“In many ways, the Niger operation typifies U.S. military missions underway in roughly 20 African countries, mostly in the northern third of the continent. They tend to be small, they are carried out largely below the radar, and most are focused on a specific aim: rolling back Islamist extremism.” The media has been focused on the Trump-created controversy concerning calls made to families of soldiers lost in battle. Now the event at the root of that controversy is finally getting some attention. What happened to the soliders killed in Niger, and what were they doing there in the first place? NPR: The U.S. Military In Africa: A Discreet Presence In Many Places. (Maybe this is all a simulation to test if we’d actually resort to yelling at each other about a fallen soldier. If so, we failed the test.)

+ Buzzfeed: “A Nigerien official has said US troops acted without proper intelligence. A French official described the battling sides as ‘overlapping.’ But there’s no official US version.”