always goes in radically different and tiresomely predictable directions according to what news source you read.

The NYT article is written by guys named Jeffrey Gettleman and Eric Schmitt whose prior reportage suggests they know the party line and never deviate from approved language and statist outlook. In other words the pentagon speaketh and thus will be written.

Whenever the Times, or the Wall St. Journal et al deliver a story about US military action these days you can bet the farm that in the initial report 1. the US never targets civilians and 2. the bad guys always live in "compounds" (sounds more sinister than "house") and 3. anyone killed deserved to die and is usually called Al Qaeda. If subsequent accounts are numerous or persistent enough to prove otherwise the publication might add a few caveats later on about the dead but will never besmirch the pure intentions involved.

In the Times story right in the headline they call the targeted guy an "Al Qaeda" chief. AQ, you must understand, really gets around, and curiously seems most active wherever there's a bunch of oil. Anyway in the piece they say this about Aden Hashi Ayro:
"Mr. Ayro was one of the most feared and notorious figures in Somalia, a short, wispy man believed to be in his 30s who had gone from lowly car washer to top terrorist suspect blamed for a string of atrocities, including ripping up an Italian graveyard, killing a female BBC journalist and planning suicide attacks all across Somalia."
A little poking around shows that positively nothing seems to be anywhere about a "ripped up Italian graveyard", the shooting death of BBC producer Kate Peyton remains unsolved and hell, I didn't know that the Times could read peoples' minds.

But who is this guy that the US military considered such a high priority they use a bunch of expensive cruise missiles to murder? According to Wikipedia, aside from being a clan leader not much, and information that is available comes from repeated references to the International Crisis Group. So who are they that their word is enough to streak missiles into a country we're not at war with? Apparently they're a self pretentious, phony "conflict management" group that's funded by governments, foundations and private donors, none of which will want the ICG to promote anything short of what the Empire desires. A look at the board members shows more than a little Council on Foreign Relations influence. So in short the ICG and similar organizations seem to be the go-to outfits that supply the bullshit the US military needs to justify their murder sprees, in this case according to the Times, Ayro, several "top lieutenants" and "several other high-ranking Shebab commanders."

But as usual from other news sources we get a slightly different and more depressing picture without the hype and smug, crowing quotes from unnamed military people, like this from Reuters, which suggests cruise missiles blowing up a village might involve quite a bit more shattered bone and gristle than the Times wants to report:

"MOGADISHU (Reuters) - The death toll from U.S. air strikes that killed an Islamist rebel said to be al Qaeda's leader in Somalia rose to 30 on Thursday, a local elder said.
"So far we understand that 30 dead bodies were found in the ruins and at least 15 others were wounded," a local leader in the small central town of Dusamareb told Reuters by telephone.
The elder, who asked not to be named, said the roofs of 25 homes in the area were blown off in the blasts."