Defense Secretary Robert Gates just announced that the presi

[Somaliman%]

Defense Secretary Robert Gates just announced that the president plans to establish a new combatant command for Africa.

Speaking before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Gates said Africa Command would incorporate portions of three other commands so that the Pentagon can better focus on transnational threats.

"The president has decided to stand up a new unified combatant command, Africa Command, to oversee security, cooperation, building partnership capability, defense support to nonmilitary missions, and, if directed, military operations on the African continent," Gates said. This command will enable us to have a more effective and integrated approach than the current arrangement of dividing Africa between Central Command and European Command, an outdated arrangement left over from the Cold War."

• Read the secretary's testimony here.

As Time noted in an August story about the new command: "The Pentagon has five geographic Unified Combatant Commands around the world and responsibility for Africa is awkwardly divided among three of those: European Command, Pacific Command and Central Command — which is also responsible for running the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Creating an African Command would be an important structural move to coordinate U.S. defense policy for the continent, as well as provide a single military organization for agencies like the State Department and the CIA to work with in the region."

According to the Christian Science Monitor, "the new command will be more than an exercise in shuffling bureaucratic boxes, experts say. The US government's motives include countering Al Qaeda's known presence in Africa, safeguarding future oil supplies, and competing with China, which has been courting African governments in its own quest for petroleum, they sugges

[FAH1223]

reeks of the British Empire

[Lacageylacag]

Qowleysato!
That gives you hope the TFG will get some bones in the kufr dust bin?