>>10666
After reading through this, one oddity stands out. The military forces undertaking the evacuation expected to find a golf course at the embassy compound, where they could land their helicopters, but found no golf course. This is stated on pg. 24, and pg. 35 describes "a large cleared area" "described by the embassy as part of the golf course" which apparently was no such thing. On pg. 24, the report hints that the problem was the the military was relying on old maps, but pg. 46 makes clear that the entire embassy had been moved "from the center of the city to a more suburban location" just recently in July 1989. So it would seem that maps could not have been that old at all. The map on pg. 6 labels a golf course.
The reason this might be interesting is that perhaps the "golf course" was a fiction, and the embassy compound included buildings that were not publicly mentioned. Perhaps this would explain why Somalia had such a large US presence.
Maybe someone who knows more about such things could find more, but that is my take.