Unbelievable, but there it is, new drone base gone.
Even the Democrats must know that Biden has got to be replaced.

Niger’s Agrees to Release 1,000 US Troops Held Hostage in Exchange for Biden’s Handing Over Our New $100M Airbase

Another terrible humiliation for the US under Biden. Another news story that the Democrat media has censored.

Chad has followed suit and demanded US troops leave.… pic.twitter.com/VXR1QNUZwS

— 🇺🇸 Pamela Geller 🇺🇸 🇮🇱 (@PamelaGeller) April 22, 2024

From a month ago, a bit of background.

Great news story. Anything more substantive?

The gift that keeps on giving.

In reply to Danimal

Danimal said:

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Great news story. Anything more substantive?

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I actually think the X story has all the marks of being sketchy
and possibly misleading, but the French report is good.
As noted by the X report, there has not been a rush from
main stream to cover this story and I still don't know if
that is because they always cover up for Biden, or just possibly
there wasn't much even an active, tough US Admin could do.
Yeah, right.

In reply to Rongagin71 WTF? What I'm reading cannot possibly be true.

In reply to TexAgs91 Understandable. Pres Biden's level of leadership has been amazing.

Here is the latest update I could find...U.S. still trying to talk but
the delegation from Washington was simply left to wait for two days,
and never got to see the new dictator.
This isn't just about not wanting Russia to take over the base or
about fighting Islamic terror, there is also uranium that Iran wants.

Damn! It's bad when the Nigerian prince kicks you to the curb. He's smarter than 81 million Americans . Get off my lawn, Joe!

In reply to Rongagin71

Quote:

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Even the Democrats must know that Biden has got to be replaced.

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Surely you can't be serious

No way this happens under Trump.

I think the 1,000 of troops held hostage is definitely misleading, but I am pretty sure Niger told us to get all our US forces out of their country (a different kind of failure on foreign policy levels)

Other stories I'm reading say the junta overthrew the existing government last summer, and they have put new government officials in place. I'm not sure what any president would have done. Sent U.S. troops to protect the U.S.-friendly government leaders? I hope we're smart enough to take everything not set in concrete before we go, but Biden's administration has a bad track record on that.

In reply to malenurse

The administration should immediately declare this an act of war. Once the 1,000 troops are home safely, it should perform a targeted strike (with either drones or special forces) to take out the key members of the junta. Then it should destroy a Niger military installation to show that it can easily destroy individuals as well as the whole. Just like with small children, you don't offer diplomacy and negotiations, you warn Niger of the consequences of breaking their agreement and then you take swift and immediate action. Russia is in no place to stop anything.

They were held hostage?... This implies US troops were being held against their will in exchange for a list of demands. What were those demands

Don't think this story is 100% accurate but may not be far off, Russia has already put a few air defense systems in Niger so they could shoot down any American aircraft that tried to get our soldiers and equipment out. Remember these bases have a lot of drone and drone hardware in them that Russia has yet to get their hands on.

In reply to e=mc2

e=mc2 said:

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Be sure and leave billions in weapons! Worst POTUS ever.

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By far. The fact this washed up loser was able to become president was a disaster. But his actual presidency is something we may never recover from. And yet there are people that still back this jackass. In any normal world Biden should lose this election by 20 points.

In reply to zag213004

zag213004 said:

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They were held hostage?... This implies US troops were being held against their will in exchange for a list of demands. What were those demands

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IF...this is true, he'll probably "handle" it like Afghanistan and like the current Islamo-commie "demonstrations" on college campuses. If people cant see this moron for what he is we are done.

This dude has never been able to get anything right.

Wth is wrong with some of you actually believing troops are being held hostage?

Niger has been working with Russia since the coup. In Mali Russia has trained troops, fought alongside in the Sehar, who in turn, also have been working with Niger. They've been partners with Russia in the past, and quite frankly, this new government doesn't see democracy in the same light we do. Niger kicked out France a year ago so the writing was on the wall for us. Our diplomats failed to change their tone and failed to recognize how volatile our relationship was. We came in a couple months ago demanding reformation to Democracy or else.

The simply didn't trust us and didn't want a country coming in telling them what to do. Russia is building an air base and heavily invested in mining. Russia is bringing jobs and money and a promise of protection. We did not.

In reply to Hubert J. Farnsworth

Hubert J. Farnsworth said:

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But we were told by the moderates on here that the adults were back in charge.

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I just started a thread about this. All of this is because these "adults" don't hold the bad actors accountable.

SOCOM & AFRICOM (and probably CIA) bears a lot of the blame for the fiasco with Agadez.

SOCOM basically established the base without coordination/approval (likely in collaboration with OGAs) to fly Preds/Reapers in support of all the CT they have been doing on Africa for the past 10-15 years. AFRICOM saw it as free chicken, and went along.

As I recall, most of OSD (outside of SOLIC) opposed it, as did the State department -- because there was no SOFA, the Niger government was neither reliable nor stable, and the whole endeavor was a big expansion without support of Congress. But SOCOM has enough funding flexibility to do what they want, and present DoD with a fait accompli.

Fast forward 10 years, and here we are -- in the exact situation the opponents of the Agadez base were worried about.

This doesn't absolve Biden -- the whole thing happened in the Obama Administration.

But it is a case study of the tale wagging the dog, and the downside of have a global SOCOM that has too much unaccountable money and not enough oversight.

In reply to Trinity Ag That was good insight and information. I'm admittedly ignorant to many of the going-ons in Africa.

We really need to put to bed the policies of nation building. I suspect we felt it was possible after the successes of Germany and Japan after WW2. However, those were very different scenarios then Iraq and Afghanistan. Sarah Paine makes a lot of good points (I highly recommend the whole interview):



TLDW, you can't rebuild a country that has never had the institutions of a functioning society and whose people have no sense of nation. We need to stop wasting taxpayer funds and American lives on these fool errands.

Many African counties are subject to tribal warfare. There is too much bad blood between tribes to join together to make a state with artificially drawn borders. They will continue to wallow in poverty for the foreseeable future.

Good excuse to bring this up

In reply to FIDO95 So much truth, the USA sucks at nation building yet its foreign policy leans heavily on doing it with standard troops. The only times we have had luck doing anything was with a small team of green berets being dropped into a country and helping that country build itself. If we build that country for them it will never last