US prepares for military intervention in Somalia

US prepares for military intervention in Somalia :: www.uruknet.info :: informazione dal medio oriente :: information from middle east :: [vs-1]

WSWS, August 6, 2011 The Obama administration is preparing a new military intervention in Somalia under the pretext of humanitarian concern for starving drought victims. The media has fallen into line with a campaign mixing crocodile tears and hand-wringing with denunciations of the Islamist movement al-Shabaab, which is blamed for the deepening crisis. Just as the bombing campaign in Libya was launched with appeals to save the civilian population of Benghazi from slaughter, so now a fresh intervention is being prepared in Africa supposedly to save the starving children of Somalia. This is a cynical exercise in public deception. Al-Shabaab is at most 10,000 strong, according to a report produced for the US Council on Foreign Relations. Its most loyal forces probably amount to only a few hundred fighters. It has no organisational connections to Al Qaeda, according to the National Counterterrorism Center.