(C) Common Dreams
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Why Bombs Made in America Have Been Killing Civilians in Yemen [1]
['Michael Laforgia', 'Walt Bogdanich', 'More About Michael Laforgia', 'More About Walt Bogdanich']
Date: 2020-05-16
“It happened so quickly,” Ben Rhodes, one of Mr. Obama’s foreign policy advisers, said in an interview. “Obama typically had a very rigorous process around certainly the application of U.S. military force, and this felt very different.”
With few options, none of them appealing, the advisers recommended a high-risk plan to support a country with billions of dollars in American weapons but little experience in using them.
Mr. Obama agreed despite misgivings. Not wanting to get embroiled in another war, he offered primarily defensive support without defining in clear terms what that meant. The arms industry would later seize on the ambiguity to sell the Saudis billions of dollars in both offensive and defensive weapons.
On the day of the call, as Mr. Obama’s advisers departed the White House Situation Room, at least a few had a sinking feeling. “We knew we might be getting in a car with a drunk driver,” one adviser would later say.
Within hours, their fears became reality.
While the Saudi ambassador in Washington was briefing the media, Saudi planes were already over Yemen. In their first bombing run, around 2 a.m., the Saudis hit a residential area and killed 14 children. Through the night, neighbors pulled the dead and the living from the piles of stone that had once been their homes. Three of the children belonged to a man named Yasser Al-Habashi, who did not learn they had died until he awoke from a coma 13 days later.
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[1] Url:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/16/us/arms-deals-raytheon-yemen.html
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