The recent deaths of four American soldiers in Niger was tragic, but the real tragedy has been the cover up of what happened. The facts and details seem to change daily and the timeline explanations are as squirrely as the Vegas shooting investigation.
The military is trying to make us believe that this is nothing more than a typical foreign internal defense mission that went bad. The blame went on a newly created threat, the Islamic Threat in the Sahel, which the DoD abbreviated as ISIS. Of course it has no connection in reality to the ISIS in the Middle East, but they are hoping we fall for it.
It looks like this was a continuation of a failed policy that started as Human Terrain Operations. When it failed miserably, it was reborn as Cultural Knowledge Consortium. When it failed, it was reborn as the Global Cultural Knowledge Network. Read more here.