Saudis Admit Hodeidah Missile Video Was Erroneous

Video was from Baghdad, 2003

Spokesman for the Saudi invasion of Yemen Turki al-Maliki admitted Tuesday that the video he showed Saturday that he claimed was missiles in Hodeidah was actually an error and shouldn’t have been released.

The rest of the world was way ahead of him, as media were reporting almost immediately that the video was actually taken straight out of a 2009 documentary on the US invasion of Iraq, and showed Baghdad in April of 2003.

Maliki said that the Saudis are using a “lot of sources” and that makes errors like this possible. It’s not clear why a decade-old documentary on an entirely different country would be considered a source at all.

More gallingly, while Maliki said correcting the error was an obligation, he’s still standing behind the allegation the fake video was meant to prove, saying just because the video was wrong “does not mean that Houthi militias are not using and militarizing ports.”

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.