On Wednesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that he has sent a certification to Congress affirming that the Saudi government is taking “demonstrable action” to reduce civilian casualties in Yemen. This certification allows US military aid to continue to flow to the Saudis.
In reality, there is no sign of any concrete changes in Saudi policy, and the civilian death toll is as high as ever. What Pompeo has done is allowed the administration to circumvent Congressional efforts to limit US involvement in the Saudi War.
In the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), Congress called a halt to US funding of the Saudi-led coalition, demanding major changes to reduce civilian casualties, and saying no aid could flow until such time as it was certified that the changes were made.
Instead of actually doing that, Pompeo is signing the paperwork now, ensuring that US aid shipments won’t stop for even a moment. This does, however, ignore Congressional intentions, and is likely to fuel more efforts to try to scale back the war going forward.
Pompeo on what amounts to orders from the president is able to bypass congress by perverting a procedural aspect of law and misrepresenting reality thus artificialy and contortedly increasing the power of the presidency to normalise and falsely legitamize the slaughter of innocent children as collateral damage while simultaneously denying that it continues to occur so among other things goverment military contractors can get rich. Do I have that right?
Thank you Sandra for reminding Ditz where the buck stops.
The House of Saud is worth trillions. Ownership of Aramco is being sold to the public exchanges which will produce an additional windfall of epic proportions, and within that Wall Street feast will be the payoff to American politicians and their family and friends – when the stock they sell to the public is at a 20+x markup to the private,initial IPO price to brokers and connected investors.. like Jared and Ivanka. Now you know why there is no outcry from the rich over Yemeni children. Imagine KNOWING you will be gifted hundreds of millions of dollars personally. The Pompeos and Ryans of the world, the Trumps… are corrupt. http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/msn/saudi-bourse-ceo-sees-aramco-ipo-as-%e2%80%98certain%e2%80%99-despite-delay/ar-BBMTWkk
What a disaster the petro dollar has been for the world.
Sad that nobody has the guts to say the truth about Saudi Arabia. The USA is no better than what 19 cowards did on 9-11. We are supporting and selling weapons to a country that took out 2996 INNOCENT people. How does the USA justify its support for this country? We are all aware that 15 of the hijackers came from Saudi Arabia. Why are we being forced to pay for these cowards?
The ally UK also has big sales to the Saudis, including the firm PM Theresa May’s husband works for (tied to Lockheed Martin) and BAE, supported by Prince Charles.
So we pretend we care while all these people died in VAIN? We should be put on trial along with the countries involved with us in these CORRUPT wars. That is why I would NEVER vote for Dianne Feinstein. She is all for these wars and her husband made a fortune off of them, while she was head of the intelligence committee. She voted with the Obama administration to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia while making hand over fist money for her corruption. She is old, tired, and corrupt, time to go home if not to prison. Frankly there is not a person on the scene that care enough about democracy instead of themselves to make a difference. The country is doomed to fail. There is no hop due to no leadership in this country only corruption.
Especially when it’s the OFFICIAL story.
And never forget: Those who do not know history’s mistakes are doomed to repeat them. The USA proved they did not want the people to be shown the truth or they would not have redacted the files they released regarding 9-11. We are continuously fed lies by our government, but forced to pay them MAFIA TAXES! ILLEGAL out of control GOVERNMENT!