By: Moon of Alabama
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March 17, 2017 "Information Clearing House"
- When I saw the above tweet this morning I wondered which "war
torn" country those Somalis were fleeing from when they were murdered. The
tweet doesn't say. Were they fleeing from the "war torn" Somalia? Or
were the fleeing from "war torn" Yemen?
It is a sad world
when has to ponder such.
It tuned out these
people were fleeing from both wars:
Coast guard Mohammad
Al Alay told Reuters the refugees, carrying official UNHCR documents, were on
their way from Yemen to Sudan when they were attacked by an Apache helicopter
near the Bab Al Mandeb strait.
An Apache attack
helicopter shot up the refugees' boat. There are Saudi, United Emirates and
U.S. Apache helicopters in or around Yemen. It is unknown which of them ordered
and which executed the strike. These helicopters, their ammunition and the
service for them are a favored U.S. export
to belligerent
dictatorships like Saudi Arabia.
The UN warns that 5
million people in Yemen are only weeks away from starving.
The Saudis, the U.S. and the Emirates block all land routes, air ports and the
coast of Yemen and no food supplies come through. This is an ongoing huge war
crime and literally a genocide. But "western" media seem totally
unimpressed. Few, if any, reports on the war on Yemen get published. Never have
they so openly displayed their hypocrisy.
Somalia is falling
back into an all-out civil war fueled by the decades old unwillingness of the
U.S. to condone an independent local unity government. The Islamic
Court Union, a unity government created by the Somalis in 2006, was the last
working instance of a real Somali state. It had no Jihadist agenda and held
down local warlords. It was destroyed by the Bush administration:
A UN cable from June
2006, containing notes of a meeting with senior State Department and US
military officials from the Horn of Africa task force, indicates that the
United States was aware of the ICU’s diversity, but would “not allow” it to
rule Somalia. The United States, according to the notes, intended to “rally
with Ethiopia if the ‘Jihadist’ took over.” The cable concluded, “Any Ethiopian
action in Somalia would have Washington’s blessing.” Some within the US
intelligence community called for dialogue or reconciliation, but their voices
were drowned out by hawks determined to overthrow the ICU.
During the last 10
years an on-and-off war is waged in Somalia with the U.S. military interfering
whenever peace seems to gain ground. Currently a new round of war is building
up. Weapons are streaming into Somalia from Yemen,
where the Houthi plunder them from their Saudi invaders:
Jonah Leff, a
weapons tracing expert with conflict Armament Research, said many [Somali]
pirates had turned to smuggling. They take boatloads of people [from Somalia]
to Yemen and return with weapons, he said.
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The wars on Somalia and Yemen are the consequences of
unscrupulous and incompetent(?) U.S. foreign policy. (Cutting down the size
of the U.S. State Department, as the Trump administration now plans to do, is
probably the best thing one can do for world peace.)
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The U.S. military
should be cut down too. It is equally unscrupulous and incompetent.
Last night the U.S.
military hit a mosque in Al-Jīnah in Aleppo governate in Syria. It first
claimed that the strike, allegedly targeting a large meeting of al-Qaeda, was
in Idleb governate. But it turned out to be miles away west of Aleppo. Locals
said a mosque was hit, the roof crashed in and more than 40 people were killed during
the regular prayer service. More than 120 were injured. The U.S. military said
it did not hit the local mosque but a building on the other side of the small
plaza.
The U.S. maps and
intelligence were not up-to-date. A new, bigger mosque had been build some
years ago opposite of the old mosque. The old mosque was indeed not hit. The
new one was destroyed while some 200 people were in attendance. Eight hellfire
missiles launched from two Reaper drones were fired at it and a 500lb bomb was
then dropped on top to make sure that no one escaped alive. Al-Qaeda fighters
were indeed "meeting" at that place - five times a day and together
with the locals they have pressed by force to attend the Quran proscribed
prayers.
Had the Russian or
Syrian army committed the strike the "western" outcry would have been
great. For days the media would have provide gruesome photos and stories. The
U.S. ambassador at the UN would have spewed fire and brimstone. But this
intelligence screw-up happened on the U.S. side. There will now be some
mealymouthed explanations and an official military investigation that will find
no fault and will have no consequences.
Amid this sorry
incident it was amusing to see the propaganda entities the U.S. had created to
blame the Syrian government turning against itself. The MI6 operated SOHR was
the first to come out with a high death count. The al-Qaeda aligned,
U.S./UK financed "White Helmets" rescuers made a quick photo session
pretending to dig out the dead. The sectarian al-Qaeda
video propagandist Bilal Abdul Kareem, which the New York Times recently
portrait
in a positive light, provided damning video and accusing comments. The amateur
NATO researchers at Bellingcat published what they
had gleaned from maps, photos and videos others created.
Each new lie and
obfuscation the U.S. Central Command in the Middle East put out throughout the
day was immediately debunked by the horde of U.S. financed al-Qaeda propaganda
supporters. This blowback from the "information operation" against
Syria will likely have consequences for future U.S. operations.
In another operation
last night the Israeli air force attacked Syrian forces near Palmyra which were
operating against ISIS. The Israeli fighters were chased away when the Syrians
fired air defense missiles. This was an Israeli attempt to stretch the
"rules of operation" it had negotiated with the Russian military in
Syria. The Russians, which control the Syrian air space, had allowed Israel to
hit Hizbullah weapon transports on their way to Lebanon. Attacks on any force
operating against Jihadis in Syria are taboo. The Russian government summoned
the Israeli ambassador. Netanyahoo broke the rules. He will now have to bear
the consequences.
