‘United States government helping butchery of Yemeni civilians’

This video says about itself:

Rising anger in Yemen after deadly funeral attack

10 October 2016

The single deadliest attack in the 19-month war in Yemen left 140 people dead and 515 injured, after an airstrike on a funeral. Anger is now rising in Yemen … ITV News Correspondent Neil Connery reports.

By James Tweedie in Britain:

US navy joins Saudi blitz on Yemen

Friday 14th October 2016

Cruise missiles fired in alleged ‘revenge attack’

US FORCES attacked Yemen with cruise missiles yesterday, adding to the Saudi blitz on the impoverished Middle Eastern nation in what the Pentagon claimed was “self-defence.”

Three Yemeni Republican Guard radar installations on the country’s Red Sea coast were hit with cruise missiles launched from the US destroyer USS Nitze.

US President Barack Obama ordered the attacks on the recommendation of Defence Secretary Ashton Carter and Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General Joseph Dunford.

In Britain, Stop the War Coalition convener Lindsey German said the US attack on Yemen was “another escalation of the war there.”

She warned: “Obama is risking a much wider war and the incident may be used as a pretext for this, as we saw in the 1960s with the Gulf of Tonkin incident in Vietnam.

“This is a very dangerous time in the Middle East, with growing tensions over Syria between the US and Russia.

“The end of a US presidency is often an uncertain and unstable period in this respect. Whoever becomes president, intervention in the region is likely to grow.”

The pretext for the military intervention was alleged missile attacks from Yemen on two other US warships, the destroyer USS Mason and the amphibious assault ship USS Ponce, on Monday and Wednesday, neither of which actually struck the vessels.

Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook claimed the attacks were “limited” and in “self-defence.”

He said they had been ordered “to protect our personnel, our ships and our freedom of navigation in this important maritime passageway,” between the Suez Canal and the Indian Ocean.

But, ominously, he warned that Washington would “respond to any further threat to our ships and commercial traffic as appropriate.”

The missile strike came just days after the US pledged to “review” billions of dollars of arms sales to Saudi Arabia and logistical support to the nine-nation invasion coalition.

That announcement followed the coalition’s bombing of a funeral in the capital Sanaa, which left 155 people dead in a scene of horrific carnage and wounded more than 500.

The Saudi-led coalition is fighting to restore ousted president Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi to power in a civil war against the Houthi movement and allied elements of the Yemeni armed forces.

Yemeni Republican Guard spokesman Sharaf Ioqman called the attack an “American farce to find a reason to interfere in Yemen directly after failure of the Saudis.”

…

Mr Ioqman said that the army never targets ships outside Yemen’s territorial waters — only vessels that enter them come under attack.

An unnamed military officer told Yemen’s Saba news agency that the US claims were unfounded and that the popular committees — set up by the Houthi rebels — had nothing to do with such actions.

He added: “Such claims are part of the general context of creating false justifications to escalate assaults and cover up the continuous crimes committed by the aggression against the Yemeni people, along with the blockade imposed on it, and after the increasing condemnations to such barbaric and hideous crimes against Yemenis.”

Communist Party of Britain general secretary Rob Griffiths said: “This direct military intervention is obviously intended to clear the path for the murderous bombing campaign by Saudi Arabia to intensify.

“This violation of yet another country’s sovereignty by US forces highlights the utter hypocrisy of the sermons delivered by Obama and Kerry against Russia’s assistance to the Syrian government.

“Yesterday, the US was supposed to be reviewing arms sales to the vile Saudi dictatorship and now it’s helping them to murder yet more Yemeni civilians.”

This video says about itself:

Yara, a child from Yemen

29 August 2016

Yara, a child from Yemen talking about the forgotten war and Saudi terror against her poor country.

With the US Navy’s firing of Tomahawk cruise missiles against targets on Yemen’s Red Sea Coast early Thursday, Washington has embarked on another major escalation of a spiraling campaign of military aggression aimed at imposing US imperialist hegemony throughout the Middle East and around the globe: here.

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

Yemen strikes show US hand

Friday 14th October 2016

WASHINGTON’S destruction of three coastal radar sites in Yemen puts the US firmly in the camp of the Saudi-led coalition blitzing civilian targets there.

The Pentagon claims that it put the radar facilities in the province of Taiz out of action with Tomahawk cruise missiles because of rockets launched this week against two [of] its warships in the Red Sea.

Whether such attacks took place is disputed by the Shi’ite Houthi popular committees and their allies, … but, in any case, no US vessel sustained damage.

Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook’s claim that launching these raids was limited and in self-defence is pitiful.

The knocked-out radar facilities are said to have been central to recent missile strikes from Yemen onto targets in Saudi Arabia in retaliation for its raids on the region’s poorest country.

By neutralising them, Washington is not only supporting Riyadh’s efforts to reimpose the rule of ousted president Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi but joining in militarily.

The carnage inflicted by Saudi Arabia and its allies in Yemen has not received the wall-to-wall political and media coverage of civilian casualties in Syria.

The weekend obliteration by Saudi warplanes, using US-supplied weaponry, of a funeral ceremony in the capital Sanaa for Interior Minister Gala al-Rawishan, which killed 155 people and wounded 500 more, initially drew expressions of concern from the White House.

State Department spokesman John Kirby said that Washington would review its assistance to the Saudi-led coalition, reporting “candid and forthright” expressions of its concerns to Riyadh over attacks on civilians and emphasising that it did not offer a “blank cheque.”

New York-based Human Rights Watch urged an independent international investigation, noting that human rights groups have documented Saudi-led coalition bombings that have hit weddings, markets, schools, and hospitals.

Secretary of State John Kerry, however, contented himself with voicing “deep concern,” while welcoming Saudi ministers’ promise “to launch a thorough and immediate investigation of the strike.”

Yesterday’s cruise missile attacks on the Republican Guard radar facilities indicate how shallow this professed concern is.

Washington values its billions of dollars worth of arms sales to Riyadh above any worries about Yemeni civilians being killed.

Saudi Arabia has cast itself as the Arab military powerhouse in the region and the most reliable US ally, replacing Egypt and, before that, Iraq.

It has organised and armed, along with its Qatari and Emirati acolytes, the jihadi extremists battling to overthrow the government in Syria.

But the ability of the Houthi-Saleh alliance in Yemen to maintain resistance, even without aerial support, to the invasion by Riyadh and its regional allies and to take the war into Saudi territory leaves such self-praise quite dented.

It also explains why the US feels it necessary to become directly involved in the Saudis’ squalid military intervention.

President Barack Obama has indicated that he has no wish to embroil the US in further overseas military quagmires, but he has little more than three months left in office.

Likely successor Hillary Clinton is hawkish in foreign affairs, backing military interventions and welcoming the lynching of overthrown Libyan dictator Muammar Gadaffi, giggling: “We came, we saw, he died.”

The current international situation is far too dangerous for such light-hearted disregard for the consequences of imperialist interventions that benefit only the arms dealers.

Politicians have a responsibility to move beyond easy recourse to bombing as a first option and recognise the need for negotiated solutions.