Two interesting articles on the Westgate and the SEAL raids.

First one is on the “white widow”. It is now almost certain she did not participate and the media frenzy around her involvement has been prompted by a lack of info and, as usual, the need for a scoop!
White Widow merely person of interest in Nairobi mall probe
AS FAR as the security officials in Kenya are concerned, Samantha Lewthwaite, the Northern Irish woman popularly tied to the Somali extremist group al-Shabaab, is merely a person of interest and not wanted for September’s mall siege in Nairobi that left dozens dead and many more injured. Having been first linked to the attacks by the British media, the link became so compelling that it was carried around the world as fact.
The Sunday Independent got the correct Lewthwaite angle: we should be worried about what the news of her fake South African passport will do to this country’s bid to reassure the world at large that its passport-issuing system is reliable.

Home Affairs Minister Naledi Pandor has assured the nation that the department had a handle on the situation as far back as 2011, when it cancelled the fraudulent passport.

"It was reported that Lewthwaite bought passports for her and her two children in Durban from convicted fraudster Ehmed Chisty for R60,000. The Sunday Independent was reliably informed that home affairs has been searching for three men who have been running ID schemes across the city similar to Chisty’s, raking in between R50,000 and R120,000 for each ID," the paper reported.
http://www.bdlive.co.za/opinion/colu...obi-mall-probe

And a very detailed inside of the SEAL raid:
Somalia SEAL Raid Ended by Children Used as Shields
In a corroborating report, NBC News described how SEALs were able to enter the al-Shabaab compound, take the positions required by their planning, and even watch one of the terrorists take a cigarette break. But that same al-Shabaab fighter may have spotted the SEALs, because he came back out with an AK-47 and fired on the SEALs. The mission quickly escalated into a firefight, with the SEALs encountering intense fire with both guns and grenades. An unidentified official told CNN that, “Once it became clear we were not going to able to take him, the Navy commander made the decision to withdraw.”

CNN and NBC had both received word from U.S. officials that the decision to end the Somalia raid was prompted by seeing children, used as human shields, being moved out of the fortified seaside stronghold the SEALs were attacking.

SEALs were actually able to see Ikrima through the compound’s windows, but when children came into their scopes, the threat of hurting them prompted the team’s withdrawal. The tactical situation for these members of SEAL Team Six, the same unit that killed Osama bin-Laden, was also disintegrating, and they evacuated via the beach.
http://guardianlv.com/2013/10/somali...ed-as-shields/