This is excellent journalism, I want to thank the editor that okayed it. It hit me like cold water in the face, I have been supportive of  a lot of the work trying to nip the Islamic-jihad-movement in the bud as de-stabilizing worldwide, since the Bill Clinton years and the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. But this story really hits, really says it: wake up, we are in a different era now, that is over, things have changed. But that the Pentagon may still fighting that old war and no one is paying attention to everything they are doing which they seem to be doing as if nothing has changed.

I find this excerpt exceptionally disturbing:

After the ambush, members of Congress from both parties said they knew little about the American military presence in Niger, expressing alarm.

“I didn’t know there was 1,000 troops in Niger,” Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” two weeks after the deadly attack. (There are actually about 800 American troops in the country.)

“This is an endless war without boundaries, no limitation on time or geography,” Mr. Graham continued, adding, “We don’t know exactly where we’re at in the world militarily and what we’re doing.”

His Democratic colleagues claimed equal bewilderment. On the same episode, the Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer of New York, said he had also been unaware that there were so many American troops in Niger. He called into question whether the authorization passed in the wake of Sept. 11, and other decades-old war power authorities, left the executive branch with carte blanche authority to send troops into danger without asking Congress first.

The Pentagon’s chief spokeswoman, Dana W. White, declined to comment “until the investigation is complete.”

“We have to get the investigation right,” she said.

 I admit I have not been paying attention either!  I think I posted Graham's comment in the news here at the time, but then forgot all about it. (I started looking at some Pakistan news the other day and boy really looks like things have changed a lot there, this one, a real news story, made me laugh aloud: Pakistan Wants US to Help Pay for Border Wall With Afghanistan, they want nothing to do with Afghanistan anymore, hah.) BUT I pay my taxes for those Congresscritters to pay attention, and they apparently are not! Pentagon activities provide jobs jobs jobs, all good stuff until the body bags start arriving and somebody starts getting angry about what we did to their country....