wassup?
Posted on 10/26/2012 11:59:53 AM PDT by mojito
DJIBOUTI CITY, Djibouti — Around the clock, about 16 times a day, drones take off or land at a U.S. military base here, the combat hub for the Obama administration’s counterterrorism wars in the Horn of Africa and the Middle East.
Some of the unmanned aircraft are bound for Somalia, the collapsed state whose border lies just 10 miles to the southeast. Most of the armed drones, however, veer north across the Gulf of Aden to Yemen, another unstable country where they are being used in an increasingly deadly war with an al-Qaeda franchise that has targeted the United States.
Camp Lemonnier, a sun-baked Third World outpost established by the French Foreign Legion, began as a temporary staging ground for U.S. Marines looking for a foothold in the region a decade ago. Over the past two years, the U.S. military has clandestinely transformed it into the busiest Predator drone base outside the Afghan war zone, a model for fighting a new generation of terrorist groups.
The Obama administration has gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal the legal and operational details of its targeted-killing program. Behind closed doors, painstaking debates precede each decision to place an individual in the cross hairs of the United States’ perpetual war against al-Qaeda and its allies.
Increasingly, the orders to find, track or kill those people are delivered to Camp Lemonnier. Virtually the entire 500-acre camp is dedicated to counterterrorism, making it the only installation of its kind in the Pentagon’s global network of bases.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
The Compost claims that nothing in this story is classified - it it isn't, it should be. Especially the operational photo of the base which can be seen at the link.
Lots of angry comments about spilling this information, from Compost readers no less, and more angry accusations that the Compost is ignoring the Benghazi story.
That base has been public knowlege for about two years, I think.
There are others, too.
Read the whole thing, and take a look at the photo.
There’s a pretty shocking level of detail here.
wassup?
Longer than two years - there has been an enormous amount of unclassified information on Camp Lemmonier.
Maybe we should ask that reporter why no drone strikes in Benghazi on 9/11?
Sheik Yerbouti! I heard he died in a Yemen drone attack, but I could be wrong about that.
I seem to recall that Lemmonier was once a major French base
occupied by 13 DBLE and hosted some pretty brutal
survival training.
The only 'secret' to this base is that it's only a secret to us.
The people who live there know what it is and where it is. The 'enemy' (pick one, plenty to choose from) have even more detailed photos, and photos of places you might never see.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.