After Attacking Yemen’s Houthis, US Admits They Don’t Know Who Fired Missiles

Pentagon Threatens More Retaliation, Despite Confusion

Last night, the United States attacked and destroyed a series of radar stations belonging to the Shi’ite Houthis in Yemen, along the Red Sea coast. This was described as retaliation for the missiles fired sort of near a US destroyer off shore, and presented as preventing future such strikes.

Yet today, Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook admitted that the US still hasn’t actually made any determination who fired those missiles in the first place. It is unclear why they retaliated against the Houthis, who denied involvement, apart from Cook saying that the US believes Iran has “been supportive of the Houthi rebels.”

Still, this act in haste and repent at leisure attitude doesn’t appear to be changing, with Cook vowing the US would “be prepared to respond again” if they think ships off the Yemeni coast are threatened, with the implied threat that they’ll attack the Houthis some more, whether or not they ever determine if the Houthis did anything.

Pentagon officials are also trying to insist that their attacks on the Houthis are totally distinct from the ongoing Saudi war against the Houthis, which the US is already heavily involved in, meaning this amounts to a second, separate war against the Houthis, with even less of a pretext. The Pentagon appears uncomfortable with connecting their heedless attacks to the myriad war crimes in the extent war.

The Houthis reiterated today that they had nothing to do with the missiles fired near the US ship, and insisted they consider the US attacks “unacceptable.” They warned that they have the right to defend themselves from future US attacks.

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Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is news editor of Antiwar.com. View all posts by Jason Ditz

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Andrew_Nichols

Oh how convenient. Just why would the Houthis want to attack a US ship? Looks like a Gulf of Tonkin incident redux. If the HGouthis are smart they wont take the bait
Gary Sellars

Uh’murikkkan liars are at it again….
GeorgyOrwell

Yemen and somolia are on opposite sides of the of the gulf of Aden where 60% of the worlds daily oil trade has to pass to get to the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean Sea and onward to markets in Europe and a North America.

He who controls choke points such as this and the South China Sea controls the world. Every kind of lie, deception, false flag and black bag covert op will be employed to maintain such control. If we don’t control it someone else will, or so goes the reasoning. The same reasoning can be applied to the drug trade out of Afghanistan. The drug trade is a trillion dollar industry. Follow the money.

So in the case of Somilia, a couple years ago, ………Oh, there are pirates off the coast of Somolia, ….why we have to have the seventh fleet in there to protect…..yadda, yadda, yadda…. See how this works?

As Zibignew Brezinski wrote in his book The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy And Its GeoStrategic Imperitives (1997). He who controls Eurasia controls the world. Eruasia has the be managed to prevent the rise of any power that would even think of challenging us. He goes onto say this must be done through “maneuver and manipulation”.

The way things appear or are presented are not reflective of what is going on behind the sceans or under the table. As HRC said, you need a public policy and a private policy.
- TellTheTruth-2
  
  The Broken Chessboard: Brzezinski Gives Up on Empire …. http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/08/25/the-broken-chessboard-brzezinski-gives-up-on-empire/
- EME
  
  I agree. The first thing the Bush regime did in Afghanistan
  after it ousted the Taliban was reinstall the opium lords,
  who returned to business as usual, after of course, giving
  the thugs in the Bush regime its cut.
jeff_davis

Yesterday I commented on the possibility of a false flag by either the US itself — the missiles did no damage — or perhaps Israel. It now occurs to me that I should have included the Saudis, and put them high on the list. What better way to stem the criticism of Saudi actions, the recent JASTA bill indictment, and the problem with the continued supply of military material, than to get the US directly involved?
- Thomas L. Knapp
  
  Yeah, for some reason it being the Saudis wasn’t something I had considered until you mentioned it. But something’s pretty fishy. There was simply no up side for the Houthis in doing what they allegedly did. The only people who benefited were people who wanted deeper involvement by the US.
  
  One thing Jason Stapleton pointed out on his program yesterday is that the radars the US attacked aren’t just used to track and target ships. They are also air defense radars. So the whole point of this MAY have been to have an excuse to take out some sites that were troubling the Saudi “coalition” attack aircraft.