US justifies Saudi 'self-defense' in Yemen, slams Russia's actions in Syria

“It is different,” the State Department's John Kirby hastold AP's Matt Lee, when asked whether Capitol Hill sees a difference between the recent attack in Yemen and“what you accuse the Russians and the Syrians and the Iranians of doing in Syria, particularly Aleppo?”

The question specifically referred to an airstrike that targeted a funeral service in the Yemeni capital, Sana'a, killing more than 150 civilians and injuring over 525.
LINK

Targeting a funeral service...even organized crime in most of the world won't stoop to that level. Should we be surprised? The Saudi Arabian government is worse than most organized crime in my opinion.

Anyone who stands with the United States' position concerning the above is not rational. You are engaging in doublethink, and you need help.

The article linked above clearly has relevance to a potential WW3. How can anyone take the U.S. seriously concerning its foreign policy anymore?

The US is on the wrong side of the early stages of WW3.

That is all.

a reply to: Profusion

I live overseas and come in contact with many different foreign nationals... No one I have ever talked to thinks the West in Syria is on the right and just side (call it a personal poll). Yemen is not going as quick or as well as the Saudi's thought it would... I personally hope they get their Saudi butts kicked.. I really did used to believe the USA et al were the good guys of the world kinda like the fictional Luke Skywalker... Anymore there is little doubt in many people's minds Luke, like his father before him, has turned to the dark side...

a reply to: Profusion

Targeting a funeral service...even organized crime in most of the world won't stoop to that level. Should we be surprised? The Saudi Arabian government is worse than most organized crime in my opinion.

So what do you think about these?
The Deh Bala wedding party airstrike, where the US killed 47 Afghans at a wedding in 2008.

The 2015 US drone strike on a funeral in Afghanistan's Khost Province, which killed at least 34 alleged Taliban members. HERE and HERE.

The 2013 US drone strike on a wedding in Yemen, where at least 10 people were killed. HERE and HERE.

Here's a 2012 article about the CIA's tactics of targeting rescuers and funerals in Pakistan (called "double tap strikes"). HERE.

And here's a short 2013 article that's also about "double tap strikes", which says the following:

Human-rights groups have alleged for some time that the United States kills people in drone strikes, waits for rescuers to arrive, and deliberately targets them too, and that we target and kill mourners at the funerals of drone-strike victims.

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism is one prominent source of these accusations. "Of the 18 attacks on rescuers and mourners reported at the time by credible media, twelve cases have been independently confirmed by our researchers," it reported in February 2012. "Credible news reports emerged a year later indicating that double-tap strikes had been revived," it added this August. "International media including the BBC, CNN and news agency AFP variously reported that rescuers had been targeted on five occasions between May 24 and July 23 2012, with a mosque and prayers for the dead also reportedly bombed."

Glenn Greenwald also had a 2012 article about "double tap strikes" (HERE), and it focuses on how the US used to consider it a terrorist tactic (note: it's also a war crime for deliberately targeting emergency personnel, but whatever).

And this doesn't even touch on "signature strikes", which literally target and attack a series of qualifications (aka the "signature") rather than attacking because a specific target is in the location. So if a hypothetical signature is "a group of 3 or more males in mostly black with guns and turbans", the drone operators will attack when they spot that "signature", literally not knowing who is being attacked.

So of course the US govt is going to defend the Saudis for doing this; it's literally the same thing we've been doing for years. Do you now see why so many of us were against the drone program? Though in all honesty, I don't think most American citizens care anymore.

a reply to: Profusion

And instead of reprimanding SA, the U.S. just offed 3 Yemeni radar positions in "limited self-defense" (re: USS Mason).

By the way, fragments of the bomb used in Sanaa allegedly suggest it was a U.S. build Mark 82 Mod.

'Murians... you will find no U.S. president speaking up against SA, as long as you don't fix your economy and your currency.

a reply to: ColCurious

(-Glances at your location-) Let's not pretend that the US is the only one the supplies Saudi Arabia with military equipment. Both of these articles are from this year.

Germany approves arms exports to Saudi Arabia and Oman: ministry letter

The German government has approved several arms export deals with countries in the Middle East, including delivery of 23 Airbus helicopters to Saudi Arabia, according to an Economy Ministry letter seen by Reuters on Monday.

Controversial exports in German arms report: newspaper

Qatar, a Gulf Arab state panned by German opposition parties as an alleged source of funding for the "Islamic State" (IS) terror militia, received combat tanks and heavy artillery, as well as ammunition and accompanying vehicles worth 1.6 billion euros.

Germany's sales to Saudi Arabia, which such groups also criticized, was to a large extent funneled through joint delivery programs run with other nations, especially France, according to the report cited by WamS.

Last October, an interim ministry report - for the first half of 2015 - said arms exports to Saudi Arabia spanned 66 approvals worth 179 million euros in total.

a reply to: Profusion

A very good article showing the hypocrisy of Western interventionism.

Peacekeepers in Syria, warmongers in Yemen

Which brings us to Yemen, that largely ignored Middle Eastern nation 2,500 kilometres to the south of Syria. Like Syria, a deeply unpopular president is being desperately propped up by foreign powers, as assorted internal factions, from the ascendant Houthi rebels in the north to al-Qaeda in the south and east, take advantage of the power vacuum following the implosion of the Yemeni state in 2011. In fact, it’s fair to say that Yemen’s nominal president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, commands even less domestic support than Assad. That’s because Hadi owes his reign not to the activists who prompted the exit of his predecessor, President Saleh, but to the United Nations and the Saudi-dominated Gulf Cooperation Council, which effectively appointed him leader as part of the so-called Yemeni transition agreement in 2011. In the words of a researcher based in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa: ‘[Hadi] has no military power, no real political power, no support base on the ground, no tribal support base. In reality, what’s he got? It’s the international community.’

So in Yemen, it’s not Russia propping up a panicked, illegitimate ruler through sheer military force; it’s the ‘international community’, with Saudi Arabia, backed by the US and the UK, leading the charge. Indeed, so tenuous has Hadi’s grip on power become that over the past 18 months the Saudis – with the US and the UK providing airborne refuelling, drone-fed intelligence and billions of dollars of weaponry – have been busy trying to bomb Yemen’s restive population into submission. The UN itself estimates that, since 2015, Saudi airstrikes have killed over 4,000 civilians, and led to 2.8million people being displaced.

Three observations...

The the US has made some serious mistakes e.g. in targetting, they have generally owned up to these. For a couple of decades the US and confined air actions to precision munitions and have stopped using things like cluster bombs.

The Saudi involvement to support the legitimate Yemeni government against the Iranian backed Houthis has resulted in a likely premeditated strike, thus a war crime. Other actions are also questionable with abuse on both sides.

The Russians are systematically destroying a large Syrian city with no account taken of the population. Cluster bombs are in use, for example. Aleppo does look like Grozny, a city destroyed by the Russians with terrible loss of life.

There are wrongs all around, but Russia's wrongs at the moment are somewhat bigger due to the methods and the metrics.