January Raid Killed Dozens of Civilians, Destroyed Most of a Village Launched shortly after the inauguration, SEAL Team 6’s raid against the Yemeni village of Yakla was immediately labeled a success by officials, and even after growing evidence of a large civilian death toll and most of the village being destroyed in chaos, officials long insisted it would be judged a success when the intelligence gathered was analyzed.
In early media reports, the intelligence cache was said to be huge, and even after an embarrassing fake video release by the Pentagon they claimed to have high hopes. Today, however, officials are conceding that they didn’t end up with any significant intelligence from the raid.
The admission only adds to the administration’s black eye on the matter, as they had so loudly cheered the operation and continued to do so despite what is an almost impossibly long list of instances of things in the operation going wrong.
This is doubly problematic because the Obama Administration had declined to authorize the same raid in its last weeks, and a lot of the hype was around the Trump Administration trying to present themselves as more willing to act with the early operation and has nothing to show for it.