A Quote by Peter Bergen
Ground operations are inherently very risky in Yemen. The two previous JSOC raids in Yemen were both in 2014.
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In the past, Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, of which SEAL Team 6 is a key component, has only launched ground raids in Yemen when the lives of hostages held by al Qaeda seemed at risk.
My view is that we shouldn't be supplying the Saudis with arms while they're bombing civilians in Yemen and, by the way, while they're arming al-Qaida and it's fighting our own counterterrorist operations in Yemen.
Two weeks before the attack on the USS Cole and then again two days before the attack, they saw through their analysis that a major event was going to occur in Yemen. They told the Navy not to bring the Cole into Yemen harbor. It went in and was attacked.
The international community should pressure Iran to get the Houthis to agree to some peaceful understanding in Yemen. But at the same time, Saudi Arabia also needs to believe truly in democracy for Yemen.
Why should we care about the coup? First, because we depend on Yemen's government to support our drone war against another local menace, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). It's not clear if we can even maintain our embassy in Yemen, let alone conduct operations against AQAP. And second, because growing Iranian hegemony is a mortal threat to our allies and interests in the entire Middle East.
When I was leaving Yemen to come to America, things were tough. My dad had just been laid off, and it was a challenge. When I lived in Yemen, I thought America was a perfect place. Everything was bigger and better. I dreamed big. The American dream, you know? You have to work hard for your dream to come true.
We have no interest in seeing an unstable Yemen or seeing a Yemen that is devastated.
Don't worry about Yemen. Yemen started in peace, and it will end its revolution in peace, and it will start its new civil state with peace.
The Saudis and Emiratis blame all of this on Iran. I think they’d have to grant, that as has been said, that the Houthis are an internally generated movement in Yemen and the Saudis were supposed to be dealing with the Houthis, who started out in essence along their border. So one of the things that we’re seeing is a complete failure of Saudi policy toward Yemen over the past 10 years, but the Saudis totally believe that the reason the Houthis are able to succeed militarily is the amount of money, advice, and guns they are receiving from Iran.
The gigantic challenge is the magnitude of the individual differences in the optimal set point for "good stress." For one person, it's doing something risky with your bishop in a chess game; for someone else, it's becoming a mercenary in Yemen.
The war in Yemen is not a war that we wanted. We had no other option - there was a radical militia allied with Iran and Hezbollah that took over the country. It was in possession of heavy weapons, ballistic missiles and even an air force. Should we stand by idly while this happens at our doorstep, in one of the countries in which al-Qaida has a huge presence? So we responded, as part of a coalition, at the request of the legitimate government of Yemen, and we stepped in to support them.
If you want peace and well-being to be in place in the Middle East and you want terrorism to be uprooted, then there's no path other than the presence of the Islamic Republic of Iran, you saw that in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen that the power that was able to help the people of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen in the face of terrorist groups was the Islamic Republic of Iran.
When I was commander of Central Command, obviously we were very concerned about the developments in Yemen, the developments in Somalia and elsewhere, in Africa and so forth. But the al Qaeda senior leadership is under unprecedented pressure.
US government policies are continuing to do exactly the same thing [produce terrorism]. Two days after the Boston marathon bombings, there was a drone strike in Yemen attacking a peaceful village, which killed a target who could very easily have been apprehended. But of course it is just easier to terrorise people.
Armed drones have become Barack Obama's way to engage in terrorist-infested hellholes without putting 'boots on the ground.' For years, the CIA has been running a secrecy-shrouded program of targeted killings in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen, and more recently in Somalia, Syria and Iraq.
As a member and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee during the 2000s, I met with civilian and military officials in Kurdistan, Libya, Jordan, Israel, Egypt, and Yemen. They shared many of the same international defense priorities as the United States. We acknowledged our differences, but we worked from where we found common ground.
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