Thursday, July 14, 2011

The Nation's Loose Lips?

Milblogger "Blackfive" catches The Nation publishing the location of the CIA's main operating base in Mogadishu, from which it presumably directs operations against al-Qa'ida affiliate Al Shabaab.

Some of the commenters suggest that this site was likely already known to Al Shabaab. Given that Mogadishu rises up from the waterfront where the airport is located, making the entire facility easily observable from the city (as Task Force Ranger discovered to its detriment in 1993), this is certainly possible. But the specifics that Jeremy Scahill provides arguably compromise the site's operational security to Al Shabaab's advantage.

Unfortunately, this is hardly the first time The Nation has aided (inadvertently or intentionally) an adversary of the United States. During the U.S. Marines' hunt for Augusto Sandino from 1927 to 1933, pro-Sandino committees in the United States, which included The Nation and the All American Anti-Imperialist League (a front group for the Soviet Comintern), collected funds ostensibly for medical supplies for the Sandinistas. Yet Marine pilots found they were being fired upon by new American munitions not yet issued to the Marines, suggesting somebody in the United States was supplying Sandino with better ammunition than the Marines were receiving.

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