[WSJ] Culture of excessive risk is faulted in ill-fated mission against Islamists in West Africa.
The investigation stemmed from an Oct. 3, 2017, mission in which about a dozen U.S. soldiers and special-operations force members, along with roughly 30 Nigerien soldiers, set out on what began as a planned meeting with local officials. But by the next day, the troops instead were assigned to another part of the country to search the suspected abandoned house of an associate of Adnan abu Walid al-Sahrawi, the leader of Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, an affiliate of the extremist movement.
They later returned to a village near Tongo Tongo, and after conducting their meeting with local officials, were ambushed by roughly 50 attackers, a two-hour attack that killed two Green Berets, two soldiers assigned to assist special-operations forces and five Nigerien soldiers.
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