Stalin
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Apr 4, 2008
- Messages
- 1,810
Field Marshall Ali Saleh is the sort of prick beloved of the many US intel agencies promoting peace and security on the planet. As usual, the War Party has no stomach for a fair fight, prefering to pick on the weak and helpless i.e women and children.
"...In the wake of the abortive Christmas Day attempt by a 23-year-old Nigerian, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, to detonate a bomb on a Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam, there has been an escalating drumbeat for a wider US military intervention in Yemen.
While US officials initially said they believed that the suspect acted alone and had no formal ties to any terrorist organizations, this did not deter leading politicians of both political parties and much of the US media from immediately raising the prospect of war in Yemen, where Abdulmutallab has family ties (his mother is Yemeni), and where Al Qaeda has a presence.
Media reports have subsequently cited unnamed US officials as saying that Abdulmutallab has told interrogators that he had attended an Al Qaeda camp in Yemen, while a web site claiming to speak for the organization claimed credit for the failed bombing.
Whatever the truth of the Yemeni connection to the incident, it has proven highly fortuitous for the Obama administration, which—parallel to its Afghanistan escalation—has already launched a secret military intervention in the impoverished Arab country.
As the New York Times reported Monday, “In the midst of two unfinished major wars, the United States has quietly opened a third, largely covert front against Al Qaeda in Yemen.”
Citing unnamed US intelligence and military officials, the Times reports that the US Central Intelligence Agency has dispatched “several of its top field operatives with counterterrorism experience to the country,” while “some of the most secretive Special Operations commandos have begun training Yemeni security forces in counterterrorism tactics.”
US military aid to Yemen has been raised to $70 million under the Obama administration, compared to virtually nothing in 2008.
The reports on increased activities by CIA operatives and Special Operations military commandos in Yemen follow a series of covert US airstrikes. On December 17, US warplanes firing cruise missiles targeted what officials in Washington claimed were Al Qaeda training camps in the provinces of Sana’a and Abyan. Officials in Yemen, however, said that the attacks claimed the lives of more than 60 civilians, 28 of them children.
A second airstrike was carried out on December 24 in the remote region of Shabwa against what US officials described as a meeting of Al Qaeda operatives. Again, Yemenis in the area said that there had been no such meeting.
US intelligence officials indicate that one of the intended targets of the December 24 airstrike was Anwar al Awlaki, a Muslim cleric who is a US citizen born in New Mexico. While Awlaki has been linked to the US Army major, Nidal Malik Hasan, who is charged in last month’s mass shooting at Fort Hood, he has himself been accused of no crime. The attempt to carry out his extra-judicial execution has provoked not a hint of criticism from any section of the media or the political establishment in the US..."
..
"..The US military intervention in Yemen is being carried out in support of the dictatorial regime of Field Marshall Ali Saleh, who has been head of state for more than 30 years—first as president of North Yemen until 1990, and then, after the post-Cold War unification, as president of the unified country.
Yemen, with 23.8 million people, is the poorest country in the Arab world. More than half of the population lives below the poverty line. More than 40 percent are unemployed and 54 percent are illiterate.
In addition to the Houthi movement in the northwest of the country, the Saleh regime confronts a separatist movement in the south. It has sought to quell these opposition movements with extreme brutality. In addition to carrying out military operations of a collective punishment character that have claimed the lives of thousands of civilians and turned tens of thousands more into refugees, it has systematically suppressed political dissent.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/dec2009/yemn-d29.shtml
Comrade Stalin
"...In the wake of the abortive Christmas Day attempt by a 23-year-old Nigerian, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, to detonate a bomb on a Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam, there has been an escalating drumbeat for a wider US military intervention in Yemen.
While US officials initially said they believed that the suspect acted alone and had no formal ties to any terrorist organizations, this did not deter leading politicians of both political parties and much of the US media from immediately raising the prospect of war in Yemen, where Abdulmutallab has family ties (his mother is Yemeni), and where Al Qaeda has a presence.
Media reports have subsequently cited unnamed US officials as saying that Abdulmutallab has told interrogators that he had attended an Al Qaeda camp in Yemen, while a web site claiming to speak for the organization claimed credit for the failed bombing.
Whatever the truth of the Yemeni connection to the incident, it has proven highly fortuitous for the Obama administration, which—parallel to its Afghanistan escalation—has already launched a secret military intervention in the impoverished Arab country.
As the New York Times reported Monday, “In the midst of two unfinished major wars, the United States has quietly opened a third, largely covert front against Al Qaeda in Yemen.”
Citing unnamed US intelligence and military officials, the Times reports that the US Central Intelligence Agency has dispatched “several of its top field operatives with counterterrorism experience to the country,” while “some of the most secretive Special Operations commandos have begun training Yemeni security forces in counterterrorism tactics.”
US military aid to Yemen has been raised to $70 million under the Obama administration, compared to virtually nothing in 2008.
The reports on increased activities by CIA operatives and Special Operations military commandos in Yemen follow a series of covert US airstrikes. On December 17, US warplanes firing cruise missiles targeted what officials in Washington claimed were Al Qaeda training camps in the provinces of Sana’a and Abyan. Officials in Yemen, however, said that the attacks claimed the lives of more than 60 civilians, 28 of them children.
A second airstrike was carried out on December 24 in the remote region of Shabwa against what US officials described as a meeting of Al Qaeda operatives. Again, Yemenis in the area said that there had been no such meeting.
US intelligence officials indicate that one of the intended targets of the December 24 airstrike was Anwar al Awlaki, a Muslim cleric who is a US citizen born in New Mexico. While Awlaki has been linked to the US Army major, Nidal Malik Hasan, who is charged in last month’s mass shooting at Fort Hood, he has himself been accused of no crime. The attempt to carry out his extra-judicial execution has provoked not a hint of criticism from any section of the media or the political establishment in the US..."
..
"..The US military intervention in Yemen is being carried out in support of the dictatorial regime of Field Marshall Ali Saleh, who has been head of state for more than 30 years—first as president of North Yemen until 1990, and then, after the post-Cold War unification, as president of the unified country.
Yemen, with 23.8 million people, is the poorest country in the Arab world. More than half of the population lives below the poverty line. More than 40 percent are unemployed and 54 percent are illiterate.
In addition to the Houthi movement in the northwest of the country, the Saleh regime confronts a separatist movement in the south. It has sought to quell these opposition movements with extreme brutality. In addition to carrying out military operations of a collective punishment character that have claimed the lives of thousands of civilians and turned tens of thousands more into refugees, it has systematically suppressed political dissent.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/dec2009/yemn-d29.shtml
Comrade Stalin
