U.S. Strikes in Yemen Said to Kill 8 Militants

[alp227]

Source: The New York Times

SANA, Yemen — American drones and fighter jets hit suspected Qaeda-affiliated militants in southern Yemen early Thursday, killing at least eight fighters sleeping in a police station they had overrun, according to local residents and American and Yemeni security officials.

The strikes were part of an expanded air war in Yemen by the American military aimed at militants who now control large swaths of southern Yemen amid a power struggle in the impoverished desert country.

In recent months, the Obama administration has escalated a campaign of airstrikes carried out by the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command with the assistance of the C.I.A. The C.I.A. is building a base in the region to serve as a hub for future operations in Yemen.

According to both American and Yemeni officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the attacks in Yemen are rarely acknowledged publicly, the strike on Thursday hit a police station that had been occupied by 20 militant fighters in the town of Al Wadyia, in Abyan Province in southern Yemen. One Yemeni security official said that eight people had been killed, including the gathering’s leader, identified as Hadi Mohammad Ali.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/15/world/middleeast/15yemen.html

[IamK]

1. gotta love Obama .. the Ghostfaced Killaa...n/t

[JackRiddler]

2. Militants (n.) All corpses of male humans at the scene of a USG drone strike.

[zalinda]

3. How many countries does this make?

I think the Nobel Peace Prize committee is doing a lot of forehead slapping, head shaking and groaning right about now.

zalinda

[JackRiddler]

4. Six, at least.

Known drone strikes or US aerial bombings in the last year (I'm pretty sure) have taken place in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Iraq, Yemen and Somalia. The latter two are escalating right now: CIA has built a training facility in its own green zone in Mogadishu, where the allied "Somali government" totally rules downtown. US is relying on Saudi intel for targets to hit in Yemen, thus participating directly in the Saudi coordination of the effort to crush the Arab Spring uprisings within the oil kingdoms. Yemen is in a state of revolution, insurgency, and incipient civil war. For all we know the fighters who took the police station are not "al-Qaeda" part of the insurgency against the government, which is post-Saleh but still ancien regime. It's absurd to think the USG has any clue who it's bombing beyond what the Arab oil kingdom allies claim. But as soon as you kill them, they're "militants" unless they can be identified as women or young children, in which case they were civilians unfortunately harboring or being used as human shields by "militants."

[zalinda]

5. To be quite honest

This makes absolutely no sense to me at all. We are bankrupting the country, for something (oil) that will be in short supply in the near future. It makes more sense to do a Green War (ala WWII) and start manufacturing green energy and electric cars, and turn this country around. Damn, if there is leadership, this country can produce miracles. I guess that can be explained away too.

zalinda