Pentagon wants to use what happened in Somali as a blueprint for the war on terror

The New York Times says Pentagon strategists say the recent military operations in Somalia should serve as a blueprint for other counterterrorism missions around the globe. In this operation, American commandos, using the Ethiopian Army as a surrogate force, rooted out Al Qaeda operatives in the country.

This was the type of Special Operations strike that former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld tried to promote under his watch, military officials told the Times.

But as the Times reports, "Some critics of the Pentagon’s aggressive use of Special Operations troops, including some Democratic members of Congress, have argued that using American forces outside of declared combat zones gives the Pentagon too much authority in sovereign nations and blurs the lines between soldiers and spies."

According to the Times, "The State Department and Pentagon took control of Somalia policy in the summer, after a failed effort by the Central Intelligence Agency to use Somali warlords as proxies to hunt down the Qaeda suspects.

"The trail of the terrorism suspects in Somalia, blamed for the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, had long gone cold. But American military and intelligence officials said that the Ethiopian offensive against the Islamist forces who ruled Mogadishu and much of Somalia until last month flushed the Qaeda suspects from their hide-outs and gave American intelligence operatives fresh information about their whereabouts."

Americans reportedly provided the Ethiopian troops with intelligence regarding the military positions of the Islamist fighters, according to the Times unnamed sources.

A Pentagon consultant, described as having knowledge about Special Operations, told the Times that the Ethiopian army was assisted by small teams of American advisers.

“You’re not talking lots of guys,” the Pentagon consultant who spoke only on condition of anonymity is quoted as saying, “You’re talking onesies and twosies.”