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Seen speculation, and then what are the fundamental questions we re asking. the questions we re asking, this is a very complex situation that they found themselves in. a pretty tough firefight. and what tactical instructions the commander on the scene gave that caused units to maneuver and why they might have been when sergeant johnson s body was found, those are all questions we ll identify during the investigation. and you had a follow-up. you are aware, i imagine, that some of the administration, when faced with tough questions about this operation, the information sharing from the operation, have intimated that perhaps members of the press shouldn t ask such tough questions, particularly of people in uniform or recently in uniform. and i m curious if you have a reaction to that. if you share any of that or take any issue with those questions. let me just speak for myself on sharing information with the media. i don t know exactly what you re referring to. i m not going to bench ....
Of october. do you have an idea of how long the firefight lasted? and did the mirages play any role in disrupting the firefight? anything i would tell you about the mirages, and i ve seen some of it, would be speculat n speculation. what i need to hear from are the guys on the ground who were employing those mirages before i make a reply on what effect those mirages had. do you have a general sense of how long it took place? only that it took several hours. well into the evening on the 3rd of october. sir, one last 4th of october. thank you. could you let us know how many u.s. forces are serving in africom total, west and east africa. maybe a potential breakdown? yeah, sure. i can give you a range. we have, on the order of 6,000, a little over 6,000 forces in africa. and they are in about 53 different countries. ....
Congress feels about that. and so we need to double our communications efforts, and we ll do that. thank you, general. you mentioned this was a reconnaissance mission. have you seen any indication to suggest the nature of the mission changed from its original intent? no. here s what we know. it was planned as a reconnaissance mission. what happened after they began to execute it? did the mission change? that is one of the questions that s being asked. it s a fair question. but i can t but, yes, we ve seen reports. we ve seen the speculation. given what happened, it s a fair question to ask because if the enemy situation was unlikely, we obviously lost four soldiers and two others wounded in a significant firefight. at some point, did the intelligence that was available to them change? did they have other intelligence available? did they decide to do something different than the original patrol with the department forces? those are the key questions the investigation is looking to ....
No judgment as to how long it took them to ask for support. i don t know that they thought they needed support prior to that time. i don t know how this attack unfolded or what their initial assessment was of what they were confronted with. i do know that our logs indicate an hour after the contact, approximately, they requested support. and then i talked about the timeline of the french response. that s just what i know right now. i m not going to tell you that in the investigation we won t find out they attempted to get support and it didn t come. i m just telling you what i know. everything beyond what i told you would be speculation. is there good enough intelligence? do they have enough isr and equipment? general walthauser in his confirmation hearing last year said he s the economy theater. clearly he doesn t have enough. if the french have to come and help out, doesn t that, you know, raise the question is there enough american equipment there? number one. and again, secreta ....
The second, every time something like this happens, we doon internal look at ourselves and find out what is it that we did? what could we do better? and then make changes based on what i would consider an after-action review. so that s fair. the other issue there are some in african command and some here in the pentagon that think the special forces are taking too many risks over there. yeah, tom, i think that would be speculation. here s what i m very clear on. i m very clear on the frahmwork within which this operation took place. what do their orders say? i don t have any indication right now to believe or to know that they did anything other than operate within the orders that they were given. that s what the investigation is all about. so i think anyone that speculates about what special operation forces did or didn t do is doing exactly that. they are speculating. in general, special operators in africa, are maybe taking too many risks. that s the sense of some in this buil ....