Should we be helping anyone here? Is this only going to make us look worse? Can anything else be done to protect civilans? https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/01/us-bombs-how-we-helped-break-yemen.html U.S. Bombs: How We Helped Break Yemen America dropped 26,000 bombs last year. This is the story of a few. By Jason Rhode | January 11, 2017 | 9:00am Brent Stirton / Getty POLITICS FEATURES BARACK OBAMA Share Tweet Submit Pin U.S. Bombs: How We Helped Break Yemen The United States is helping Saudi Arabia bomb the poorest country in the Middle East. We need to stop. The nation of Yemen stands on the brink of starvation. Serious famine could result from the continued application of American might; we will be party to even more serious crimes if we continue to back the Saudi regimes agenda. Yesterday, a primary school was hit in an air strike by Saudi forces. Last fall, the Obama administration decided to block arms deals to Riyadh. Thats not enough. Our fingerprints are all over this one. The Yemen conflict started on March 26 of 2015, but the strife is one with a long backstory. The simplest version goes like this: to quote the World Bank, An Arab coalition of nine countries led by Saudi Arabia initiated a military campaign to restore President Hadis government to power. In other words, the Saudis and their friends, including America, are intervening in Yemen. The Saudis are afraid that Iran is setting up a new puppet government there, so they want to put the old moderate government back in charge. Thats the clinical explanation. Whats actually happening is that a lot of poor people are being killed by missiles, and bombs, and other munitions. Washington nods, and smiles, and gives the go-ahead. Americans refuel Saudi aircraft. Americans provide coordination with the Saudi military. Americans offer the Saudis a hundred other little favors. We are co-conspirators. As a wise man once said, there are two powers in the world, America, and global opinion. A good rule of thumb for understanding world politics: whenever an American ally makes a big move in the realm of foreign affairs, the ally usually clears it with the American government first. This is not universally true, but its usually the safe way to bet. Thats why this country is tangentially complicit in so many different kinds of human rights outrages. America pretending to have clean hands in world politics is like the beat cop pretending to not notice organized crime operating under his nose. Where our allies are concerned, we have a huge amount of influence. Example: until recently, the Americans peddled all kinds of munitions to the Saudi military; we sold $20 billion of them in 2015. We only stopped on Dec. 13, 2016, when the Administration halted a sale by Raytheon to the Saudi Kingdom. The White House was getting it from human rights groups and couldnt proceed as before. In fact, the Obama administration, to quote Reuters, has sold the Arabian Kingdom over $115 billion in various war goods, more than any U.S. administration in the 71-year U.S.-Saudi alliance. Remember, this is all being done under the watch of a Nobel Peace Prize recipient, so its totally morally cool. Twenty-three illegal air strikes, using our weapons, have killed children and other civilians. This all got noticed, by the way, when our weapons flattened over one hundred and forty people last October, during a funeral in Yemen. The funeral in question occurred in the al-Sala al-Kubra community hall during the mourning for Ali al-Rawishan, the father of the governments interior minister, Jalal al-Rawishan. The funeral time and guest list was announced on Facebook on Oct. 7. The two munitions, dropped at 3:30 PM, wereit is allegeddeliberately planned to land during the peak hour of mourning, when the civilian population would be the greatest. According to Human Rights Watch: Human Rights Watch identified the munition used as a US-manufactured air-dropped GBU-12 Paveway II 500-pound laser-guided bomb. The identification was based on a review of photos and footage of an intact guidance fin assembly with legible manufacturers markings and other weapon remnants. The photos and video were taken at the scene of the attack by Mwatana, a leading Sanaa-based human rights organization, journalists from the British news channel ITV, and a local activist, who visited the site on October 9. As NPR points out, although our efforts in Syria and Iraq are famous, our involvement in Yemen is not so well-known: Since March 2015, the U.S. has been providing support to a Saudi-led military coalition fighting Houthi rebels. The Houthis ousted Yemens government and forced the president, Abed Mansour Hadi, to flee to Saudi Arabia. Initially the Saudis thought they could easily uproot the Houthis, but the conflict has ground on much longer than the Saudis expected. The Washington Post described a bloody and futile intervention in Yemen by Saudi Arabia: Pushed by its ambitious, 31-year-old deputy crown prince, the kingdom plunged into Yemens civil war in 2015 and since then has carried out some of the most brutal attacks in a war-ravaged Middle East with substantial American support. Human rights groups have accused the Saudis of bombing hospitals, schools and other civilian sites and of employing cluster munitions, all in violation of international law. According to writer Ben Norton, a famine monitor created by the U.S. government has said the conflict is responsible for creating the gravest food security crisis on the planet.
Seal Team Six member killed in Yemen operation... SEAL Killed Fighting al-Qaida in Yemen Identified Jan 31, 2017 | The Navy SEAL killed Jan. 28 during a raid on al-Qaida in Yemen was a 36-year-old chief petty officer, the Defense Department said Monday. See also: Navy SEAL Team 6 Members Fought Female Fighters in Yemen Raid Jan 30, 2017 | Navy SEAL Team 6 members fought female fighters of the Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula group in the Yemen raid over the weekend.
Granny says, "Dat's right - the Donald kickin' jihadi butt.. US Troops on Ground in Yemen Against AQAP Terror Group 4 Aug 2017 | A small team of U.S. Special Forces troops is on the ground in the midst of Yemen's civil war in support of an operation against the Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) terror group, the Pentagon said Friday.
