U.S: We Will Not Send Armed Forces To Nigeria (U.S. Marine Claim UNTRUE)

This piece is based on the personal findings I made in the early hours of this morning. Contrary to the widespread speculations and rumours about the US marines in the Northern part of the country, U.S. President, Obama affirms that the U.S. will help Nigeria in combating the insurgence. Obama, in an interview with 'CBS This Morning' said: We're sending in a team made up of... Military, law enforcement and other experts. And we're very glad that Nigeria has accepted the help. Obviously, what's happening is awful and as a father to two girls I can't imagine what the parents are going through. Erhm... but this organization, Boko Haram has been one of the worst regional or local terrorist organizations in the world. We've long sought to work with Nigeria on dealing with them and we're gonna do everything we can to assist them in recovering young women http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aeiaigI2FY A 6 man team involving arrived Nigeria yesterday, shoving aside the widespread lies of the Marines in the North. Excerpts below: Six U.S. military advisers arrived in Nigeria Friday to assist the nation in its search efforts, bringing the total number of US military personnel there to 18, including the 11 who are permanently assigned advise and help train Nigerian military forces. Two additional military personnel are set to arrive later Friday, and seven more will travel to Nigeria on Saturday, said State Department Spokesperson Jen Psaki. “If there are needs for more, we'll continue to assess that," Psaki said. But the official said that any rescue mission had to be a Nigerian one. "We've been training Nigerian military and security forces in counter-terrorism for the past two years. They have to step up." U.S. defense and military officials for now knock down any speculation that US military forces would be directly involved in a rescue effort. "We have no clear idea where they (girls) are," the official said. There's also a high level of concern that the girls themselves would not survive such a rescue mission. Unlike most hostage situations, this is a large group, spread out in separate locations, and Boko Haram has already proven they are willing to slaughter innocents in large numbers. "There's a lot we can do," said one senior military official. "Provide intel, training, advising, mission planning, communications. But we won't be the trigger pullers." Reuters reported Thursday that the U.S. was considering a request by Nigeria to provide surveillance aircraft and intelligence. "We are considering it," Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. assistant-secretary of State for African Affairs, said in an interview. But as of Friday, no U.S. military drones have flown any surveillance missions over Nigeria, Chad or Cameroon. It's not clear when or even if that may happen. Kirby said Friday the use of drones was not being discussed. “There are no active discussions” with the Nigerian government about the use of “unmanned aerial surveillance,” said Rear Adm. John Kirby during a Pentagon briefing. The Nigerian government has only accepted the offer of the small “coordination team” from the U.S., Kirby said, without disclosing what additional aid the U.S. may have offered. Late Thursday, Secretary of State John Kerry announced the arrival of U.S. support in Nigeria. “Our inter-agency team is hitting the ground,” he said. They are going to be working with Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan’s government to return the girls to their families and their communities, he added. Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/missing-nigeria-schoolgirls/u-s-experts-arrive-nigeria-hunt-girls-taken-boko-haram-n101126 PS: Based on personal investigation, there are no U.S forces in Nigeria other than the ones supposedly protecting delegates at the World Economic Forum on Africa, which is on-going at Abuja. Vanguard, Newswatch and some Nigerian media are misleading Nigerians for reasons unknown. The arrival of the foreign troops is coming on the heels of the appeal yesterday by the former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar for Nigerians to unite and fight the insurgents to achieve success. According to Kerry, “Our inter-agency team is hitting the ground in Nigeria now and they are going to be working with President Goodluck Jonathan’s government to do everything that we possibly can to return these girls.” The CNN also quoted the U.S. Navy Rear Admiral, John Kirby, who serves as Pentagon press secretary, as saying that the small team of seven would join advisers supporting local efforts to find the girls abducted over three weeks ago. Kerry said the US team, working with the Nigerian government, would do everything possible to free the girls and everything possible to stop the atrocities of Boko Haram. “We are also going to do everything possible to counter the menace of Boko Haram. The entire world should not only be condemning this outrage but should be doing everything possible to help Nigeria in the days ahead,” he added. But there are no plans to send American combat troops into Nigeria, Mr. Kirby said. http://www.vanguardngr.com/2014/05/chibok-american-marines-locate-abducted-girls-sambisa-forest/#sthash.pNslzzOk.dpuf Upon closer analysis, I discovered, after 'Googling' 'U.S.-Marines-Nigeria', that ONLY Nigerian blogs and news sites brought results; all claiming that the U.S. Marines have apprehended two Boko Haram members. This is blatantly untrue - for now, there's nothing of such. Vanguard reported the bolded above in the same article where they claim a Boko Haram member is apprehended. Credit: Vanguard The picture above is assumed to have been taken a day or few days back when the supposed terrorist was caught. If this is true, how come it is blurry in an age where the least photographing device would not be as terrible as that? The resolution is terribly low and to me that only means one thing - it was copied from a website and the cues from the picture tells me it is not a recent one. Nigeria Journalists are terrible! #Sanchez 70 Likes

Re: U.S: We Will Not Send Armed Forces To Nigeria (U.S. Marine Claim UNTRUE) by Ekundayo7: 7:26am

Yup, all fake news. And then there is this write up, to further quiet the paranoid doom and gloom neo-colonialist crew: Nigeria school attack: why US hasn't sent Special Forces to rescue girls Offers of US military assistance are 'politically dicey' for Nigeria, experts say, and intelligence suggests the schoolgirls have been split up, making their rescue complicated even for Special Forces. The United States is sending eight military personnel to Nigeria to offer intelligence assistance following the kidnapping of nearly 300 schoolgirls, but if Washington were serious about helping find them, why not offer up a contingent of US Special Operations Forces to help do the job? That is the question posed by some lawmakers, who note that such rescue and extraction missions are, after all, a Special Ops specialty. And how tricky could it be, they add, to overpower a brutal, but military undisciplined, rebel group? “I would like to see Special Forces deployed to help rescue these young girls,” Sen. Susan Collins (R) of Maine told CNN, adding that she would think Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan “would welcome Special Forces coming in.” RECOMMENDED: Think you know Africa? Take our geography quiz. That has not been the case, say top US military officials. “We had made repeated offers of assistance, and it was only just this week when the Nigerians accepted the offer of this coordination cell,” Rear Adm. John Kirby, Pentagon press secretary, said Friday. The US military personnel in that cell will include eight US troops being sent to Nigeria in addition to another 10 service members that were already working in the embassy. These are US troops trained in intelligence collection and analysis, Rear Admiral Kirby said, and they also will work out of the embassy. “We’re not talking about US military operations in Nigeria to go find these girls,” Kirby said. “That’s not the focus here.” But specially trained personnel, such as Special Operations Forces (SOF), could provide some much-needed expertise, some argue. “Special Ops would give us a deeper understanding for what’s going on,” says retired Lt. Col. Rudy Atallah, former Africa Counterterrorism director at the Pentagon. Such forces, he adds, would also help to “figure out how to mitigate the threat.” At the same time, that prospect is “politically dicey” in Nigeria. “We’ve always looked to the Nigerians for assistance,” which has included peacekeeping operations through the Africa Union, notes Mr. Atallah, now a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center. “Now all of a sudden they have an insurgency that has been growing and taking root in the north, and it’s an embarrassment for them.” There is also a concern that the Nigerian military does not prioritize human rights when they are pursuing targets, and that innocent civilians suffer as a result. “Nigeria has been extremely heavy-handed,” Atallah adds. “And that has led to Boko Haram getting some sympathetic support” from civilians who fear the government almost as much as the rebel group. The Nigerian government “has been promising for months that it would adopt a softer approach,” says Bronwyn Bruton, deputy director of the Africa Center at the Atlantic Council. These promises have yet to come to fruition, and the concern is that the US military equipment that Nigeria is requesting could be used “to carry out their hard-fisted approach,” she notes. “The United States doesn’t want to put an American face on the brutality of the Nigerian military.” For now, the US troops – most of whom have already arrived in Nigeria – will begin doing “gap analysis,” which will include examining “what capabilities the Nigerians are applying to the effort [to find the girls] and what gaps they may need and additional help and/or resources they may need,” Kirby says. Intelligence indicates that many of the girls have been split up into small groups and moved to different locations, and these locations are remote and difficult to penetrate. "Instead of searching for one group of 250 girls, law enforcement and the military are likely looking for 25 groups of 10 girls or 50 groups of five girls," notes Geoff Porter, an assistant professor at the US Military Academy at West Point, in a paper for the academy's Combating Terrorism Center. "This poses an enormous challenge and diminishes the possibility of a dramatic rescue that will bring this crisis to a quick close." These are points strikingly illustrated by US military efforts to help capture Joseph Kony, Uganda leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), who is wanted by the International Criminal Court to face war crimes charges. The US deployed 100 Special Forces troops there in 2011 to help thousands of African troops in their search for him, to no avail. Three years later, the Pentagon announced in March that it is sending four Osprey aircraft and 150 more Air Force Special Forces personnel to provide further help. “Obviously, Kony has been elusive for some time. We’ve been doing our best to capture him, and it still hasn’t happened,” Atallah says. “Do I see our efforts expanding into something like we’re doing with the LRA?” he adds. “At this juncture, I don’t think we’re going to go down that path.” The abductions and the search for Boko Haram, as well as the hunt for Kony, will likely spur more study within the Pentagon, however. The episodes will be a catalyst for military strategists and special operators to more closely examine rebel groups that are able to operate across a number of national borders, Atallah adds. In the meantime, Pentagon officials are keeping expectations low. “Look, in any hostage situation, time is at a premium,” Kirby said. “We know that time is not on our side.” he added. “These girls have been gone a long time.”