The US view of Yemen as an al-Qaida hotbed is a travesty of the truth (and ANOTHER drone strike)

[cali]

Third drone strike in the last 3 days. I think that brings it to 6 in the last 2 weeks.

Yemenis in the city of Sanaa awoke on Tuesday morning to the sound of rattling windows and a constant buzzing in the sky. It was a noise that brought one word to the minds of those who heard it – "drone" – and a sense of apprehension as they awaited the explosion on the ground that seemed sure to come at any moment.

Citizens of Yemen's capital are not accustomed to drones – strikes usually happen in more remote parts of the country – but the white object circling overhead, harmlessly as it turned out, gave them a small taste of what it's like to be on the receiving end.

"If this is how much fear, terror, and anger what just sounds to be a drone makes in Yemen's capital, imagine what it does in areas it actually bombs," activist Farea al-Muslimi tweeted.

In fact, it wasn't a drone on this occasion. The object in the sky was soon identified from photographs as a manned P-3 surveillance aircraft (or, as Yemeni journalist Shuaib Amosawa dubbed it, a "subservience plane&quot . Interestingly, the P-3 is mostly used for detecting submarines but has also seen service in Afghanistan where submarines are as rare as they are in Yemen. But what, exactly, was it doing over Sanaa?

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There is now widespread recognition that drone strikes in Yemen have been counter-productive. Whatever benefits they brought in terms of killing militants who posed a serious threat have been cancelled out by the killing of others who posed no threat at all, and the anger this has aroused among the population at large.

<snip>

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/07/us-attacks-yemen-al-qaida

And about that 3rd drone strike in 3 days:

A U.S. drone killed at least six suspected al Qaeda militants in Yemen's southeastern province of Maareb on Thursday, officials said, the sixth such strike in less than two weeks.

The strike follows Yemen's announcement on Wednesday that it had foiled a plot by al Qaeda to seize two major oil and gas export terminals and a provincial capital in the east of the country.


The drone killings also come after warnings of potential attacks by militants that pushed Washington to shut missions across the Middle East, and the United States and Britain to evacuate staff from Yemen.

Witnesses and local officials in Maareb, a mostly desert region where militants have taken refuge, said the drone fired at two vehicles suspected of carrying al Qaeda militants at dawn, killing six people.

Residents saw the two vehicles rise in flames and the drones circled the air for a while after the attack.

<snip>

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/08/us-drones-yemen-maareb-idUSBRE97705R20130808

[cali]

1. kick