Niger deaths echo in troop scoop

Time serves up an eye-opening cover report on how the US government is relying too heavily on the military’s most elite fighters, because they offer political cover for leaders who want to avoid the optics of deploying troops overseas.

Special operations insiders, according to Time’s W.J. Hennigan, say they have become an “easy button for successive administrations to push — an alternative to sending thousands of conventional military forces to hot spots and risking the political blowback that comes with it.”

Hennigan’s pack-busting reporting also pulls back the curtain on the roiling controversy over the four US commandos killed on Oct. 4 in Niger. This year, 11 special ops members have been killed in four countries.

Speaking of political cover, two of President Trump’s three lawyers — Ty Cobb and Jay Sekulow — who are charged with handling questions from Special Counsel Robert Mueller are interviewed in the New

Yorker by Jeffrey Toobin. Toobin breaks down how and why Trump might be facing legal jeopardy in light of for- mer National Security Advisor Michael Flynn’s Dec. 1 plea deal and how Trump’s legal advisers are building a defense.

Sekulow tells Toobin that even if collusion between Trump and the Russians took place it wouldn’t be illegal.

“There is not a statute called collusion,” Sekulow said while Cobb insists that Flynn’s guilty plea — lying to the FBI about meeting with Russia’s UN envoy — “only implicates” Flynn.

Sure, but the tale Flynn might tell Mueller. That could be a different story.