McMoron and Company

Last week, while most of that was still going on, the president was asked at a press conference whether he would seek congressional approval to take action against the Islamic State in Syria as well as Iraq. He said yes but it would have to wait until specific plans were fully developed in light of all possible variables: “We don’t have a strategy yet.”

Widely and in some places willfully taken out of context to mean “I have no idea what we should do”, that quote was the headline everywhere, the talk of the Sunday morning news shows. Of all the many politicians and pundits to castigate Obama for lack of a detailed battle plan, perhaps the most remarkable was Kentucky’s Senator Rand Paul, a libertarian deeply suspicious of U.S. military action, someone who opposed punishing Syria for its use of chemical weapons and who has advocated cutting off all foreign aid.

Ahmed Godane, the leader of the Somali militant group Al-Shabaab, was killed in a U.S. military operation, the Pentagon said Friday.
A look inside Al-Shabaab
"The U.S. military undertook operations against Godane on Sept. 1, which led to his death. Removing Godane from the battlefield is a major symbolic and operational loss to Al-Shabaab," said Pentagon press secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby.
On Monday, U.S. military conducted a strike in the African country targeting Godane, who pledged allegiance to al Qaeda. He has headed the Al-Shabaab as it has terrorized East Africa, killing Somali officials, aid workers and others in a spate of suicide bombings. Godane allegedly was behind 2013's deadly siege of a Nairobi, Kenya, shopping mall.