Pentagon: ‘No Proof’ US-Trained Troops Involved in Yemen’s Protest Attacks

Officials Say Troops 'Engaged With Armed Forces'

by Jason Ditz, June 03, 2011

With violence soaring in Yemen, there are growing questions about exactly how much of the Saleh regime’s deadly crackdown against pro-democracy protesters is being carried out by the “anti-terror” troops trained by the United States.

According to the Pentagon, however, its a don’t ask don’t tell situation, where they have seen “no evidence” that those particular troops ever attacked protesters. Since a lot of the anti-protester violence has come in the form of sniper attacks, it may well be such evidence doesn’t exist.

Of course the US complicity in crackdowns by their client states has already been well documented in places like Bahrain, where US-made tanks rolled into the capital city of Manama to attack Shi’ite demonstrators. And of course this is also the case in Iraq, where US-created forces have engaged in a brutal, if not heavily-publicized, crackdown on protests.

The US has been tepid, at best, toward the calls for reform in Yemen, and efforts to convince President Saleh to step down have always been coupled with calls for him to hand-pick to top military general as his successor.

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