Yemen
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Confirmed: Saudi-led coalition aircraft are now being refuelled in-flight by the US Air Force
Aerial refuelling of coalition aircraft began Tuesday 7 April with a USAF KC-135 filling up a RSAF F-15 and UAEAF F-16.
http://www.business-standard.com/art...0900076_1.html
American fighter aircraft dropping American bombs being refuelled by American tankers. The difference between this and the Americans' doing it all themselves is narrowing by the day, but one thing stands out: ownership - in public, this is a Saudi-led campaign. Meanwhile, there is a USMC Major General leading an American team working with the Saudis to co-ordinate the operation in Riyadh. Of course, it doesn't take a stretch of the imagination to realise that Operation Decisive Storm was their baby all along.
In America's dealings with Iran, it's a matter of rhetoric versus actions. The "nuclear agreement that isn't really an agreement" is rhetoric; the proxy wars are actions. Which matters more? Actions speak louder than words.
Get a load of this: http://www.informationclearinghouse....ticle41438.htmbut then again the Saudi themselves were only a year ago strongly backing the Houtis against the Muslim brotherhood.
A year earlier, then Saudi intelligence chief Prince Bandar met with Houthi leader Saleh Habreh in London. The Saudis wanted to mobilise the Houthis against the Islah Party, Yemen’s Muslim Brotherhood branch that shared power with President Hadi, so that they “cancel each other out” in conflict.
But Islah refused to confront the Houthis, and Riyadh’s green light backfired, allowing the Iran-backed militia to march unhindered to the capital.
The US was involved. Sources close to Hadi say they were told by the Americans about a meeting in Rome between Iranian officials and the son of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, to secure his assurances that government units loyal to Saleh would not oppose the Houthi advance.
According to another source close to President Hadi, the UAE also played a key role in the Houthi operation, providing $1 billion to the Houthis through Saleh and his son Ahmad.
If true, this means in sum that US intelligence had advanced warning of the Houthi offensive and Saleh’s role in it; the UAE had reportedly provided funding to Saleh for the operation; and the Saudis had personally given the Houthis the green light in hope of triggering a fight to the death with Yemen’s Brotherhood.
Local reports in Yemen refer to “an alliance… between the Houthis, the United States, and Saleh’s Republican Guard,” to counter Ansar al-Sharia, the local al-Qaeda branch. Some Yemeni politicians also said that “the Americans gave a green light to the Houthis to enter the capital and weaken Islah”.
Why would the US do nothing to warn its Yemeni client-regime about the incoming Houthi offensive, while then rushing to support Saudi Arabia’s military overreaction to fend off the spectre of Iranian expansion?
The 2008 RAND Corporation report was sponsored by the US Army Training and Doctrine Command’s Army Capability Integration Centre. It set out US government policy options for prosecuting what it described as “the long war” against “adversaries” in “the Muslim world,” who are “bent on forming a unified Islamic world to supplant Western dominance”.
Muslim world adversaries include “doctrinaire” Salafi-jihadists; “religious nationalist organisations” like “Hezbollah and Hamas that participate in the political process” but are also “willing to use violence”; secular groups “such as communists, Arab nationalists, or Baathists”; and “nonviolent organisations” because their members might later join “more radical organisations”.
The report suggests that the US Army sees all Muslim political groups in the region that challenge the prevailing geopolitical order as “adversaries” to be countered and weakened.
By backing the Iraqi Shiite regime and seeking an accommodation with Iran; while propping up al-Qaeda sponsoring Gulf states and empowering local anti-Shia Islamists across the region - this covert US strategy would calibrate levels of violence to debilitate both sides, and sustain “Western dominance”.
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Originally Posted by Excel
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