zero tolerance -- yemen

THE ABSURD TIMES

TRUMP THE VILE

Even calling him something like that will be no problem for his as long as his hell's angle's gang of supporters keep suppporting him and they will. Whenever an issue become too hot for him, he manages to change the subject and the media is more than happy to oblige him on that. He has taken the attention away from Jerusalem, Russia and his complicity, and a variety of other issues, this time by creating baby prisons on the Texas borders, a move so vile that even Ted Cruz, the leach-infested Senator from Texas is trying to distance himself from it.

This is an easy task to this love lorn attention hound. Even his ghost writer has pointed out that he has the attention span of, well, an attention span no greater that 15 minutes. Once he read a state of the union speech and someone asked me what did it prove? My answer was simple, it proved that he was able to read, just so long as he was allowed to say the words as he spoke and knew that it was going out on national television. Otherwise, they know not to give him anything longer than about one paragraph to read and even then to be careful to put his name in it somewhere.

The media has absolutely no interest in pointing this out or even calling him on it except to point it out, but then they go along with the new topic and abandon whatever it was that was giving him trouble in the first place. He is just too good for ratings, sort of the Hell's Angels of politics. https://www.thenation.com/article/this-political-theorist-predicted-the-rise-of-trumpism-his-name-was-hunter-s-thompson/ You can see from that, if you can get through all the adds and warnings and permissions, that it was predicted and that it came true. Fortunately, for him, he shot himself in the head when he was 69 and thus never lived to see it. We have to live through it.

He will continue if we let him, and have to let him at least until midterms. If we try to take him out before that, it will be used to get of his voters who normally are a sluggish sort. Still, he was forced to cancell the congressional picnic (Ivanka will miss that, but she doesn't care) and soon issued an executive order to stop separating children from their parents. Probably the biggest incentive to do this was first the sight on about 10 9 and 10 year old girls being led to a detention center in East Harlem and televised by TV ! In New York followed by nagging from Melania and Ivanka (presumably) and outrage from Republican members who were afraid of what the photos showed back home. (Things look different in Louisville than in Washington, D.C.)

So, he changes his mind. Of course. He will find something else. Perhaps as Cohen says he may flip, finds an attprney that specializes in flipping, and asks Trump to pay his legal fees, we may have something going on there.

So, there may be a change after this order, but now we have a few court challenges. Do not worry, Jeffrey Beaugragrd Session is read for that. He will fuck it up, for sure, but not right away.

Still, it keeps attention away from the Russia investigation, Mike Cohen seeming ready to turn and spill the beans for Mueller rather than spend the next 30 years in a prison cell with a guy named Bubba who will like his ass. He knows where he is headed. Seems nobody is insisting on proof of the 3 million illegal votes cast in the last election and nobody is mentioning the lack of at least a down payment for the wall. Meanwhile, he is praising North Korea because they all sit up straight and listen with rapture at whatever word their ruler says. He even suggests that quasi Geisha who is the lead anchor on North Korean TV wee the lead anchor on Fox news. No bull shit, he actually said that. Of course, he probably forgot.

Anyway, perhaps it's time for the Cohen show? We heard a lot about MS-!3 as being the gang that is the cause of this and I wondered about them. A friend I knew who grew up in Loa Angeles (I don't admit to know anyone who grew up in Southern California, BTW) says that they actually started out in LA. They formed in Korea Town off 18^th Street near a 7/11 and started to rip off the locals. The Koreans had enough and the cops were not much help as neither culprits were black, so they fought back and the Korean War started up again, and there was no General MacArthur to intervene. Things were getting ugly and the sanitation workers threatened to go on strike as they didn't like sweeping up body parts so Bill Clinton moved in and deported all of them to South American somewhere. ENOUGH OF THIS, I'M GETTING SICK.

I was about to go back to organizing the first SDS Chapter in a small university town directly north of Chicago, but that means it's time to finish this and be done with it. Speaking of blood and torture, this is what our beloved friends are doing in Yemen:

A new investigation has uncovered rampant sexual violence against Yemeni prisoners held in prisons run by the United Arab Emirates in Yemen. The Associated Press reports that in March, 15 officers lined up the prisoners in the southern city of Aden and ordered them to undress before searching their anal cavities, claiming they were looking for contraband cell phones. The prisoners screamed and cried and those who resisted were beaten and threatened by dogs.
Hundreds of prisoners reportedly suffered similar abuse. A Pentagon spokesman quoted in the piece said the allegations were not substantiated. The UAE is a key ally of the United States and has partnered with Saudi Arabia in its military assault on Yemen. We speak with Maggie Michael, the reporter who broke these stories. She is the Associated Press based in Cairo. Her latest exposé is headlined "Detainees held without charges decry Emiratis' sexual abuses." Last year, she reported on prisons in a piece headlined, "In Yemen's secret prisons, UAE tortures and US interrogates."

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Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I'm Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: We turn now to a shocking new investigation of rampant sexual violence against Yemeni detainees held in prisons run by the United Arab Emirates in Yemen.

The Associated Press reports that in March, 15 officers lined up the prisoners in the southern city of Aden and ordered them to undress before searching their anal cavities, claiming they were looking for contraband cell phones. The men screamed and cried and those who resisted were beaten and threatened by dogs. Hundreds of detainees reportedly suffered similar abuse. Witnesses told the AP that detainees were raped while other guards filmed the assaults. AP also reports that Yemeni guards working under Emirati officers electrocuted prisoners' genitals and sexually violated others with wooden and steel poles.

A Pentagon spokesman quoted in the piece said the allegations were not substantiated.

AMY GOODMAN: The UAE is a key ally of the United States and has partnered with Saudi Arabia in its military assault on Yemen. Last year, AP exposed the existence of secret prisons run by the United Arab Emirates in Yemen where torture was widespread. For more, we are going to Cairo to speak with Maggie Michael, the AP journalist who wrote the exposé, the headline Detainees held without charges decry Emiratis' sexual abuses. Welcome to Democracy Now! Maggie, talk about what you found.

MAGGIE MICHAEL: Our investigation started in 2016, and since that time we have been speaking to witnesses, to security officials, families, and finally, in this investigation, we managed to speak to prisoners inside the prisons. They are talking about how sexual abuse is being used as a way to extract confessions, and sometimes to turn them into informants to the Emiratis who are supervising and running prisons, directly or indirectly, through their own allies of security forces they set up in southern Yemen.

Our investigation last year exposed a network of 18 prisons in cities of Aden and Mukalla.

Our investigation this year found that of these prisons, at least five, there's a lot of sexual abuse happening to detainees. What is different this time is that we also spoke to officials who were at one point allied with the Emiratis. They were working for them, and then they defected. Their testimonies were very important to confirm what the prisoners and what the families have been saying all the time—hat they are being held without charges, no trials. Even those who were granted prosecutors like orders to be released, they still kept in detention. The officials—one of them, at least—was was involved in the torture. He confirmed that they were filming detainees while being raped in order to press them, in order to turn them into informants.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Can you say, Maggie, the drawings, some of which our television viewers can now see–the drawings that you received from the prisoners, how you got access to those drawings?

MAGGIE MICHAEL: The thing is, we communicated with the prisoners inside Beir Ahmed in Aden, southern Yemen, and one of them is a really good artist who in order to answer my questions about what exactly is happening, he decided to show it to me by drawing positions of torture, abuse, and then took pictures and then by phones and then sent them by WhatsApp, and this is how we got them. And lately, they have been finding it hard to use the same way, and we relied more on text messages from inside the prison.

AMY GOODMAN: Maggie, you were told by some prisoners that the American personnel in the prisons were there in uniform and must be aware of the torture. One senior security official at the prison in the city of Mukalla said in your piece, "Americans use Emiratis as gloves to do their dirty work." Explain what U.S. involvement is.

MAGGIE MICHAEL: Based on what we had last year and this year, Americans are in main base of Emiratis in Yemen. So this is including Mukalla, Balhaf in Shabwa, and there's a place called Buriqa—these have American interrogators. They are American personnel in uniform.
There are also mercenaries, including Americans. The main mission is interrogation. What we were told also that torture does not happen in front of the Americans, but they are aware of it, either by hearing people being tortured or by seeing marks of torture on their bodies. What this official in Riyan, in Mukalla told me is that Americans are aware of what is happening, and they're not only aware, they are actually part of it. And instead of doing the torture themselves in order to get confessions, they're using the Emiratis to do their dirty work.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Maggie, can you talk about the role of the United Arab Emirates? Now it has taken a leading role in the Saudi assault on Yemen, in particular its assault on Hodeida—the crucial port of Hodeida.

MAGGIE MICHAEL: This is the dilemma of the Yemeni government. On one side, it needs the Emiratis because it is leading the forces that are fighting the Houthi rebels who occupied northern Yemen since 2015 in order to liberate and take over Hodeida port from the Houthis. Hodeida is known as the mouth of Yemen. This is where most of the humanitarian aid and imports get through northern Yemen, where the strong majority of the population is concentrated. So the port is very important for the two sides—for the government and for the Houthis. So the government needs and relies on the Emiratis in taking over Hodeida.

At the same time, in southern Yemen, where the government should be having the upper hand, instead the Emiratis have taken the lead. They set up their own militias in every single city. Each of these militias have their own tribal and regional agenda. They set up prisons. They took control. It undermined to a great extent the Yemeni government. And until just last week, the president of Yemen was barred from returning to the government for nearly a year. We was in Saudi Arabia. And we reported that based on his own aides and commanders, he couldn't get back to Yemen because the Emiratis did not want him to return. Only with the start of the Hodeida assault…

AMY GOODMAN: We just have 30 seconds, and I just wanted to quickly ask, is the U.S. involved with giving lists of names of Yemenis to the Emiratis to jail?

MAGGIE MICHAEL: The Americans have a list of most wanted men, but not every single man arrested by the Emiratis are on the list. The Emiratis are trying to get information about the men on the list through mass arrests.

AMY GOODMAN: Maggie Michael, we want to thank you for being with us. We're going to link to your piece. Maggie is a reporter for Associated Press, her latest piece Detainees held without charges decry Emiratis' sexual abuses. We'll also link to her last year's piece, In Yemen's secret prisons, UAE tortures and US interrogates. That is all for the show.

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

Yemen, God, and Orange

THE ABSURD TIMES

Illustration:  Our work in Yemen.  Brits helped.

Here I was, quietly thinking about a piece on Yemen, when I got a frantic call, a conference call, from England (Kent) and Berlin.  It was all in English, of course, as almost all Germans who can speak and write English and more fluent than I am in Germany.  In fact, I imagine my own German is more understandable to a 19^th Century German philosopher or early 20^th Century poet than anyone else.  I imagine I sound much like one of those Brits who visited Germany in Thomas Mann's Masterpiece Dr. Faustus and was mimicked by one of Adrian's friends.

Anyway, the call was frantic and somehow came across as a mixture of depression and anger, asking about tariffs, who was Dennis Rodman, are all Republicans insane, and so on, although I have cleaned up the language a bit.  So I tried to explain, reminding them that my own views were somewhat morbid as well.  Still, not everyone here gets Dennis Rodman.  He was not one of the greats, but he was richly appreciated by the fans of any team he played for, and hated by the rest.  This show he had some good qualities.  

What happened was this: Trump insulted Canada and Trudeau remarked back that Canadians were polite and reasonable, but would not be pushed around.  I played a bit of hockey (left-wing) and can verify this.  Right afterwards, Trump's economics advisor was on network television accusing him of stabbing Trump in the back, went apoplectic, and eventually was hospitalized with a "minor" heart attack.  This was before his fixer Cohen let slip that he was going to "spill the beans".  The German had a bit of trouble with that, but I explained the colloquialism. 

Bob Corker, a Republican who quit, started ranting about the cult of Trump, but I personally think this insults Bob Jones and David Koresh.  The so-called "branch Davidians, btw, had only 2 guns per person whereas the state of Texas averages four.  It seems that Trump's approval rating in the Republican party in around 90 %.  At least, that is among those who admit to being Republicans.

During the negotiations over Korea, Kim was seen parading down the streets of Singapore enjoying himself, but The Orange man was nowhere to be seen.

Meanwhile, the United States seems to be on fire, especially in Durango (which anyone with a background is old westerns will remember as an epicenter of anything vile) Utah, Nevada, Las Vegas, and parts of California.  California seems to have had enough of this and voted to divide itself into three states, north, south, and east. 

At the same time, at the order of Jeff Sessions, children are even being ripped from their mothers while being breast-fed down on the border.   MAKE AMERICAN GREAT AGAIN!. 

The crys on the phone were weird: "Gott in Himmel, der Schwein!" and "Bloody Beastlike," and so on.  I tried to explain, but realized that there was no explanation other than stupidity.  Sure, I could talk about the Foreign Minister who is also Orange and gives Oxford much to explain, but such things seemed to trifle compared to how we sounded. 

So I said "How about Yemen?"

That really cut it.  I can't remember all they said, but they were not compliments to our electorate.  Even the mention of Lafarge or whatever seemed weak ammunition.  Even the 51% turnover rate in the White House and the fact that they have to throw a job fair to recruit people to work at the White house just seemed to prove their points. 

        Beware of false prophets. Which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are wolves.  Matthew vii, 15.

So, I again started on Yemen when I got a call from a catholic friend of mine screaming "Did you hear Jeff Sessions quoting the fucking Bible for God's sake?"

        For whose sake?

        "You know what I mean and then Sarah Sanders continues with it?  Hell, I hate these buggers!" And then he slammed down the phone. 

        Well, I put up the quotation from Matthew just for context's sake, and for, damn it, I'm going to get on with Yemen.  (BTW: The quote he used was a favorate of slave owners on the old south.)

        It has been awhile since we taked about Yemen as Palestine is much more serious and helpless.  AIPAC has this county's political system by the balls and it won't ever let go.  Even mentioning BDS is now illegal in some states.  But anyway, here is the systematic starvation and intentional disease of Yemen (which Obama one called his "model" for dealing with terrorism) that Trump is intensifying because the Saudi's have lots of money:

In Yemen, a coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates has launched an all-out offensive against the key port city of Hodeidah. The offensive is expected to be the biggest battle in the ongoing 3-year war between the U.S.-backed, Saudi-led coalition and Houthi rebels. The war has already killed 15,000 civilians, sparked the world's worst cholera epidemic and pushed the country to the brink of famine. Humanitarian organizations have warned the offensive could be a catastrophe for a quarter of a million civilians living in the port city, and for the rest of the Yemen, which is highly dependent on aid that travels through this port. For more, we speak with Congressmember Ro Khanna in Washington, D.C. He recently co-authored a bipartisan letter calling for Defense Secretary James Mattis to help prevent an attack on Hodeidah.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: We begin today's show in Yemen, where a coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates has launched an all-out offensive against the key port city of Hodeidah. The offensive is expected to be the biggest battle in the ongoing 3-year war between the U.S.-backed, Saudi-led coalition and Houthi rebels. The war has already killed 15,000 civilians, sparked the world's worst cholera epidemic and pushed the country to the brink of famine. Humanitarian groups have warned the offensive could be a catastrophe for a quarter of a million civilians living in Hodeidah, and for the rest of the Yemen, which is highly dependent on aid that travels through the port. The World Health Organization estimates 8.4 million people in Yemen already face pre-famine conditions. The offensive comes just days after the U.S.-backed, Saudi-led coalition bombed a new Doctors Without Borders cholera clinic in Yemen's northwest Abs region.

On Tuesday, I spoke with Democratic Congressmember Ro Khanna. He represents Silicon Valley in California. He recently co-authored a bipartisan letter calling for Defense Secretary James Mattis to help prevent an attack on Hodeidah. I asked Congressman Khanna to lay out his concerns.

REP. RO KHANNA: It would just be a catastrophe of civilian casualties. An attack on Hodeidah would mean thousands and thousands of women and children and civilians would die. Second, the port of Hodeidah is the only place right now, for practical purposes, that food and medicine can get into Yemeni civilians. So, this is—one would think it just should be common sense that the United States and the international community would be doing everything in our power to keep that port open. In the past, even Ambassador Nikki Haley has talked about the importance of that port for civilians. And it would be really a dereliction of our own values to not do everything in our power to stop that attack, and do everything in our power to stop refueling the Saudis from their bombing campaign in Yemen.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you know about this Doctors Without Borders cholera clinic that the Saudi regime just bombed? They said they gave their coordinates to the Saudis. We have heard this so many times before in other places, for example, in Afghanistan.

REP. RO KHANNA: Well, it's really shocking and unconscionable. And this is not the only incident. We've had reports over the last year, year and a half, about the Saudis indiscriminately bombing civilian sites, bombing relief workers. And that's not something that the United States should in any way participate in. Our refueling of the Saudi planes is something the Saudis desperately rely on. We started doing that as a sop to Saudi Arabia when we did the Iran deal. We thought, "OK, we're going to do this Iran, and the Saudis are insistent on this. So, let's provide some assistance." It was a mistake. I don't think anyone would have anticipated the level of humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen.

It's important to understand that this is not a counterterrorism operation in Yemen against al-Qaeda. This is an active interference in the Saudi effort to bomb the Houthis and engage in a civil war. So the United States needs to stop our role in furthering the Saudi effort. And we certainly need to do everything in our power to stop the Saudis from attacking the port of Hodeidah.

AMY GOODMAN: Congressman Khanna, The Wall Street Journal is reporting the Trump administration is weighing a request by the United Arab Emirates to expand the U.S. role in the war in Yemen by providing direct assistance to the impending offensive against the port city of Hodeidah. So you're talking about, oh, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates. These are the countries also that particularly Jared Kushner, President Trump's son-in-law, senior adviser to President Trump, is very close to. What does this direct assistance mean? And how is this happening without congressional approval?

REP. RO KHANNA: Well, there's been, candidly, a lack of transparency by the Trump administration. In the past, when Secretary Mattis has testified to the Armed Services Committee, on which I sit, he has been very clear that our efforts in Yemen are largely limited to counterterrorism operations against al-Qaeda and that he has said that the United States does not have an active role in assisting the Saudis in their fight against the Houthis. But then we are hearing reports that that is not true and that they're considering expanding our aid to the Saudis, not because of counterterrorism interests, but really because of the civil war, which is a proxy war with Iran. And so, that is what prompted several of us to write Secretary Mattis a letter.

At the very least, we need transparency from the administration about our objectives in Yemen. They are relying on the 2001 AUMF, authorization of force, which allows us to go after al-Qaeda or its affiliates anywhere in the world. That was overly broad, but even under that authorization of force, there is no authority to go after the Houthis. And the administration just needs to be far more transparent. And we're going to demand transparent answers from Secretary Mattis and others.

AMY GOODMAN: What about the United Arab Emirates? It's United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. What is the U.S. interests in both of these places?

REP. RO KHANNA: Well, we see them both as allies, candidly, to contain Iran. And this type of balance-of-power politics has gotten us into a lot of problems in the Middle East. And, unfortunately, we're continuing the same type of thinking, saying that we need to ally with countries that may be a check on Iranian expansion. Unfortunately, the administration has continued down that path of thinking, without any authority from the United States Congress. But the first step is to really understand what our involvement and role is in Yemen. The administration has been very coy about admitting that we're actually aiding the Saudis in a proxy civil war, aiding the United Arab Emirates in a proxy war in Yemen against Iran, because they know that has absolutely no authorization under congressional—by Congress.

AMY GOODMAN: And talk more about this, for people who are not familiar with the U.S. role, why the U.S. is at all involved in this on the side of Saudi Arabia. Under Obama, for a period, they were directly assisting. Then, as you pointed out, they put some limitations on that assistance. If you could explain what that was and what caused that, and then how Trump himself is responding? Do you think he has any understanding of what's happening in Yemen, with—I mean, not even to mention the deaths, something like 15,000, but talking about just people afflicted with cholera, the worst situation in the world? Over a million Yemenis are suffering from cholera. The Doctors Without Borders clinic was a cholera clinic.

REP. RO KHANNA: Well, you're right to point out the humanitarian catastrophe. I mean, this is the single worst humanitarian crisis in the world. And, unfortunately, in this case, unlike in Rwanda in the past or in Bosnia, the United States has had a role, because we initially provided aid to the Saudis, and we continue to refuel their planes.

The reason for our aid to the Saudis was as a balance to our supporting Iran with the Iran deal. We were negotiating with Iran to have the Iran deal. The Saudis complained to the Obama administration at the time, saying, "We feel insecure with the normalization of the relationship with Iran." And the administration made a decision that they would provide some assistance to the Saudis, partly to make sure that the Saudis still felt secure in their relationship with the United States. Now, when you talk to most of the former Obama administration officials, they will say that was a mistake, that they could never have fathomed the level of brutality of the Saudi regime in Yemen. They couldn't have fathomed the civilian casualties.

They tried to wind it down. Well, then they realized that the Trump administration was coming in, but it was too late for them to wind down the efforts and the support to the Saudis. And then the Trump administration comes in, and they redouble their support of the Saudis and the United Arab Emirates as a check on Iran. The Trump administration is singularly focused on containing Iran, on supporting allies of ours that may help us box Iran in. And so, the administration has doubled down on aiding the Saudis in this catastrophe and with a huge civilian loss of life.

AMY GOODMAN: Democratic Congressmember Ro Khanna of California. To hear him weighing in on the North Korea-U.S. summit, you can go to democracynow.org.

This is Democracy Now! 

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

YEMEN AND MONEY

THE ABSURD TIMES

YEMEN: Just think of all the good we do.  (An women can drive now.)

A Critique of Pure Killing

By

Immanuel Cant

The times are indeed absurd.

Waffle-House shot up.  Now this guy had been arrested at the White House recently saying that some pop star was stalking him.  They took his guns away, but returned them to his dad who turned around and gave them back.  The then went to the waffle house, naked, I hear, and killed four and whatever.  Now they want to bring charges against the Dad.  Why they hell didn't they just confiscate the guns in the first place?  Maybe, since we invented the meat grinder, we could invent a gun grinder and just toss the things in there. 

The FBI has told of counseling services for friends of the loved ones and consolations.  Sort of "Cheer up, you still have your second amendment rights and look what we are doing in Yemen."

Toronto some idiot drives a van onto a sidewalk and kills 20, having to weave in and out to avoid cars that tried to block him.  Since he wasn't an Arab, no problem.  Just send your thoughts and prayers.

What has this got to do with Yemen?  Well, Saudi Arabia spent about 20 billion dollars on military hardware from us and so we gave them out blessings.  Even Oprah gushed over the new ruler as he allowed women to drive.  Wow, what a force for progress!  Liberation now.  Meanwhile, they keep on bombing Yemen, mainly weddings, a favorite target, with our help and assistance.

Here are a couple of accounts of Yemen recently.  We must remind you that at one time Obama hailed Yemen as his possible "Model for dealing with terrorism."  I'm certain he never thought it would work out this way.  At least I hope he didn't:

At least 20 people died Sunday when a Saudi-led coalition airstrike hit a wedding party in northern Yemen. Most of the dead were reportedly women and children who were gathered in one of the wedding party tents. The bride was among the dead. Medics and residents said more than 46 others—including 30 children—were also injured. The attack on the Yemeni wedding party was one of at least three airstrikes over the weekend that killed Yemeni civilians. A family of five died in an airstrike in the province of Hajjah. And 20 civilians died on Saturday when fighter jets bombed a bus near the city of Taiz. Earlier this month, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said Yemen had become the world's worst humanitarian crisis. We speak to Shireen Al-Adeimi, a Yemeni doctoral candidate at Harvard University.

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Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: At least 20 people died Sunday when a Saudi-led coalition airstrike hit a wedding party in northern Yemen. Most of the dead were reportedly women and children who were gathered in one of the wedding party tents. The bride was among the dead. Medics and residents said more than 46 others, including 30 children, were also injured. Video footage released by the Yemeni TV station Al-Masirah showed a young boy clutching his dead father, who was surrounded by rubble. The boy was shouting, "I swear I won't leave him!"

The attack on the Yemeni wedding party was one of at least three airstrikes over the weekend that killed Yemeni civilians. A family of five died in an airstrike in the province of Hajjah. And 20 civilians died on Saturday when fighter jets bombed a bus near the city of Taiz.

AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, Yemen's rebel Houthi movement said senior leader Saleh al-Sammad had been killed in a Saudi-led coalition airstrike last Thursday. The rebel group warned Sammad's killing was a crime that would, quote, "not go unanswered." Sammad is the most senior Houthi official to have been killed since the Western-backed coalition intervened in Yemen in March 2015. More than 15,000 people have died since the Saudi invasion, while U.S.-backed, Saudi-led airstrikes have devastated Yemen's health, water and sanitation systems, sparking a massive cholera outbreak—about a million Yemenis are believed to have cholera—and pushing millions of Yemenis to the brink of starvation. Earlier this month, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said Yemen had become the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

SECRETARY-GENERAL ANTÓNIO GUTERRES: Every 10 minutes, a child under 5 dies of preventable causes. And nearly 3 million children under 5 and pregnant or lactating women are actually malnourished. Nearly half of all children aged between 6 months and 5 years old are chronically malnourished and suffer from stunting, which causes development delays and reduced ability to learn throughout their entire lives.

AMY GOODMAN: To find out more about the situation in Yemen, we're going now to Boston to speak with Shireen Al-Adeimi, a Yemeni doctoral candidate at Harvard University. Her recent piece for In These Times is headlined "Trump Doesn't Care About Civilian Deaths. Just Look at Yemen."

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Shireen. Can you talk about what you understand happened with the Saudi bombing of the Yemeni wedding party, that resulted in at least 20 deaths, many of them women and children? Where did this happen?

SHIREEN AL-ADEIMI: Thanks so much for having me.

And what happened a couple of days ago in Yemen is not unusual. So, this happened in a northern province, in Hajjah, nowhere near the front lines. This, of course, was a civilian wedding. They struck the men's wedding first, the men's wedding party. And then, as rescuers were trying to attend to the injured, they went and, you know, bombed the women's part of the wedding. So this is a double-tap airstrike, that is very common in the Saudi-led war on Yemen.

Thirty-three were reported to have been killed, and several more injured, hundreds—sorry, tens have been injured. And, you know, 30 children are included in this list of people who were injured. This is a wedding. This is supposed to be the happiest day of people's lives. And instead, the bride was killed, the groom injured, and so many more guests ended up killed, as well.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Shireen, for people here who don't understand, since this is a war that Saudi Arabia is waging, how important is the American support, the U.S. support for this war?

SHIREEN AL-ADEIMI: So, starting with the Obama administration and continuing in through the Trump administration, the Saudis have enjoyed extensive support from the U.S. Army. Right from day one, March 26, 2015, when Saudi Arabia began bombing, the U.S. was right alongside, helping them with targeting, with logistics. They help maintain and update their vehicles. And most importantly, the U.S. refuels Saudi jets midair, jets that we've sold to them, jets that—you know, bombs that we've sold to them. But we also help operate them. So, as they're bombing civilian targets in Yemen, the U.S. Army helps refuel those jets midair. So, U.S. support of the Saudis is extensive.

And, you know, U.S. claims that we are there to help them with precision targeting, but the fact of the matter is, is that civilians have beared the brunt of this war. You mentioned 15,000 people have been killed. That's just the number of people who have been killed by airstrikes. We also help them maintain the blockade, that's killed 113,000 children in 2016 and 2017 alone, due to malnutrition and disease, because, you know, water is very limited in the country. Yemen used to import 90 percent of its food, and that's now become very difficult for people to afford or to find. And so, you know, many people are on the brink, but many people have already been killed and have lost their lives, because they just can't find food and water and medicine for preventable diseases like cholera.

AMY GOODMAN: Shireen, can you talk about Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, who has overseen the Saudi strikes on Yemen? Can you talk about his recent, what they called, "charm offensive" throughout the United States, from Washington to Houston to Hollywood? Talk about the significance of this. When President Trump met with him at the White House last month, he held up posters of recent Saudi weapons purchases from the U.S. and said, quote, "We make the best equipment in the world."

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Saudi Arabia has been a very great friend and a big purchaser of equipment and lots of other things. … Some of the things that we are now working on—thanks—and that have been ordered and will shortly be started in construction and delivered: THAAD system, $13 billion; the C-130 heli—airplanes, the Hercules, great plane, $3.8 billion; the Bradley vehicles, that's the tanks, $1.2 billion; and the P-8 Poseidons, $1.4 billion. … So, we make the best equipment in the world. There's nobody even close. And Saudi Arabia is buying a lot of this equipment.

AMY GOODMAN: Shireen Al-Adeimi, the posters that President Trump was holding, almost like a high school presentation, was a map of the United States. And as he talked about the weapons, these weapons were sourced to places in the United States, states in the United States. Can you talk about this, human rights groups warning about the weapons that the—the massive arms deal, that may make the United States complicit in war crimes committed in the Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen?

SHIREEN AL-ADEIMI: Right. So, of course, Saudi Arabia doesn't manufacture its own weapons. They rely on countries like the U.S. and the U.K. and even Canada to supply them with the weapons needed to wage this incredibly destructive war on a country that really posed no threat to them. So, Yemen doesn't even have an air defense system. They've disabled that. And it's a country that's not even able to defend itself. So, they've been purchasing these weapons, totaling in the hundreds of billions of dollars, simply for the cause—for the sake of trying to assert control and dominance, and trying to win this war that's really unwinnable in Yemen.

But, you know, Trump was being transparent about why Mohammed bin Salman was in the U.S. And reportedly, Mohammed bin Salman was embarrassed by those posters. But Trump, essentially, was saying, "Well, yes, this is the relationship that we have with Saudi Arabia, one that's based on how much they can pay for our services." I mentioned all the logistical training and updating of aircraft and so on. Those total $129 million per month. And so we're making—really, we're making a lot of money. The U.S. is making a lot of money from their relationship with Saudi Arabia. Human rights groups, of course, have warned that these weapons are not being used for any reason other than to target civilians. And countries like Germany and the Netherlands have recently stopped selling weapons to the United Arab Emirates and the Saudi Arabians for this very reason.

But here, you know, Prince Charming, he was—you know, we protested his visit here in Boston at MIT. But places like MIT and Harvard, and people like Oprah and the Clintons and, like you said, President Trump, they've all met with him. And they've all—you know, he went unchallenged when he was doing interviews here in the United States. And he's not just anybody in the Saudi Arabian royal family. He is the architect of this Yemen war. He is the defense minister and crown prince. This war began under his command. And so, this is somebody who has caused extreme suffering in a country. The U.N. says that Yemen is the world's worst humanitarian crisis. He has caused this, and we're helping him perpetuate this, yet he was virtually unchallenged while in the United States.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Shireen, what about—obviously, the United States continues to justify its support under the continuing war on terrorism and also the attempts to hold back supposed Iranian influence on terrorist groups. What about the situation with ISIS and al-Qaeda and other international terrorist groups within Yemen? Could you talk about that, as well, and also the Iran issue?

SHIREEN AL-ADEIMI: Right. So, Congress has said, has declared that the role of the United States in Yemen, in helping Saudi Arabia in this war on Yemen, is not covered under that, you know, under fighting terrorism. So it's unconstitutional. It's unauthorized by Congress.

But like you mentioned, the U.S. is in Yemen on two different fronts. On the one hand, they are trying to target, you know, anybody suspected of being al-Qaeda or ISIS. And that's largely done through drone strikes, that began—or that really escalated under Obama's administration and have continued through Trump's administration. And then, the other front, which is unauthorized by Congress, is this support, this blanket support, of Saudi Arabia in its war on Yemen.

Now, you know, they've mentioned Iran as a cause, as a reason to intervene in Yemen. The fact of the matter is that, you know, there's very little evidence that Iran is interfering in any significant way in Yemen. Like I mentioned, there's a land, air and sea blockade that Saudi Arabia and the United States impose on Yemen. You know, Doctors Without Borders have trouble bringing their personnel, their medicine, their food, their doctors into the country. U.N. ships have trouble bringing food into the country. But we're somehow led to believe that Iran is able to smuggle missiles or other sorts of weapons to Yemen. So, for Yemenis, it's really absurd to think that they're fighting Iran in Yemen. There is no evidence of any Iranian soldiers or any Iranian generals on the ground in Yemen. Of course, the Houthis and Iran have some sort of relationship, but it doesn't—it's very limited, and Iran is not involved in Yemen in the same degree that Saudi Arabia has been claiming.

So, you know, Congress has tried to pull the United States out of Yemen, recognizing that it's unauthorized. Bernie Sanders recently introduced a bill in the Senate called S.J.Res. 54, which was eventually tabled in the Senate. They didn't even vote on it. But that was attempting to extricate the United States out of hostilities in Yemen and by invoking the War Resolutions Act.

AMY GOODMAN: And the significance of the—Yemen's Houthi movement saying that a senior political figure had died in an attack last Thursday, Saleh al-Sammad? Who is al-Sammad?

SHIREEN AL-ADEIMI: So, the Houthis, in partnership with the prior president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who maintain significant control in Yemen, they formed a political council that governed northern areas that they control. Now, the Houthis control a small portion of land, if you look at the map, but about 80 percent of the population live there. So they still maintain large control over the country, compared to what Saudi Arabia controls, which is, you know, land that they control along with ISIS and al-Qaeda and other groups. So, you know, they formed this political council as a way to govern.

And Sammad was the head of that political council. And so, you know, Saudi Arabia took him out in an airstrike. And there is video posted online yesterday of that attack. It's an assassination, essentially. And I don't know what comes next, you know? Here they are. There's no hope really for a peace process if leaders like that are going to be executed by Saudi Arabia. So, I'm really not sure what comes next.

AMY GOODMAN: Shireen Al-Adeimi, I want to thank you very much for being with us, Yemeni doctoral student at Harvard University. She's been speaking out about the role of the United States in the Saudi-led war in Yemen. We'll link to your piece in In These Times. It's headlined "Trump Doesn't Care About Civilian Deaths. Just Look at Yemen."

This is Democracy Now! 

On Tuesday, the U.S. Senate rejected a bipartisan resolution to end U.S. military involvement in the Saudi-led war in Yemen within 30 days, unless Congress formally authorizes the military action. The vote was 44 to 55, with 10 Democrats joining the Republican majority to block the legislation and Arizona Senator John McCain not casting a vote. The U.S.-backed, Saudi-led airstrikes and naval blockade have devastated Yemen's health, water and sanitation systems, sparking a massive cholera outbreak and pushing millions of Yemenis to the brink of starvation. More than 15,000 people have died since the Saudi invasion in 2015. We hear part of Sen. Bernie Sanders' speech against U.S. involvement and speak with Al Jazeera's Mehdi Hasan and Medea Benjamin of CodePink.

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Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Earlier this week, the Senate rejected a bipartisan resolution to end the U.S. military involvement in Yemen within 30 days, unless Congress formally authorizes the military action. The bill would have forced the first-ever vote in the Senate to withdraw U.S. armed forces from an unauthorized war. By a vote of 55 to 44, senators voted against a procedural motion that would have advanced the measure. This is Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders speaking Tuesday before the vote.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: Some will argue that American troops are not out there shooting and getting shot at, not exchanging fire, gunfire, with their enemies, and that we are not really engaged in the horrifically destructive Saudi-led war in Yemen. That's what some will argue on the floor today, that we're really not engaged in hostilities, we're not exchanging fire. Well, please tell that to the people of Yemen, whose homes and lives are being destroyed by weapons marked "Made in the U.S.A.," dropped by planes being refueled by the U.S. military, on targets chosen with U.S. assistance. Only in the narrowest, most legalistic terms can anyone argue that the United States is not actively involved in hostilities alongside of Saudi Arabia in Yemen.

And let me take a minute to tell my colleagues what is happening in Yemen right now, because a lot of people don't know. It's not something that is on the front pages of the newspapers or covered terribly much in television. Right now, in a very, very poor nation of 27 million people—that is, the nation of Yemen—in November of last year, the United Nations emergency relief coordinator told us that Yemen was on the brink of, quote, "the largest famine the world has seen for many decades," end of quote from the United Nations. So far, in this country of 27 million people, this very poor country, over 10,000 civilians have been killed, and 40,000 civilians have been wounded. Over 3 million people in Yemen, in a nation of 27 million, have been displaced, driven from their homes. Fifteen million people lack access to clean water and sanitation, because water treatment plants have been destroyed. More than 20 million people in Yemen, over two-thirds of the population of that country, need some kind of humanitarian support, with nearly 10 million in acute need of assistance. More than 1 million suspected cholera cases have been reported, representing potentially the worst cholera outbreak in world history.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, that's Senator Bernie Sanders speaking on Tuesday before the Senate vote. Mehdi Hasan, could you comment on what he said, and also explain what Saudi Arabia is trying to do in Yemen and why the U.S. is supporting Saudi Arabia?

MEHDI HASAN: It's a good question, when you say, "Try and explain what Saudi Arabia is doing in Yemen." I think a lot of people would wonder, "Yes, what is Saudi Arabia doing in Yemen?" including a lot of Saudis now, who are wondering.

This war was declared in 2015. It was supposed to be done quickly, a Saudi-led coalition of Arab nations against, quote-unquote, "Houthi rebels," backed by Iran, allegedly. And this was the case where MBS, Mohammed bin Salman, at the time, wasn't the crown prince; he was a deputy crown prince and the defense minister, and he was pushing this war. It was going to be a quick, simple war—you know, the richest countries in the Middle East against the poorest country. And yet, three years later, still mired in this horrific war, with all of those humanitarian consequences that Bernie Sanders mentioned on the floor of the Senate. It's a disaster. It's been called an apocalypse by U.N. officials. It's been called the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

And, you know, by all intents and purposes, it is a U.S.-Saudi war, Nermeen. It's not just a Saudi-led war. As Bernie Sanders pointed out, it's U.S. refueling Saudi jets, it's U.S. providing arms and bombs, it's U.S. providing intel to Saudi officials, diplomatic cover in international forums. And yet, Americans don't know enough about it, because the media doesn't cover it. And when it does cover it, it doesn't mention the Saudi role. And it's been a disaster. There's no end in sight. MBS said, in that 60 Minutes interview on Sunday, you know, "It's all the fault of the Houthis, and it's all the fault of Iran," and showed no signs of any prospect of bringing this horrific war to an end.

We rightly get agitated about what goes on in Syria and the bombing—the bombings in Aleppo and elsewhere. But that's a dictator who we are not arming, who we're not supporting. And yet, in Yemen, there's a war going on which has horrific humanitarian consequences, and that's a dictator, the Saudi dictators, who we do support and arm. So, I find the whole thing slightly absurd and morally grotesque. But, you know, the U.S. is not going to do anything.

To go back to the earlier question that we began the show with, MBS's visit is such a big deal because he's such a close ally of the U.S. And Donald Trump, remember, came to office claiming he was going to be a Saudi critic. People forget, when Donald Trump was running for election, he accused the Saudis of being behind 9/11. He said he might not buy oil from the Saudis. He attacked Hillary Clinton for taking money from the Saudis, because they were human rights abusers. And yet, since coming to office, he went to Saudi Arabia first. The first foreign visit he made was to Saudi Arabia. He now praises MBS and his father, the king, Salman. He welcomed him to the White House on Tuesday, and he said, "They've got lots of money. We want that money. We're going to have a great relation." For Trump, it's always about money. So, expect no change.

But although one—you know, one bit of good news: That vote, 55 to 45, I think it was, that's much narrower than previous, quote-unquote, "anti-Saudi" votes on Capitol Hill have been. On Capitol Hill, at least, there's far much more criticism of Saudi Arabia than there has been anytime that I can think of in recent memory.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, we just interviewed Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, who—

MEHDI HASAN: Who's been great on this.

AMY GOODMAN: —joined with Sanders in pushing for this. Now, I wanted to ask you, Medea Benjamin—last year, the Trump administration approved the resumption of sales of precision-guided munitions to Saudi Arabia. President Obama had frozen some of those weapons sales last year due to concerns about civilian casualties in Saudi Arabia's expanding war in Yemen. Now, Obama didn't cut off the support, but he did restrict it. Trump took those restrictions off. You have been deeply concerned about this vote. Can you explain what happened on the floor of the Senate?

MEDEA BENJAMIN: Well, I want to give kudos to Bernie Sanders and Chris Murphy and Mike Lee, a conservative Republican, who introduced this resolution using a very unique angle, which is the War Powers Act, to say this is an unconstitutional war. It has never been voted on by Congress. Congress has not only the authority, but the obligation, to declare war. And this certainly does not fit under the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force that was passed after 9/11 to attack those associated—involved in the 9/11 attack or associated forces. So, it was a very good argument. And I think it's horrific that 10 Democrats defected and voted for this, and that so many—almost all of the Republicans have shown themselves to be the war party and to not want to take on their constitutional duty to declare war or not declare war, to allow President Trump to continue with this war in Yemen.

And so, I think we should go back and look at all of those who voted in favor of continuing this war, to tell them they have the blood of Yemeni people on their hands. And when we see those amateur graphs that President Trump held up to talk about all the weapons sales, and showed the states in which there were jobs being created by those weapons sales, showed them in red, think of them as the blood of the Yemeni people, that it's their deaths and their famine that's creating jobs in the United States, and then ask yourself about the morality not just of President Trump, but of this country and of our Congress, that will be delighted by the creation of jobs, on the backs of the people of Yemen, who are suffering the largest catastrophe, in the United States. What does this say about our country? What does it tell the rest of the world about the morals of the United States?

AMY GOODMAN: And to be clear, the man he's sitting with, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, even before he was crown prince—and he's taken over this power after arresting, what, hundreds of people in Saudi Arabia, a number of members of the Saudi royal family, right after Jared Kushner met with him in Saudi Arabia—he was in charge of this war, even before he was crown prince.

MEDEA BENJAMIN: Well, that's right. This is his war. And that's why when anybody talks about him as a reformer, "No," you have to say, "he's not a reformer. He is a war criminal." And the shakedown that he presided over in Saudi Arabia is one of the most bizarre things, taking over 200 of the elites of Saudi Arabia and bringing them into this gilded prison in the Ritz hotel and then demanding that they turn over a lot of their assets to him, under his control, before they would be allowed to leave, and 17 of them hospitalized, one of them killed. And this is seen as part of his anti-corruption campaign.

This is the same crown prince who, when he was on a vacation in France, saw a yacht that he liked, that was owned by a Russian vodka financier, and bought it for over $500 million, who owns a château in France that's considered the most expensive house in the world, and that also bought a Picasso picture, the most high-priced painting ever sold in the United States—in the world. So, this is not Robin Hood. And he, himself, said on 60 Minutes, to be fair, that he is not Gandhi or Mandela. But he is a war criminal.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Yeah, and he also said in that interview that he has a great deal of personal wealth and, exactly what you said, that he's neither Mandela or Gandhi, and that this was—the way that he spent his money was entirely his own business. Let's just go to a clip of that, responding to a question about his own extravagant lifestyle.

PRINCE MOHAMMED BIN SALMAN: [translated] My personal life is something I'd like to keep to myself, and I don't try to draw attention to it. If some newspapers want to point something out about it, that's up to them. As far as my private expenses, I'm a rich person. I'm not a poor person. I'm not Gandhi or Mandela. I'm a member of the ruling family, that existed for hundreds of years, before the founding of Saudi Arabia. We own very large lots of land. And my personal life is the same as it was 10 or 20 years ago.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Mehdi Hasan, if you want to expand on this? And also, what has happened to the crown prince's mother? Where is she?

MEHDI HASAN: So, just on the interview clip you played, I love the idea that "I'm not Mandela or Gandhi." I don't think anyone was really going to confuse the crown prince of Saudi Arabia with Mandela or Gandhi, although some in the U.S. media—

AMY GOODMAN: Really? Even with the U.S. press?

MEHDI HASAN: Yeah, I'll add the caveat: Some in the U.S. media may want to portray him in that way. And the bar is so low when it comes to the Saudis. So, he becomes crown prince, and he allows women to drive. And people in the West say, "Wow! He's the emancipator of women," because he allowed women to drive, rather than asking, "Why was Saudi Arabia the only country in the world where women were not allowed to drive?" Why not ask the question, as Medea pointed out: The death penalty for adultery, which disproportionately affects women, for sorcery and witchcraft, which disproportionately affects women, when's he getting rid of that? No question from 60 Minutes about the death penalty. No questions about democracy or freedom or elections. The words didn't come up during the interview. They keep calling him a revolutionary. I've never come across a revolution where the dictator is still in power at the end of it. I thought that's the whole point of a revolution, is to get rid of the absolute totalitarian government. So it's bizarre to call this guy a revolutionary.

To take your point about his mother, there have been reports in the news that this is a crown prince who basically detained, quote-unquote, "kidnapped" his own mother, in order to prevent her from stopping him from taking over from his father. He is one of many children. Saudi kings tend to have a lot of children. He's one of many children to King Salman. King Salman, by most accounts, is really not in control of the kingdom. He may have dementia. He's kind of out of it. He's in his eighties. This guy, 32 years old, crown prince, basically runs the show now. He's been very, very efficient in terms of taking power. You've got to give him that. He may—he may have botched the war in Yemen, but he's been very good at asserting power at home. He got rid of his cousin, who was the crown prince, put him under palace arrest. He may have kidnapped his mother or detained his mother or hidden her away somewhere, so that she couldn't get involved in his kind of power takeover from his siblings. He locked up all these princes and business leaders, as Medea pointed out. Basically, it was a shakedown, to use her very appropriate phrase.

And now he's consolidated all this power, in himself, in the country, at this young age. But the problem is, he's not very good at doing what he does in terms of foreign policy. Let's see what he does on economic policy. He's great pals with Jared Kushner. Nermeen mentioned earlier about how they hung out 'til 4:00 in the morning the week before the purge. He and Jared Kushner are great pals. That's the connection to the Trump administration. And I always think they're very—they're very similar, Jared Kushner and MBS. They're both 30-something spoiled brats who are deeply overrated and mess up everything they touch.

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