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U.S. officials walk back claim drone strike killed senior al-Qaeda leader

The US has been making numerous wild claims about killing so called al- Qaeda leaders in Syria- Not a one of them can be trusted. I’ve included two of my previous reports on this very topic. Lies, lies and more lies.

Washington Post

U.S. military officials are walking back claims that a recent strike in Syria killed an influential al-Qaeda figure, following assertions by the dead man’s family that he had no ties to terrorists but was a father of 10 tending to his sheep when he was slain by an American missile.

Lotfi Hassan Misto, 56, whose family identified him as the victim of a Hellfire missile attack on May 3, was a former bricklayer who lived quietly in this town in northwest Syria, according to interviews with his brother, son and six others who knew him. They described a kind, hard-working man whose “whole life was spent poor.”

The operation was overseen by U.S. Central Command, which claimed hours after the strike, without citing evidence or naming a suspect, that the Predator drone strike had targeted a “senior Al Qaeda leader.” But now there is doubt inside the Pentagon about who was killed, two U.S. defense officials told The Washington Post.

“We are no longer confident we killed a senior AQ official,” one official said. The other, offering a slightly different view, said “though we believe the strike did not kill the original target, we believe the person to be al-Qaeda.”

A video by the Syrian Civil Defense, often referred to as the “White Helmets,” captures the moments after a U.S. strike killed Lotfi Hassan Misto, 56, on May 3.

The strike was confirmed by the “White Helmets”

The strike

Details about what transpired before and after the U.S. attack were gathered from interviews with Misto’s family and neighbors and images provided by the Syrian Civil Defense, a humanitarian response group often referred to as the “White Helmets” that responded to the strike location within minutes.

Misto’s neighbors described his routines of drinking tea with family and friends, tending to his animals and leaving home mostly to pray at his mosque. He was “old-fashioned,” they said, and did not own a phone.

3 replies on “U.S. officials walk back claim drone strike killed senior al-Qaeda leader”

” Why do you have to tell anyone that which is so plainly obvious?”
Because:
So many people in the prosperous ‘ First World ‘ sub-consciously or consciously self identify with the invisible elephant in the room. They realize that our prosperity is a result of war machine economics and continued neocolonial imperialism. They just don’t want to think about all the dirty little details.

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