Pointless ...

Another pointless war, another hit against the economic well being of America as we continue to squander our resources in order to line the pockets of the Military/Industrial/Congressional Complex while the infrastructure of our once great nation continues to deteriate at alarming speed. Compare this with the Russian/Chinese initiative of the New Silk Road and you see why the US is slowly moving toward the dustbin of history as all empires eventually fail including this one. 

WASHINGTON — An American warship stationed off the coast of Yemen fired cruise missiles on Thursday at radar installations that the Pentagon said had been used by Yemeni insurgents to target another American warship in two missile attacks in the last four days.

The strikes against the Houthi rebels marked the first time the United States has become involved militarily in the civil war between the Houthis, an indigenous Shiite group with loose connections to Iran, and the Yememi government, which is backed by Saudi Arabia and other Sunni nations. The strikes were approved by President Obama, said Peter Cook, the Pentagon spokesman, who warned of more to come if American ships were fired upon again.

“These limited self-defense strikes were conducted to protect our personnel, our ships and our freedom of navigation in this important maritime passageway,” the Pentagon said in a statement. “The United States will respond to any further threat to our ships and commercial traffic.”

The question to ask here is, why are we involved in a guerrilla conflict between Saudi Arabia and Yemen? Arms sales anyone?

The Obama administration went ahead with a $1.3 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia last year despite warnings from some officials that the United States could be implicated in war crimes for supporting a Saudi-led air campaign in Yemen that has killed thousands of civilians, according to government documents and the accounts of current and former officials.

State Department officials also were privately skeptical of the Saudi military's ability to target Houthi militants without killing civilians and destroying "critical infrastructure" needed for Yemen to recover, according to the emails and other records obtained by Reuters and interviews with nearly a dozen officials with knowledge of those discussions.

U.S. government lawyers ultimately did not reach a conclusion on whether U.S. support for the campaign would make the United States a "co-belligerent" in the war under international law, four current and former officials said. That finding would have obligated Washington to investigate allegations of war crimes in Yemen and would have raised a legal risk that U.S. military personnel could be subject to prosecution, at least in theory.

For instance, one of the emails made a specific reference to a 2013 ruling from the war crimes trial of former Liberian president Charles Taylor that significantly widened the international legal definition of aiding and abetting such crimes.

The ruling found that "practical assistance, encouragement or moral support" is sufficient to determine liability for war crimes. Prosecutors do not have to prove a defendant participated in a specific crime, the U.N.-backed court found.

It gets better

Quite the coincidence that within just a few days of increased war crime concerns, the U.S. military suddenly found an excuse to escalate its involvement. How convenient.

Before Thursday’s attack, Secretary of State John Kerry pushed for a peace deal in Yemen, arguing that the United States could be an honest broker because it was not directly involved in the Saudi-led bombing campaign.

The military response could now make that a more difficult position to take.

Just great, knee-fucking deep in another Middle Eastern war.

Peter Salisbury, a Yemen expert at Chatham House, a London policy institute, said in an interview conducted hours before the American strikes that “if they do intervene, it deepens the case that the Americans are party to the conflict.”

And just think, NeoCon Hillary will soon be president.

As Dylan so famously wrote - A Hard Rains Gonna Fall

Rand Paul is right when you stop to consider ...

The Obama administration has sold more weapons to the Saudis than any other administration, pledging more than $115 billion worth of small arms, tanks, helicopters, missiles, and aircraft.

It's all about the money. - Robert E.