Busted: Donald Trump releases supposed video of botched Yemen raid, but it’s ten years old

| 9:36 pm EST February 3, 2017
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The U.S. military raid in Yemen ordered by Donald Trump was already enough of a disaster that it’s resulted in the death of a Navy SEAL, the death of numerous civilians including children, and the destruction of a $75 million military vehicle — and it appears to have accomplished none of its goals in the process. But it gets even worse. Trump and his administration have now been busted for releasing what they claimed was a video of the Yemen raid, even though the footage is from a decade ago.

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The surreal “fake footage” of the Yemen raid was reported by respected Joy-Ann Reid host MSNBC, who tweeted that it “Turns out the video the Trump administration claims was part of the “intel” the got in the failed Yemen raid is 10 years old & avail online.” That led Democratic Congressman Ted Lieu to posit that “Perhaps when Sean Spicer said yesterday that the botched #Yemen raid was successful ‘by all standards,’ he watched the wrong video.”

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And in a tacit admission that the video in question was in fact not of the Yemen raid, that video has now been withdrawn from government websites.

Even worse, the high-risk low-reward raid in Yemen may have been hastily ordered by Donald Trump in an attempt to please the government of the United Arab Emirates, where he’s been trying unsuccessfully to build a golf course for some time. The military op was so strongly desired by the UAE government that it supplied troops to fight alongside the Navy SEALs. The operation, which targeted the fading Al Qaeda instead of targeting ISIS, which is much more potent threat to the United States, appears to have been for the benefit of the UAE and not for the U.S.

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