Striking Somalia

A small-scale special forces raid on an al-Qaeda cell in Somalia sounds like a good idea to me. The article, however, is quite unclear as to who the targets of the operation were, whether or not we hit them, etc. Presumably more information will come out later. One thing I wish I understood better was the specops people's love of the AC-130 gunship whose primary attributes (loud, slow, hard to maintain) don't seem all that appealing.

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2007/01/striking-somalia/41151/