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Oops! There goes another half billion dollars’ worth of war material lost to another enemy. This time in Yemen where until a few weeks ago President Obama could readily tout Yemen as the one foreign policy success story he could always hang his hat on. Yemen was the one place on this planet where Obama could avoid having to admit his foreign policy is not a total and abject failure. Yemen was where he could rationalize that his killer drone policy was actually working at keeping the enemy at bay. So what if most of the people killed by drones are innocent (over 96% by one recent analysis), many children and women that happened to get in the way. A little so called collateral damage never hurt the mighty US Empire’s warring ways.
In January Yemen’s US puppet government was overthrown by Iranian backed Shiite Houthi rebels affiliated with al Qaeda factions. These insurgent forces generated increasing strength over time in large part provoked by Obama’s predator drone policy regularly attacking and killing hundreds of mostly innocent civilians in Yemen since 2002. Last month during the ensuing unrest in the Yemen capital Sanaa, US personnel apparently were forced to close its embassy, having to evacuate US citizens from what’s now become another openly hostile, unsafe nation for Americans in the Arabian Gulf.
Subsequently the Pentagon in recent weeks had to slink before closed sessions of Congress to inform them that it fears that al Qaeda in Yemen now has in its possession countless small arms, ammunition, night-vision goggles, patrol boats, vehicles, aircraftand other large scale combat supplies that enable yet more so called Islamic extremists to wage yet more terrorism and war into the future. Pressed to account for the whereabouts of the weaponry, the Pentagon brass simply shrugged their shoulders and alluded to it most likely being in the wrong hands now. An anonymous legislative aide could only conclude, “We have to assume it’s completely compromised and gone.”
This much of the confiscated aid presumed missing and irretrievable was released:
• 1,250,000 rounds of ammunition
• 200 Glock 9 mm pistols
• 200 M-4 rifles
• 4 Huey II helicopters
• 2 Cessna 208 transport and surveillance aircraft
• 2 coastal patrol boats
• 1 CN-235 transport and surveillance aircraft
• 4 hand-launched Raven drones
• 160 Humvees
• 250 suits of body armor
• 300 sets of night-vision goggle