Yemen’s Houthi forces, which control the capital city of Sanaa and most of the nation’s west coast, are continuing to make major gains across the nation’s south and east, in spite of a Saudi war against them.
Saudi warplanes and those of their allies continue to pound Houthi targets across the country, focusing in particular on the capital, but other than reports of some civilian casualties and locals hearing a lot of explosions, it’s unclear that the strikes are doing much to change the situation on the ground.
Houthi leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi has vowed not to surrender to the Saudi attacks, and slammed the planned invasion as unjustified aggression. Yemeni FM Raid Yassin also urged the Saudis to finish their air war as quickly as possible.
The Saudis have lost a warplane already in the war, an F-15 two-seater, and US officials confirmed that a US HH-60 helicopter from Djibouti was dispatched to rescue the pilots.
Saudi Arabia began the attacks on Wednesday and has 10 nations cooperating in the war. They have some 150,000 ground troops positioned along the Yemeni border and an unknown number of Egyptian troops are planing to join them from ship-based transports.
The other weapon that Saudis can use is their left overs of ISIS whom are hiding in Turkish borders with Iraq and Syria. Saudis., the GCC the English government, a non biding English people institutions lead by David Cameron the servant of the English monar, and these barbarians cooperated in Libya, Syria and Iraq, so why not in Yemen! This way they really can blowup the entire region and for real this time. The stupudity of western non existing, fake democracy practiced by fake religious Marxism and Neo liberalism to be continued.
Hey! Where is the outcry from NATO, The EU and USG about about aggression against a sovereign nation like there was against Russia invading the Criema (At the request of the Crieman People)).
I don't think the Yemini People invited the Saudi's to attack their Capital.
Just like here in the US, the people are not invited to offer their consent.
Without a support of the majority, terrorism is truly a useless and worthless way to change things for the better. For here we have Saudi Arabia using both terrorism and wars of aggression to enslave the Middle-East, by money, whole money and an unlimited amount of money.
American participation in yet another war begins with its mission to rescue shot down Saudi pilots. It must give our government warm fuzzies to know they are linked with Sisi, the crazed Egyptian dictator and the head-lopping Saudi king. What filth runs our government, filth just like the Saudi king and Sisi.
Women's attire in Qom/Iran and Saudi/Yemeni streets are the same
Loud speakers use for religious purposes in Secular Syria's Assad and in rest of Syria as well as Yemen/lebanon/Saudi etc are equally loud
Wondering which side to side with – Satan or Devils?
All Arab leaders and Muslim leaders had used those loudspeakers and encouraged their installation while most mosques are empty at dawn prayer and all other prayers – except Friday at noon – to scare western embassies and present themselves as preventives to an anti west religious revolution
BUT THE FACT IS = RELIGION IN ISLAMIC AND ARAB COUNTRIES HAS A PLACE 90 PERCENT OF THE TIME FOR WEDDINGS AND FUNERALS
Look what happened in Syria – After Ass-Add men killed peaceful demonstrators – upon their funeral which was a religious funeral HE BRAGGED telling the world I TOLD YOU … LOOK AT THE VIDEOS …. THEY ARE ISLAMIST…. listen to the peoples chants
And the world does not know how funerals are conducted in these parts of the world
Ass-Add got snipers to shoot at the funerals killing certain selected youth – in order to generate more funerals – Finally after 10 months of peaceful demonstrations – Desertions started and with their personal weapons defended their neighbourhoods – Your Ass-Add brought his air-force and obliterated entire viliges and neighbourhoods – While antiwar DOT com = SIDES WITH Ass-Add.
What a shame!!!!!!!!
????
Women's attire in Qom/Iran and Saudi/Yemeni streets are the same
Is there anyone with an IQ over single digits that actually believes this total garbage. We are nothing but blood pudding these compete lunatics that want to start WWIII.
Who also have a taste for children 14 or younger …
I never swear or use vulgar language. what the heck takes so long for my comments to appear if they ever do …
[moderator’s note: Registering for an IntenseDebate account; $0. Establishing a track record of not violating the site’s relatively lenient guidelines; $0. Asking for your IntenseDebate account to be whitelisted so that your comments are never caught in the spam filters: $0. Bellyaching because the moderators have lives and don’t spend every minute of their weekends waiting with bated breath for you to post a comment so they can approve it: Priceless – TLK]
To — [moderator’s note…
Your logic has no logic, not to say that this place is funded by the rich, just to say that if it was with the only goal being to burn up the emotional capital of those who differ openly against the rich, then it would block all comments made on weekends, as it be the very best time for a dissident to proclaim his truth.
John,
From years of experience moderating — and, so far as I can recall, always approving — your comments, I am quite confident in my conclusion that you wouldn't know logic if it walked up behind you and swatted you across the posterior with a bass fiddle.
Thank you for mentioning IntenseDebate in your note. It was always right there, but I never saw it.
How does one go about asking for that account to be whitelisted? That too may be right in front of me, but I don’t see it.
Thanks.
[moderator’s note: Good question, Mark. THAT part was something I hadn’t thought about in awhile, and since we stopped running a letters column I don’t really have an email address at antiwar.com anymore. I’ll see about getting that fixed, but in the meantime once you have your IntenseDebate account created and have made a few comments, feel free to email me at kubby dot communications at gmail dot com if they’re still getting caught in moderation – TLK]
In this sort of situation, air power can only be fire support for effective ground forces. Without effective ground forces, air power can kill but it can't win, can't change the outcome.
There are no effective ground forces now. That is why there is talk of sending some. So far, talk.
The Saudis are dependent on Western contractors for maintenance, logistics, and much else. That is a weakness, and probably why their F-15 just fell out of the sky. If they expand this effort, that weakness will show up more clearly, much more clearly.
The Saudis are fragile, vulnerable to their own internal weakness. Their effort in this could easily break their own fragile control. Wars backfire like that, as with WW1 on all the combatants, who were mostly a lot more stable than the Saudis are at the start.
This could easily become not just failure, but disaster coming right back home to them.
Good points.
I have a suspicion that the Saudi regime prefers to rely heavily on US contractors — and if necessary direct US military intervention — precisely because it fears having an effective military of its own.
A well-trained, effective army might well either decide that the monarchy and the royal family are unnecessary inconveniences and take power itself, or back a popular revolt if one should happen to develop.
A military that can be hobbled by the simple expedient of having key support personnel removed on command — because they're foreign contractors in service to an ally of the regime — is attractive from that perspective.
The Saudi army supposedly boasts 150k "active personnel," but I'd be surprised if half that many are actually properly trained, full-time troops who are capable of effectively conducting real military operations. My brief experience with the Saudi military in 1991 was that its normal footing seemed to be "yeah, it's a cool thing for the upper class to be able to strut around in fancy uniforms … oh, shit, a real war?" The Saudi "naval cadets" I was supposed to familiarize with the 81mm mortar were scared to death of it. I don't think they'd ever heard a loud weapon before, and they were supposed to become the early basis for a Saudi Marine Corps.
Further on what you wrote, the Saudis divide their forces into two parts, with a large independent National Guard whose main task is to protect the regime from the Army. Their NG is not really an effective force against foreign threats, but its recruiting base and makeup are well suited to offsetting the Army in a domestic showdown if necessary. It is a huge waste of resources, made necessary by the nature of the Saudi regime.
In light of that, your suggestion they cripple the regular army deliberately by dependence on foreign contractors takes on more meaning.
I had read many times American and Brits working on contracts in Saudi to keep them going, and just accepted that for some internal reasons the Saudis can't do it on their own. You suggest that instead they don't want to do it on their own, and for good reason. If you're right, that puts a whole new risk into this war that is spinning up.
Recall how the shattered Red Army learned and hardened in battle by 1944, how the Soviets learned and hardened in battle in the last half of Afghanistan, how the American Army progressed by battle experience between the Kasserine Pass loss and Battle of the Bulge opposite outcome despite worse circumstances.
The Saudis risk their army learning by experience an independence and self sufficiency they did not want it to have (if you're right, as I suspect you are).
The Saudis could be creating the very thing they fear, to come home and remove them. That reinforces my original point, that this could become "disaster coming right back home to them."