All told, the Pentagon’s official narrative is the following. An improperly equipped and ill-prepared team of Americans and Nigeriens set out on an inappropriately approved mission. When their superiors discovered the operation already in progress, not only did they not order the unit to stand down, they immediately moved to send additional forces into the area. When that plan fell through, those commanders, who were in regular contact with their own superiors, ordered the original team, poorly suited to the task as it was, to continue with the mission anyway.
This chain of events, if accurate, would seem to imply gross negligence at every part of the chain of command. The alternative, that these decisions somehow occurred without mutual agreement at all levels that the mission was valid or was at least worth pursuing in spite of the initial inaccurate CONOP, strains credulity.
