Breaking from Saudi Arabia!!! Two Month Old Misleading News
This Reuters exclusive is getting a lot of careless attention. Here’s what a careless reader learns:
Exclusive: U.S. withdraws staff from Saudi Arabia dedicated to Yemen planning
From that headline, particularly the use of the present tense, you might assume that the US is in the process of withdrawing its Yemen-related staff from Saudi Arabia, perhaps in response to the Saudi war crimes earlier this week.
But here’s what the story actually reports: the staff withdrawal happened in June, and was in no way a response to this week’s war crimes.
The June staff withdrawal, which U.S. officials say followed a lull in air strikes in Yemen earlier this year, reduces [sic] Washington’s day-to-day involvement in advising a campaign that has come under increasing scrutiny for causing civilian casualties.
In spite of the fact that this “exclusive” — which has since been reported by other outlets with similarly misleading headlines — describes two month old news, it nevertheless obscures that fact with its editorial choices, as here where it suggests the move “reduces,” in present tense, staff numbers, or the headline which hides that, in fact, the US already withdrew these staffers.
In fact, the report goes on to admit that this was not a response (which would have required a time machine in any case).
U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the reduced staffing was not due to the growing international outcry over civilian casualties in the 16-month civil war that has killed more than 6,500 people in Yemen, about half of them civilians.
But the Pentagon, in some of its strongest language yet, also acknowledged concerns about the conflict, which has brought Yemen close to famine and cost more than $14 billion in damage to infrastructure and economic losses.
“Even as we assist the Saudis regarding their territorial integrity, it does not mean that we will refrain from expressing our concern about the war in Yemen and how it has been waged,” Stump said.
I’d also suggest that reports about what non-uniformed US personnel are doing in Yemen’s immediate neighborhood would be a better gauge of the support we’re giving Saudi Arabia beyond refueling their aistrikes, the latter of which has not stopped at all.
It’s not until the last line two paragraphs of the story that we learn what this misleading news is really about:
U.S. Representative Ted Lieu, a Democrat from California and a colonel in the Air Force Reserve, said he believed such strikes could help galvanize votes for limiting arms transfers to Saudi Arabia.
“When its repeated air strikes that have now killed children, doctors, newlyweds, patients, at some point you just have to say: Either Saudi Arabia is not listening to the United States or they just don’t care,” Lieu said.
Not long ago, the US announced $1.5 billion in new arms sales to Saudi Arabia. Congress has a narrow window to affirmatively veto that sale, and people like Ted Lieu and Rand Paul and Chris Murphy are trying to do just that. The arms sale was announced such that Congress has just one day after they come back in session to reject the transfer. Stories like this — suggesting the US is not as involved in this war as it really is — will make the task all the more difficult.
The reality remains that the US, even the overt uniformed operations, continues to provide key support to Saudi Arabia’s war, and therefore to its war crimes. Selling it more arms in the wake of these most recent war crimes only doubles down on the complicity.
Spot the issue
http://web.archive.org/web/20160819192436/http://www.reuters.com/article/us-yemen-security-usa-saudiarabia-idUSKCN10U1TL
It seems the foreign news service Reuters was having a slow news day and slipped this filler piece, with its click baited headline, into the stream. There is really nothing of real or imagined interest here, The US reassigned forty advisors because they were no longer needed in the KSA where the Saudis have shown they are more than able to target MSF troublemakers on their own and the only War Crime that really matters today is being defeated.
why would this administration – or any for that matter – be concerned over saudi arabia war crimes? the united states commits war crimes every day. obama has murdered american citizens, terrorized and incinerated others by drone, kidnapped and tortured. meanwhile, he golfs on martha’s vineyard, as horrors continue apace.
moreover, a chance to produce profits for american weapons manufacturers is too good to pass up.
the video of a stunned, soot-covered, bloodied, 3-year-old in syria displays the true face of war.
which is exactly why you will never see images of the hundreds-of-thousands of children america has killed since 2001. people with a conscience might object.
which is also why millions of muslims want revenge. and their vengeance will target innocent americans.
obama, and the generals, and intelligence agencies, are very aware that the actions of the u.s. over there endanger all citizens over here. how are current policies an advancement of domestic tranquility? san bernadino & orlando are the result of the self-defeating war on terror. there will be more.
the reason for war is war. the goal of war is death & destruction. humanity is under attack from the dogs of war. there are no winners. only losers.
the losses are immeasurable.