Middle East

[Vrede too]

Saudi Arabia’s New Crown Prince Is a Bumbling Hothead. Trump Needs to Treat Him Like One.

Funny, Dolt .45 Is a bumbling hothead, too.

[Boatrocker]

Saudi Arabia’s New Crown Prince Is a Bumbling Hothead. Trump Needs to Treat Him Like One.

Funny, Dolt .45 Is a bumbling hothead, too.

What could POSSIBLY go wrong?

[Vrede too]

Senators ask military to review Yemen abuse reported by AP

[Vrede too]

US House Votes to Block US Participation in Saudi War in Yemen

Today, the US House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved two amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would prohibit US participation in the catastrophic Saudi-United Arab Emirates (UAE) war against the Houthi-Saleh alliance in Yemen.

The Davidson amendment prohibits US military action in Yemen not authorized by the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF). US participation in the Saudi-UAE war in Yemen is not targeting al-Qaeda or ISIS and is not authorized by the 2001 AUMF. Davidson's amendment would block the US refueling of Saudi and UAE warplanes bombing Yemen.

The Nolan amendment prohibits the deployment of US troops to participation in Yemen's civil war. Nolan's amendment would block the US refueling of Saudi and UAE warplanes bombing Yemen.

The Saudi-UAE war in Yemen, in which US participation was never authorized by Congress, has pushed Yemen to the brink of famine, with the worst cholera outbreak in the world, with the UN suspending its vaccination plan against cholera in Yemen because of the war.

The Saudi-UAE war in Yemen has also strengthened al-Qaeda and ISIS. Indeed, al-Qaeda's Yemen branch is allied with the Saudis and the UAE against the Houthi-Saleh forces.

Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut has said, "The Saudis simply could not operate this bombing campaign without us. Their planes can't fly without US refueling capacity." Yet the US has doubled the amount of fuel it provided to Saudi and UAE bombers since October. Most of the bombers refueled by the US are UAE bombers, according to the Pentagon. The Pentagon apparently has little oversight or concern about who or what it is helping to bomb:

"We provide refueling totals for the Saudi-led Coalition on an on-demand basis," said CENTCOM spokesperson Maj. Josh Jacques. "They request refueling and we provide it. I will refer you to the Saudi-led coalition as to the reasons why they requested the amounts of fuel."

Congressional action to end US participation in the catastrophic Saudi-UAE war in Yemen, which has never been authorized by Congress, is long overdue. President Trump should heed the House votes and end US refueling of Saudi and UAE planes bombing Yemen immediately.

You can urge President Trump to comply with the House demands, and urge the Senate to stand with the House here.

To be delivered to The United States House of Representatives, The United States Senate, and President Donald Trump

We thank the House for voting to prohibit U.S. participation in the Saudi war in Yemen. We call on President Trump to immediately cease refueling Saudi & UAE planes bombing Yemen. We call on the Senate to stand with the House.

Both were voice votes, no telling how my Rep. Meadows (R-NC11) voted.

[Vrede too]

Petition to be delivered to Nikki Haley, US Amb. to UN, The United States House of Representatives, and The United States Senate

Back UN Yemen Envoy's plan to stop Saudi-UAE attacks on Yemen's Hodeida port, rebuild it & allow aid to avert famine.

[Vrede too]

Lebanese prime minister stays silent as Donald Trump mistakenly says he is fighting Hezbollah

This would be even funnier if Dolt .45 wasn't making the decisions about who to risk and kill in the region.

[Vrede too]

Petition to be delivered to The United States Senate

Pass the Young and Merkley amendments to stop arming Saudi Arabia's war crimes in Yemen.

[billy.pilgrim]

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/ ... lians-week

My estimate - for every civilian murdered there are 10 terrorists created.

How many have we killed - maybe a million.

[Vrede too]

I've been struck in the interviews of Mosul residents with how many described 4 years of ISIS being horrible, then saying that the period of US bombing and Iraqi assault was the worst and most frightening. I'll bet it's the same in Raqqa.

[Vrede too]

Rand Paul: Unconstitutional Saudi War in Yemen Is Not in Our Interest and Congress Should Vote

[rstrong]

A good overview of the current state of war in Syria from military historian Gwynne Dyer: Russian victory in Syria

[Vrede too]

Russia can have it. Good will and influence in the region can be very fleeting and expensive.

... I prefer non-military action on our part. Once we start killing people the consequences can be unpredictable, costly and very ugly.

We've spent a bunch of money, helped kill a bunch of people, still have al-Assad and no one will be happy with our efforts. I'm not a pacifist, but I think that US killing or abetting killing should be very restricted, and should only occur when there's far more clarity of purpose and intended outcome than there ever was in Syria and usually is in the Middle East.

[rstrong]

Peacekeeping and peace-making is always messy.

Canadians are very proud of our UN peacekeepers. They're even featured on our $10 bill.

But it's often damned hard to point out what they actually accomplished. We kept the peace in Cyprus, but nothing had changed when we pulled out decades later. Peacekeeping in the Sinai Peninsula and later in southern Lebanon failed to prevent war. Genocide happened on our watch in Rwanda. Genocide happened on our watch in Bosnia/Herzegovina, ending only when Clinton had enough and started bombing Serbia. Etc. Etc.

The US went into the Syrian mess with good reasons. To prop up the Iraqi government it helped create. (As the pundits said during the 2003 Iraq invasion: "You break it, you bought it.") And to shield civilians.

The problem with the latter is that there's often no "good guys" to hand responsibility to. In this case they were caught between Assad and ISIS. So you're in for a generation at least, trying to create a local "moderate" force.

But that can conflict with other interests. The only viable moderate force was the Kurds, whose homeland is shared between Turkey, Iran and Syria, and whose villages are traditionally used for peace-time target practice by the air forces of all three. Any aid to them, any move towards an independent Kurdish country even if only on one side of a border leads to more bombing from all sides. Now with Russian help.

In the end all the US (and Canada and others) could do is use military force to open corridors for civilians to escape. And that's worth the effort. Unfortunately it's also a role in ethnic cleansing. Those refugee camps full of Yazidis, Christians and Sunnis in Jordan and Turkey are permanent.

[Boatrocker]

. . . So you're in for a generation at least, trying to create a local "moderate" force . . . .

And historically, that has worked out so well, in so many places.

[Vrede too]

TAKE ACTION: Tell Congress to Prevent a "Spiral of Proliferation" (with Iran)

[Vrede too]

Trump: Iran is violating the nuclear deal. Top US general: no, it isn’t.
The chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff just said the Iran deal is working.

[Vrede too]

Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site, which I have visited:



Today:

[Vrede too]

House declares U.S. military role in Yemen's civil war unauthorized

In a rare exercise of its war-making role, the House of Representatives on Monday overwhelmingly passed a resolution explicitly stating that U.S. military assistance to Saudi Arabia in its war in Yemen is not authorized under legislation passed by Congress to fight terrorism or invade Iraq.

The nonbinding resolution adopted 366-30, does not call for a halt to the American support but publicly acknowledges the Pentagon has been sharing targeting information and refueling warplanes that Saudi Arabia and other allies are using to attack Houthi rebels in a conflict that is widely considered a proxy war with Iran — and a humanitarian disaster.

It states, in part, that U.S. military operations are authorized to fight only Al Qaeda and other allied terrorist groups in Yemen, not Shiite Muslim rebels....

The resolution was not as strong as some would have liked, however. After a compromise with House leadership, it left out the language contained in a separate measure drafted by Khanna calling for a halt to U.S. military assistance in Yemen....

First I'm learning about of this. Did any of you hear about it from the MSM?

[billy.pilgrim]

First I have heard.

[Vrede too]

Tell the U.S Senate: No war in Yemen