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The Trump Administration Kills Coldly in Yemen, Putting Jobs Before Lives – Antiwar.com Original

Posted by M. C. on May 18, 2020

It soon became evident that the Saudi military is a vanity force, largely for show. Even with abundant American assistance, providing planes and munitions, training personnel, refueling planes, and giving intelligence to assist in targeting, Riyadh found itself stuck in what became an endless war, a quagmire that revealed the Saudi royals to be incompetent, unimaginative fools.

However, they proved to be efficient killers – of civilians.

Weapons supplied by American companies, approved by American officials, allowed Saudi Arabia to pursue the reckless campaign.”

https://original.antiwar.com/doug-bandow/2020/05/17/the-trump-administration-kills-coldly-in-yemen-putting-jobs-before-lives/

by

Many observers have been mystified by the Saudi regime’s hold over President Donald Trump. For years he had criticized the gaggle of corrupt, dissolute royals. He also asked why Americans were paying to defend the wealthy, licentious al-Saud family, as it practiced totalitarianism at home and promoted Islamic fundamentalism abroad, including in America.

Yet Trump made his first trip as president to Saudi Arabia. Some observers wondered if Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had salvaged his infamous orb from Mordor’s collapse eons ago and used it to take control of the president’s mind. No other explanation made sense.

Now the New York Times reports that the fault lies with Peter Navarro, the protectionist aide who spends much of his time urging economic and real war with China. He apparently was instrumental in convincing the president to put the profits of munition makers before the lives of Yemenis.

Consider the tragedy that had befallen Yemen, a deeply divided and tragically impoverished nation. During the Arab Spring the Yemeni people ousted the longtime president, leaving a weak and unpopular successor. The former chief executive joined a longtime rebel movement to overthrow the government. All par for the course in a divided land that has never known peace or stability.

But MbS, as the reckless, impulsive, dictatorial crown prince is known, wanted a toady in power next door. He also desired to demonstrate that he was the Big Man in the Middle East. So he and his counterpart in the United Arab Emirates, Mohammed bin Zayed, created a faux coalition filled with the bought and conscripted and invaded Yemen. The conquest was supposed to be completed in a few weeks.

It soon became evident that the Saudi military is a vanity force, largely for show. Even with abundant American assistance, providing planes and munitions, training personnel, refueling planes, and giving intelligence to assist in targeting, Riyadh found itself stuck in what became an endless war, a quagmire that revealed the Saudi royals to be incompetent, unimaginative fools.

However, they proved to be efficient killers – of civilians. Reported the Times: “Year after year, the bombs fell – on wedding tents, funeral halls, fishing boats and a school bus, killing thousands of civilians and helping turn Yemen into the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Weapons supplied by American companies, approved by American officials, allowed Saudi Arabia to pursue the reckless campaign.”

Notably, President Barack Obama and the supposedly liberal interventionists who surrounded him, who insisted that something must be done to stop the killing in Syria, didn’t care and didn’t act. Nothing changed with President Trump; if anything, he seemed bewitched when he returned from his May 2017 trip. The slaughter continued. Read the rest of this entry »

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The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity : Will More US Troops in Saudi Arabia Make America Great?

Posted by M. C. on September 24, 2019

Why should the military be sent to “defend” one of the wealthiest and most repressive countries on earth? It is hard to see how putting US servicemembers into harm’s way – into a war zone – to defend Saudi Arabia can in any way make America great again.

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2019/september/23/will-more-us-troops-in-saudi-arabia-make-america-great/

Written by Ron Paul

President Trump deserves credit for resisting the war cries from neocons like Sen. Lindsey Graham and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo after last week’s attack on two Saudi oil facilities. Pompeo was eager to blame Iran because he wants war with Iran and anything that can trigger such a war is fine with him. So he put the president in a difficult spot by declaring Iran the culprit: suddenly the president’s options in the media and in Washington were limited to “how to punish Iran.”

A week has now passed since the attack and Pompeo’s rush to judgement has been shown for what it was: war propaganda. That is because there has still been no determination of who launched the attack. Yemen’s Houthis took responsibility right away and Iran denied any involvement. We have seen nothing to this point that contradicts this.

President Trump likely understands that a US war on Iran will be his undoing as president. Who knows, maybe that’s what his closest advisors want. But according to a Gallup poll just last month, only 18 percent of Americans were in favor of military action against Iran. Seventy-eight percent of Americans – including 72 percent of Republicans – want the president to pursue diplomatic efforts over war. Iran has made clear that any attack on its territory will trigger a total war. The Middle East would be engulfed in flames and the US economy would be in the tank. Suddenly we’d see Democrat challengers pretending to be antiwar!

The message to Trump is pretty clear – war with Iran would be deeply unpopular – and it seems clear he understands the message. Just hours after his Secretary of State put the US on war footing with Iran, President Trump was forced to walk back Pompeo’s aggression. When asked about going to war with Iran, President Trump said, “Do I want war? I don’t want war with anybody.”

Unfortunately, with pressure on President Trump to “do something” even as Iran has not been found to have been behind the attack, the president has settled on two measures – one pointless and the other dangerous. On Friday Trump announced yet even more sanctions on Iran, leaving many of us to wonder what is possibly left to sanction. He also announced a deployment of US military forces to Saudi Arabia of a “defensive nature.” Why should the military be sent to “defend” one of the wealthiest and most repressive countries on earth? It is hard to see how putting US servicemembers into harm’s way – into a war zone – to defend Saudi Arabia can in any way make America great again. I believe most Americans would agree.

President Trump should immediately cancel the order to send US troops to Saudi Arabia and should immediately remove what troops are already on Saudi soil. Then the Saudis would understand that they must end their aggression against Yemen.

Attempting to placate the neocons is a fool’s errand, because they are never satisfied even up to and including war. The tide is turning in America – and even in Washington – against Saudi Arabia. After the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and a catastrophic four-year Saudi war on Yemen, no American politician is any longer in the mood to stick his or her neck out to defend Saudi Arabia. President Trump would be wise to use caution: it’s always dangerous sticking one’s neck out when the Saudi government is around.

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Empire First – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on September 18, 2019

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/09/david-stockman/locked-and-loaded-on-behalf-of-empire-first/

By

David Stockman’s Contra Corner

American democracy and capitalist prosperity are dying on the vine of Empire. And this weekend’s drone attack on the largest oil processing facility on the planet is a graphic case of why. So is the related picture below.

The scene is of Yemenis burying a busload of children who were obliterated by American-made bombs delivered by American-made Saudi aircraft, which were being navigated to target by US command and control assets.

This particular cruel foray was just one of thousands of sorties launched by the Saudis since 2015, which have resulted in upwards of 100,000 civilian deaths in northern Yemen and the virtual destruction of its economy – meaning horrific outbreaks of starvation, cholera and other diseases have become commonplace.

The cost to the Yemenis in misery and human life is incalculable. Nor can the stain of these genocidal attacks on America’s moral stature be gainsaid. Yet Washington’s collaboration in this mayhem is not based on even a smidgen of national interest or homeland security.

To the contrary, the Houthi who took control of Yemen’s capital (Sana’a) and who dominate the population of northern Yemen, are a second cousin practitioner of the Shiite confession of Islam. Accordingly, they are aligned with the Shiite regime of Iran and have received modest aid and weapons from Tehran in support of their struggle for independence from the Saudi-supported government in exile and its alignment with a motley array of Sunni-jihadist, Muslim Brotherhood and other anti-Shiite factions in southern Yemen.

Of course, given the fact that Yemen was divided into two countries – North and South Yemen – for nearly three decades between the early 1960s and early 1990s, it’s obvious that no war, bloodshed or devastation is needed at all to solve the religious and ethnic enmities of that godforsaken armpit of the world. All that’s needed is re-partition.

It’s simple. Two countries. No war. No misery. No genocide.

And, in fact, back in 2015 Washington could have told the new Saudi King (Salman) in no uncertain terms to accept partition or “no tickie, no washie”. That is, don’t you dare use a single American supplied aircraft or bomb to carry out war against the Houthi of North Yemen – or we will cut off resupply of spare-parts and technical support to the Saudi military’s advanced American-made weaponry.

And without the latter, of course, Switzerland would soon become the new abode of the monarchy.

But Washington’s neocons were having none of letting the world go its own way and staying out of other people’s quarrels…

Yet that’s how the Empire rolls. The Persian Gulf is on the verge of an apocalyptic eruption that is absolutely not in the interest of any producer – Iraq, Kuwait, Iran, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Qatar – that borders on its waters. But events may now overtake sanity because the one person who could reel in the impending catastrophe is busy tweeting proof that he is dangerously ignorant of the issues and stakes involved:

President Trump warned on Sunday that the US was “locked and loaded,” and prepared to strike when America and Saudi Arabia identified who was responsible.

“There is reason to believe that we know the culprit, are locked and loaded depending on verification,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter. “But are waiting to hear from the Kingdom as to who they believe was the cause of this attack, and under what terms we would proceed!”

On Monday, Mr. Trump tweeted a reminder of Iran’s behavior when it shot down a US drone in June, a strike that led the US to prepare a military strike against Iran. Mr. Trump called off the strike after having second thoughts.

“Remember when Iran shot down a drone, saying knowingly that it was in their ‘airspace’ when, in fact, it was nowhere close,” he said. “They stuck strongly to that story knowing that it was a very big lie. Now they say they had nothing to do with the attack on Saudi Arabia. We’ll see?”

No, POTUS, the real culprit is the War Party that has utterly mis-educated you on the Nuke Deal, the phony threat Iran allegedly poses to Homeland security and the impossible corner into which you have backed the government in Tehran.

You came to Washington to house-clean the Swamp and to put America First at the center of the nation’s failed foreign policy. What you are in danger of accomplishing is enabling the Empire Firsters to ignite a conflagration in the Persian Gulf that could bring the entire world economy to its knees.

And, by the way, ensure that you leave office in January 2021 with a likely berth in a place not nearly as commodious as Trump Tower.

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Will Trump Take Neocon Bait and Attack Iran Over Saudi Strike? – Antiwar.com Original

Posted by M. C. on September 17, 2019

What is remarkable is that all of Washington’s warmongers are ready for
war over what is actually a retaliatory strike by a country that is the victim
of Saudi aggression, not the aggressor itself. Yemen did not attack Saudi Arabia
in 2015. It was the other way around.

Sen. Lindsay Graham, one of the few people in Washington who makes John Bolton look like a dove,

Graham is the perfect embodiment of the saying, “when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

Bolton by proxy.

https://original.antiwar.com/paul/2019/09/16/will-trump-take-neocon-bait-and-attack-iran-over-saudi-strike/

by

The recent attacks on Saudi oil facilities by Yemeni Houthi forces demonstrate once again that an aggressive foreign policy often brings unintended consequences and can result in blowback. In 2015 Saudi Arabia attacked its neighbor, Yemen, because a coup in that country ousted the Saudi-backed dictator. Four years later Yemen is in ruins, with nearly 100,000 Yemenis killed and millions more facing death by starvation. It has been rightly called the worst humanitarian catastrophe on the planet.

But rich and powerful Saudi Arabia did not defeat Yemen. In fact, the Saudis last month asked the Trump Administration to help facilitate talks with the Houthis in hopes that the war, which has cost Saudi Arabia tens of billions of dollars, could finally end without Saudi crown prince Mohammad bin Salman losing too much face. Washington admitted earlier this month that those talks had begun.

The surprise Houthi attack on Saturday disrupted half of Saudi Arabia’s oil and gas production and shocked Washington. Predictably, however, the neocons are using the attack to call for war with Iran!

Sen. Lindsay Graham, one of the few people in Washington who makes John Bolton look like a dove, Tweeted yesterday that, “It is now time for the US to put on the table an attack on Iranian oil refineries…” Graham is the perfect embodiment of the saying, “when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” No matter what the problem, for Graham the solution is war.

Likewise, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo – who is supposed to represent US diplomacy – jumped to blame Iran for the attack on Saudi Arabia, Tweeting that, “Iran has now launched an unprecedented attack on the world’s energy supply.” Of course, he provided no evidence even as the Houthis themselves took responsibility for the bombing.

What is remarkable is that all of Washington’s warmongers are ready for war over what is actually a retaliatory strike by a country that is the victim of Saudi aggression, not the aggressor itself. Yemen did not attack Saudi Arabia in 2015. It was the other way around. If you start a war and the other country fights back, you should not be entitled to complain about how unfair the whole thing is.

The establishment reaction to the Yemeni oilfield strike reminds me of a hearing in the House Foreign Affairs Committee just before the US launched the 2003 Iraq war. As I was arguing against the authorization for that war, I pointed out that Iraq had never attacked the United States. One of my colleagues stopped me in mid-sentence, saying, “let me remind the gentleman that the Iraqis have been shooting at our planes for years.” True, but those planes were bombing Iraq!

The neocons want a US war on Iran at any cost. They may feel temporarily at a disadvantage with the departure of their ally in the Trump Administration, John Bolton. However, the sad truth is that there are plenty more John Boltons in the Administration. And they have allies in the Lindsay Grahams in Congress.

Yemen has demonstrated that it can fight back against Saudi aggression. The only sensible way forward is for a rapid end to this four-year travesty, and the Saudis would be wise to wake up to the mess they’ve created for themselves. Whatever the case, US participation in Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen must end immediately and neocon lies about Iran’s role in the war must be refuted and resisted.

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A View from the Brink – Kunstler

Posted by M. C. on September 17, 2019

If that happens, the world will never be the same. You can kiss the global economy goodbye for good. Let’s hope some people don’t do something.

https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/a-view-from-the-brink/

James Howard Kunstler

Welcome to the world where things don’t add up. For instance, some people did some things to the Saudi Arabian oil refinery at Abqaiq over the weekend. Like, sent over a salvo of cruise missiles and armed drone aircraft to blow it up. They did a pretty good job of disabling the works. It is Saudi Arabia’s largest oil processing facility, and for now, perhaps months, a fair amount of the world’s oil supply will be cut off. President Trump said “[we] are waiting to hear from the Kingdom as to who they believe was the cause of this attack, and under what terms we would proceed!” Exclamation mark his.

How many times the past few years has our government declared that “we have the finest intelligence services in the world.” Very well, then, why are we waiting for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to tell us who fired all that stuff into Abqaiq? Whoever did it, it was unquestionably an act of war. And, of course, what are we going to do about it? (And what will some people do about it?)…

The presence of Israel greatly complicates things, since Iran has a hard-on for that nation, too, and for Jews especially, often expressed in the most belligerent and opprobrious terms, such as “wiping Israel off the map.” No ambiguity there. The catch being that Israel has the capability of turning Iran into an ashtray.

The world has been waiting for a major war in the Middle east for decades, and it might have one by close of business today. Or perhaps some people will do nothing. The Iran-backed Houthi rebels of Yemen supposedly claimed responsibility for the attack. That’s rich. As if that rag-tag outfit has a whole bunch of million-dollar missiles and the knowledge and capacity to launch them successfully, not to mention the satellite guidance mojo. A correspondent suggests that the missiles were fired from a pro-Iranian military base in Iraq, with the Houthis brought in on flying carpets to push the launch buttons…

With the new crisis in the Middle East, benchmark West Texas Intermediate oil is up from around $55-a-barrel to just over $60 at the market open (European Brent crude is just above $70). That’s a pop, but not a spectacular one, considering that a whole lot more damage might ensue in the days ahead. China, Korea, and Japan stand to lose bigly if the players in the Middle East really go at it and bust up each other’s assets. If that happens, the world will never be the same. You can kiss the global economy goodbye for good. Let’s hope some people don’t do something.

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Saudi Attacks May Nudge US to ‘Go to War’ With Iran and Seize its Oil, Megaupload’s Kim Dotcom Warns – Sputnik International

Posted by M. C. on September 16, 2019

McCain, Bolton and the third stooge Pompeo.

https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/201909151076808289-saudi-attacks-may-nudge-us-to-go-to-war-with-iran-and-seize-its-oil-megauploads-kim-dotcom-warns/

by

The Trump administration, which has long demonised Iran and been trying to choke off its oil exports, has blamed the latest attacks on Saudi oil processing facilities on the Islamic Republic, despite Yemeni Houthi rebels claiming responsibility. Iran rejects the accusations.

The United States will emerge as the “biggest beneficiary” of Saturday’s drone attacks that targeted a Saudi Aramco processing facility and oilfield in eastern Saudi Arabia, internet tycoon Kim Dotcom has suggested.

The attacks are expected to trigger a jump in oil prices when markets reopen on Monday, given that Saudi Arabia has halted half its oil production – around five million barrels of crude per day, or around 5 percent of the world’s daily output.

The millionaire Megaupload founder, who is fighting extradition to the US on charges of fraud and online piracy, predicted the attacks would embolden the US – the largest oil producer – to “blame Iran, go to war, [and] take control of Iran’s oil which pays for the war.”

This scenario has partly come to pass already: although Yemen’s Houthi rebels acknowledged they were behind the strikes, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed there was “no evidence”  to believe the attacks came from Yemen and blamed Iran instead….

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MoA – Saudi Arabia Acknowledges Defeat In Yemen – Starts To Sue For Peace

Posted by M. C. on August 30, 2019

It was the clown prince Mohammad bin Salman who launched the war in Yemen soon after he came to power. It was supposed to defeat the Houthi within a few weeks. Five years later and after at least a $100 billions was spent on it, the Saudis have lost the war.

Will the King hold his son responsible for the large loss of money and face that he caused?

And the loss of life. Another war of death and destruction we helped lose.

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/08/saudi-arabia-acknowledges-defeat-in-yemen-starts-to-sue-for-peace-.html

Moon of Alabama

…Since 2015 the coalition of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, with U.S. and British help, has waged war against the Houthi in northern Yemen. The coalition is now falling apart. Both countries claimed to fight against the Houthi, which control the capital Sanaa, in support of the internationally recognized ‘legitimate’ government under ‘President’ Hadi. But both countries had from the very beginning more egoistic war aims.

The Wahhabi Saudis want a Yemeni government that is not controlled by the Zaydi-Shia Houthi with whom they fought dozens of wars over two provinces that Saudi Arabia once annexed. They also want to control Yemen’s oil and a pipeline from the Saudi oil region to a harbor in Yemen. It would help Saudi oil exports to avoid the Iran controlled Strait of Hormuz.

The UAE is big into the port business. It wants to control the strategic port of Aden and other Yemeni harbors on the southern coast. As it has no direct border with Yemen it largely does not care who controls the rest of Yemen.

The UAE leader Mohammad bin Zayed (MbZ) is not an absolute king. He is the son of the Emir of Abu Dhabi, one of the seven emirates that form the UAE. His aggressive foreign policy, with military engagement in Yemen, Sudan, Somalia and Libya, has come under criticism of the rulers of the other emirates. Wars are expensive and bad for regular business. MbZ’s alliance with the Saudi clown prince Mohammad bin Salman (MbS) was seen as dangerous. While the Saudis would like the U.S. to wage war on Iran, the UAE, and especially Dubai, would become a casualty of such a war.

In June the emirs decided to change cause. The UAE retreated from active war in Yemen and started to make nice with Iran. It hoped that the southern separatists it had trained would keep Aden under control and continue to do the UAE’s bidding. The Saudis and the ‘legitimate government’ under Hadi they control do not want to condone that.

The Saudis are extremely angry that the UAE changed course:

But this month, at his Mecca palace, Saudi King Salman took the unusual step of expressing “extreme irritation” with the UAE, his closest Arab partner, according to sources familiar with the matter.The comment appears to be evidence of a fissure in the alliance, which is led in practice by the king’s son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS), and the UAE de facto ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan (MbZ).
…
The king’s annoyance was voiced in a conversation on Aug. 11 with President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, head of Yemen’s Saudi-backed government, according to two Yemeni sources and one other briefed on the meeting.

Hadi’s forces in Aden had just been routed by troops supported by the UAE, as nominal allies in the country’s south turned on each other in a power struggle.

The Saudis must end the war against the Houthi that was launched at the behest of its clown prince. The war has cost the Saudis an enormous amount of money even as they are still losing it. Only yesterday 25 of their forces were killed in a Houthi ambush. With the help of Iran the Houthi acquired long range missiles and drones and they now use them in volleys that reach deep into the Saudi’s land:

Beginning on Aug. 24, the Houthis said its forces conducted two drone strikes on the King Khaled airbase in Khamis Mushayt and the Abha airport in southern Saudi Arabia. A day later, another round of drone strikes were reported on both targets.On the same day, ten Badr-1 ballistic missiles were reportedly fired into Saudi’s Jizan city. However, Saudi officials reported that the country’s air defense systems shot down six ballistic missiles. The officials did not confirm if more missiles were included in the barrage.

On Aug. 26, another ballistic missile, the newly-announced Nakal missile, was reportedly fired at Saudi troops near Najran. Later in the day, another round of drones were reportedly intercepted near the King Khaled airbase in Khamis Mushayt.

As drones were hitting the King Khaled airbase, a separate attack was purportedly occurring near Riyadh with the new Samad-3 suicide drones. If confirmed, this marks the second time Houthi drones have hit the Saudi capital. The first was a reported strike on an Aramco facility near the capital last month.

On Aug. 27, the Houthis showcased another newly-announced ballistic missile, the Qasem-1, by allegedly hitting Saudi troops positioned near the Yemeni border in Najran. Another drone was intercepted and destroyed by Saudi forces over Khamis Mushayt as well.

And yesterday a new cruise missile, the Quds-1, was launched towards the Abha airport. Though, Saudi officials stated that the missile was intercepted and destroyed.

The Saudi king must have recognized that he has no longer any chance to ever win the war. It seems that he asked the Trump administration to work out an agreement with the Houthi:

The Trump administration is preparing to initiate negotiations with Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in an effort to bring the four-year civil war in Yemen to an end, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.The effort is reportedly aimed at convincing Saudi Arabia to take part in secret talks with the rebels in Oman to help broker a cease-fire in the conflict, which has emerged as a front line in the regional proxy war between Riyadh and Tehran.

The brother of the clown prince came to Washington to prepare for the talks:

Prince Khalid met with Secretary of State Michael Pompeo on Wednesday and discussed “U.S. support for a negotiated resolution between the Republic of Yemen government” and a breakaway group known as the Southern Transitional Council, according to a statement from State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus.

The Hadi government is irrelevant. The Southern Transitional Council will demand independence from the north. The Houthi will demand to control the north and reparations for the war the Saudis waged against them. North Yemen’s infrastructure is largely destroyed. It will cost several dozens of billions to rebuild what the five year long Saudi air war destroyed. As the Houthi can continue to harass the Saudis at will, even in their capital, their is no way out for the Saudis but to pay whatever the Houthi demand.

It was the clown prince Mohammad bin Salman who launched the war in Yemen soon after he came to power. It was supposed to defeat the Houthi within a few weeks. Five years later and after at least a $100 billions was spent on it, the Saudis have lost the war.

Will the King hold his son responsible for the large loss of money and face that he caused?

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Yemen’s Houthis Downed US Drone, CENTCOM Blames Iran – News From Antiwar.com

Posted by M. C. on June 17, 2019

And US drones are helping bomb hospitals and school buses in Yemen because?

We are helping Saudi Arabia build their pan Sunni Islamic state. We do their dirty in Iraq and Syria. SA and Israel want US to fight their battle in Iran.

What happens when Saudi Arabia, The 9/11 attacker, decides they don’t need US anymore?

https://news.antiwar.com/2019/06/16/yemens-houthis-downed-us-drone-centcom-blames-iran/

Jason Ditz

In a continuing effort to try to pin everything that goes wrong for the US on Iran, a new statement by CENTCOM is claiming that a MQ-9 Reaper drone was shot down on June 6 in Yemeni airspace, by the Houthis, and they are alleging it was “with Iranian assistance.”

The basics of the incident are that the US government-operated drone was flying over Yemeni airspace when it was shot down with a 2k12, a Soviet-era anti-aircraft system which Yemen has been known to be in possession of since well before the Saudi invasion.

There is no reason to think this needs to be Iran, and despite CENTCOM claiming that the successful shoot down was ‘an improvement over previous Houthi capability,” all that really means is they’d never successfully hit a US drone before with weapons that they’ve plainly had all along.

Indeed, the Houthis have paraded 2k12 vehicles around publicly since ousting the Hadi government in 2015. That they’ve not been used more is reflective of the Saudis using highly advanced US-made bombers of modern pedigree, and the 2k12’s being the height of late 1960’s Soviet technology. Drones have substantially fewer capabilities, and unsurprisingly for an unmanned vehicle that sometimes gets shot down by a guy with a rifle or a bow and arrow, the 2k12 was more than up to the task…

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Civilian fatalities caused by US-drone attacks ...

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Yemen’s Houthis claim seizing 20 positions in Saudi Arabia | Saudi Arabia News | Al Jazeera

Posted by M. C. on June 7, 2019

Five years of war. Tens of thousands of dead children.

Victims (allegedly) of one of the poorest places on earth fight back and invade SA.

If only the Pentagram was running the show…oh, wait…

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/06/yemen-houthis-claim-seizing-20-positions-saudi-arabia-190606030429810.html

Yemen‘s Houthi group has claimed that its forces crossed the border into neighbouring Saudi Arabia, which leads a military coalition against them, and took control of more than 20 positions.

Speaking to Yemen’s SABA news agency, Houthi spokesman Yahya Sarei said on Wednesday that the military sites in the kingdom’s southwestern Najran province were captured in a “surprise” offensive carried out over the past three days.

The spokesman said that more than 200 personnel affiliated with the Saudi-UAE-led military coalition battling the Houthis had been killed or wounded, while many others were captured along with large quantities of military equipment.

“We have extensive video footage of the operation which will be broadcast later,” Sarei was quoted as saying.

His claims could not be independently verified. There was no immediate comment from Saudi Arabia or the military coalition…

Yemen’s latest conflict broke out in late 2014 when the Houthis, allied with forces loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, seized much of the country, including the capital, Sanaa…

Since then, tens of thousands of civilians and combatants have been killed and as many as 85,000 children may have starved to death.

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Yemen: A War, a Humanitarian Disaster and an International ...

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This is why America is persecuting Julian Assange, by Patrick Cockburn – The Unz Review

Posted by M. C. on June 3, 2019

Yemeni experts on the conflict say that Houthi arms acquisition today has likewise little to do with Iran. Yemen has always had a flourishing arms black market in which weapons, large and small, can be obtained in almost any quantity if the money is right. Anti-Houthi forces, copiously supplied by Saudi Arabia and UAE, are happy to profit by selling on weapons to the Houthis or anybody else.

http://www.unz.com/pcockburn/this-is-why-america-is-persecuting-julian-assange/

…

However, it was the friendly US official and I who were being naive, forgetting that the real purpose of state secrecy is to enable governments to establish their own self-interested and often mendacious version of the truth by the careful selection of “facts” to be passed on to the public. They feel enraged by any revelation of what they really know, or by any alternative source of information. Such threats to their control of the news agenda must be suppressed where possible and, where not, those responsible must be pursued and punished.

We have had two good examples of the lengths to which a government – in this case that of the US – will go to protect its own tainted version of events. The first is the charging of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange under the Espionage Act for leaking 750,000 confidential military and diplomatic documents in 2010.

The second example has happened in the last few days. The international media may not have always covered itself in glory in the war in Yemen, but there are brave journalists and news organisations who have done just that. One of them is Yemeni reporter Maad al-Zikry who, along with Maggie Michael and Nariman El-Mofty, is part of an Associated Press (AP) team that won the international reporting Pulitzer prize this year for superb on the ground coverage of the war in Yemen. Their stories included revelations about the US drone strikes in Yemen and about the prisons maintained there by the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The US government clearly did not like this type of critical journalism. When the Pulitzer was awarded last Tuesday in New York Zikry was not there because he had been denied a visa to enter the US. There is no longer a US embassy in the Yemeni capital Sanaa, but two months ago he made his way to the US embassy in Cairo where his visa application, though fully supported by AP and many other prestigious institutions, was rejected.

After AP had exerted further pressure, Zikry made a second application for a visa and this time he was seen by a Counsellor at the embassy. He reports himself as asking: “Does the US embassy think that a Yemeni investigative journalist doing reporting for AP is a terrorist? Are you saying I am a terrorist?”

The Counsellor said that they would “work” on his visa or, in other words, ask the powers-that-be in Washington what to do. “So, I waited and waited – and waited,” he says. “And, until now I heard nothing from them.”

Of course, Washington is fully capable of waiving any prohibition on the granting of a visa to a Yemeni in a case like this, but it chose not to.

Can what Assange and Wikileaks did in 2010 be compared with what Zikry and AP did in 2019? Some commentators, to their shame, claim that the pursuit of Assange, and his current imprisonment pending possible extradition to the US or Sweden, has nothing to with freedom of expression.

In fact, he was doing what every journalist ought to do and doing it very successfully...

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says that Iran has provided the Houthis “with the missile system, the hardware, the military capability” that they have acquired.

National Security Adviser John Bolton said on Wednesday that Iran risked a “very strong response” from the US for, among other things, drone attacks by the Houthis on Saudi Arabia for which he holds the Iranians responsible.

These accusations by the US, Saudi Arabia and whoever is their Yemeni ally of the day that the Houthis are stooges of Iran armed with Iranian-supplied weapons has a long history. But what do we know about what Washington really thinks of these allegations which have not changed much over the years?

This where Wikileaks comes to the rescue. Read the rest of this entry »

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