What were American troops doing in Niger?

Worldly

Vox Media Podcast Network

News Commentary, Politics, News

4.4 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 26 October 2017

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Yochi, Zack, and special guest Loren DeJonge Schulman of the great podcast Bombshell talk about the deaths of four US soldiers in Niger in October, a tragedy at the center of a nasty political fight between President Trump and a grieving military widow. They discuss what those troops were doing there, why no one in the military seems to understand how the mission went so wrong, and how America’s military presence in Africa is quietly growing in both size and risk without public debate or much Congressional oversight -- a dynamic that means these won't be the last US troops to die fighting a shadow war in an African nation. On Elsewhere, we try something new — a dispatch from a wind farm in Puerto Rico that Yochi visited earlier this month while looking into the island's decimated power grid. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to Worldly, Fox's Weekly Look at the most important stories in the world,
0:12.3	part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
0:14.7	I'm Yolke here with Zach.
0:16.4	Hi, and with our special guest, Lauren De Young Schulman, who had been at the Pentagon and
0:20.8	National Security Council, now works at the Center for New American
0:23.7	Security, a think tank here in Washington, and is one of the hosts a really good
0:27.5	podcast called Bomb Shell.
0:29.5	Lauren, welcome.
0:30.5	Thanks for having me.
0:31.5	So this is one of those interesting weeks
0:32.6	where you have things bounce between politics,
0:35.1	national security, then back again.
0:36.8	And there are kind of three questions
0:38.4	that I think have been hovering in the air.
0:39.9	So one is, why on earth is a president of the US fighting with a literally pregnant war widow?
0:46.2	What was happening in Niger that this poor widow's husband died?
0:50.4	And then this kind of bigger question of, is it just Niger or is it Africa?
0:54.0	We sort of know the answer that it's bigger than just Niger, that there are US troops
0:57.9	everywhere but why and what are they doing? And we're going to focus pretty
1:01.9	heavily on the second and the third on what happened
1:04.8	to Niecher and what's happening in Africa.
1:06.7	But let's start with the fight.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Vox Media Podcast Network, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Vox Media Podcast Network and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.