This video covers the U.S. moving its troops into region and how the president of the United States is handling this conflict.

The post BREAKING: The U.S. Troops Are Moving In! appeared first on We Are Change.

This report explains how the situation in that part of the world is unraveling and who’s getting drawn into the conflict next.

The post We’ve Been Warned: THIS COUNTRY Is Next!! appeared first on We Are Change.

This report explains how both sides are escalating the conflict and getting the West involved.

The post IT’S COMING HERE! They’re Both Provoking The West Now! appeared first on We Are Change.

This video breaks down the lies about the conflict and explains the major escalation coming.

The post LIES ON ALL SIDES… A MAJOR Escalation Is Coming! 🚨 appeared first on We Are Change.

I mean, what a bizarre hill to die on. War is the very worst thing in the world, and forever is the very worst amount of time they could go on for, yet they’re openly condemning the “doctrine of ending the forever wars”. How warped does your sense of reality have to be to even think this is a view anyone who isn’t paid by defense contractors could possibly be sympathetic to?

Yet they are indeed trying. Citing the chaos of the Afghanistan withdrawal as though every single day of the twenty-year occupation has not been far worse, career-long warmongers are trying to spin “ending the forever wars” as a disdainful slogan that everyone should reject.

Tony Blair, the former prime minister of Britain who led the UK into Afghanistan, criticized Biden's withdrawal, calling it a hasty move made “in obedience to an imbecilic political slogan about ending ‘the forever wars.’” https://t.co/jJbWliMJc9

— The New York Times (@nytimes) August 22, 2021

As we discussed previously, The Hague fugitive Tony Blair recently made headlines with a lengthy statement bloviating about the concept of ending forever wars with the revulsion you’d normally reserve for people advocating the elimination of age of consent laws or legalizing recreational panda punching.

“We didn’t need to do it. We chose to do it,” Blair wrote of the withdrawal. “We did it in obedience to an imbecilic political slogan about ending ‘the forever wars’, as if our engagement in 2021 was remotely comparable to our commitment 20 or even ten years ago, and in circumstances in which troop numbers had declined to a minimum and no allied soldier had lost their life in combat for 18 months.”

As Blair well knows, the only reason no allied soldier had lost their life in combat for 18 months was because the Trump administration had cut a deal with the Taliban in February 2020 on condition of withdrawal from Afghanistan. Pretending the lack of deaths among occupying forces was due to the occupation being easy and that it was in any way sustainable minus a credible promise of withdrawal is disgusting. And not that Blair cares but it’s not like the occupation hasn’t been slaughtering mountains of civilians during those eighteen months.

Paul Wolfowitz, chief advocate of the Iraq War, being given major op-ed space to argue the US should've never withdrawn from Afghanistan — while also lecturing Biden on "credibility" — proves that in US media, there's no official wrongdoing that you can't be rehabilitated from pic.twitter.com/0TZ5dWRCPv

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) August 28, 2021

Then there’s Iraq war architect Paul Wolfowitz, who’s been on a media tour throughout the withdrawal because obviously everyone wants to hear the opinions of Bush administration war criminals about whether it’s okay to end the Bush administration’s criminal wars. His latest contribution is a Wall Street Journal op-ed titled “The ‘Forever War’ Hasn’t Ended” in which he argues the concept of ending forever wars is both stupid and fallacious.

“President Biden, like his two immediate predecessors, seems to think you can end ‘forever wars’ simply by leaving them,” Wolfowitz writes. “But Thursday’s unprovoked attack, on people who were fleeing and those who were helping them, demonstrates the truth of the soldier’s adage that ‘the enemy always gets a vote.’”

“Choosing to avoid ‘forever war’ by abandoning our Afghan allies was both costly and dishonorable,” says Wolfowitz. “Exactly as Churchill said to Neville Chamberlain after the betrayal of Czechoslovakia at Munich: ‘You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor, and you will have war.’”

God what a wanker.

In many respects, #Afghanistan represents the 1st real implementation of the "ending forever wars" doctrine.

The results so far?

– Crumbling of a democratic government;
– #Taliban rule;
– #AlQaeda ecstatic;
– Emergency mass evacuation;
– Unprecedented transatlantic divisions. pic.twitter.com/NdAJPgafhP

— Charles Lister (@Charles_Lister) August 26, 2021

Then there’s UAE-funded war propagandist Charles Lister hilariously arguing that the withdrawal shows a failure of the “ending forever wars doctrine” on the basis that it caused the “crumbling of a democratic government” and made “Al Qaeda ecstatic”. Hilarious because only by the most determined mental gymnastics was the corrupt US puppet regime in Afghanistan “democratic”, and because Lister has been an outspoken advocate of Al Qaeda in Syria.

There’s also the insufferably hawkish Congressman Adam Kinzinger, who has received campaign donations from Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, appearing on MSNBC and writing a Foreign Policy op-ed explicitly in opposition to the notion of ending endless wars.

“On both sides of the political spectrum, we’ve heard the ‘endless wars’ rallying cry used to argue against America’s presence in the Middle East,” Kinzinger writes for Foreign Policy. “We’ve heard the many fatigued Americans who complain about ‘forever wars.’ Some are upset by the money spent, and others want our troops home, or both. Those who have lamented for years that our mission in Afghanistan was a disaster from the start are stepping up in droves to say they were right and that we should have left years ago—or never engaged at all. I respectfully and vehemently disagree with all of it.”

Kinzinger told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell that “the kind of Rand Paul ‘endless war’ crowd that have been stoking this fire of endless war and man we’re all tired” is like “when your grandma tells you how tired you are and you eventually feel tired.” He then advocated for re-invading Afghanistan to take back the abandoned Bagram airfield.

Kinzinger: The endless war just got fired up again pic.twitter.com/cQllKJxR0W

— Acyn (@Acyn) August 26, 2021

In a recent National Review article titled “The ‘Forever War’ Fallacy“, MSNBC contributor Noah Rothman rages against the notion of ending perpetual military slaughter.

“In Afghanistan, the demagogues who wanted to see an end to America’s ‘forever wars,’ regardless of the consequences, got their wish. It has been a disaster arguably without parallel,” writes Rothman, who has apparently never heard of the disaster that was the entire Afghanistan occupation.

“The U.S. maintains deployments in and around the Middle East that fluctuate between 45,000 and 65,000 troops. Would advocates of retrenchment sacrifice that mission — and the Middle Eastern governments that rely on it to prevent non-state actors and Iranian proxies from destabilizing those regimes?” Rothman asks. “What about Africa, where between 6,000 and 7,000 American troops are advising local forces fighting Islamist militant groups?”

Uh, yeah actually, getting rid of those would also be great. The less expansive you can make the most destructive institution on earth, the better.

The alternative to withdrawal from Afghanistan was not “endless occupation” but open-ended presence. Occupation is imposed, presence invited. Unless you think we are occupying Japan, Germany, & South Korea. And yes, withdrawal was the problem. https://t.co/FceI02wWNF

— Richard N. Haass (@RichardHaass) August 27, 2021

Perhaps the funniest case was Richard Haass, president of the wildly influential war propaganda firm Council on Foreign Relations, arguing on Twitter for a rebranding of “endless occupation” to “open-ended presence”.

“The alternative to withdrawal from Afghanistan was not ‘endless occupation’ but open-ended presence,” Haass said. “Occupation is imposed, presence invited. Unless you think we are occupying Japan, Germany, and South Korea. And yes, withdrawal was the problem.”

I mean, where to even start with that one? The hilarious notion that simply rebranding an endless occupation which has killed hundreds of thousands of people with a different label makes it better? The idea that the consent of a puppet government installed by regime change invasion means the military presence was “invited”? The claim that an occupation of nonstop bombing and killing is comparable to US military presence in Japan, Germany and South Korea? The claim that there’s any legitimate reason for the US military to be in Japan, Germany and South Korea either? The suggestion that everyone in Japan, Germany and South Korea wants the US military there?

Moron.

If you think the Afghanistan withdrawal is going badly wait til you hear about literally every single day before the Afghanistan withdrawal for 20 years.

— Caitlin Johnstone ? (@caitoz) August 29, 2021

The fact that these people are thought leaders of policy-shaping influence and not fringe pariahs of society shows that our world is being steered by idiots and sociopaths. They’re standing there right in front of us and wagging their fingers at us for opposing something as straightforwardly and self-evidently bad as endless war. ENDLESS WAR.

They should be mocked and laughed at for this. We will know our world is becoming sane when such creatures are regarded with scorn and ridicule instead of being taken seriously by the largest platforms in our society. Never stop making fun of these freaks.

Republished from CaitlinJohnstone.com with permission

The post Warmongers Keep Raging About the Phrase “Ending the Forever Wars” and We Should Laugh at Them appeared first on We Are Change.

Titled “Creating Refugees: Displacement Caused by the United States’ Post-9/11 Wars” (pdf), the new report conservatively estimates that at least 37 million people have “fled their homes in the eight most violent wars the U.S. military has launched or participated in since 2001.”

The latest figure represents a dramatic increase from the Costs of War Project’s 2019 report, which estimated that 21 million people had been displaced internally or forced to flee their home countries due to violence inflicted or unleashed by U.S.-led wars over the past two decades. That report also put the death toll of the so-called war on terror at 801,000 and the price tag at $6.4 trillion.

The new report argues that “wartime displacement (alongside war deaths and injuries) must be central to any analysis of the post-9/11 wars and their short- and long-term consequences.”

“Displacement also must be central to any possible consideration of the future use of military force by the United States or others,” the report states. “Ultimately, displacing 37 million—and perhaps as many as 59 million—raises the question of who bears responsibility for repairing the damage inflicted on those displaced.”

In addition to the tens of millions displaced by U.S. military actions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, the Philippines, Libya, and Syria, the report notes that millions more have been displaced by “smaller combat operations, including in: Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, Niger, Saudi Arabia, and Tunisia.”

“To put these figures in perspective, displacing 37 million people is equivalent to removing nearly all the residents of the state of California or all the people in Texas and Virginia combined,” the report says. “The figure is almost as large as the population of Canada. In historical terms, 37 million displaced is more than those displaced by any other war or disaster since at least the start of the 20th century with the sole exception of World War II.”

Kudos to @CostsOfWar & @QuincyInst boardmember Catherine Lutz for this crucial study.

The blob assumes there's something fundamentally wrong with the Middle East.

Few acknowledge America's role in the instability and refugee flows.

It's massive…
https://t.co/5EGmqFUpBL

— Trita Parsi (@tparsi) September 8, 2020

David Vine, professor of anthropology at American University and the lead author of the new report, told the New York Times that the findings show “U.S. involvement in these countries has been horrifically catastrophic, horrifically damaging in ways that I don’t think that most people in the United States, in many ways myself included, have grappled with or reckoned with in even the slightest terms.”

Matt Duss, foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), demanded such a reckoning in a tweet responding to the Costs of War Project’s latest findings.

“The scale of the disaster the United States has inflicted on the world—through three war on terror presidencies—is staggering,” wrote Duss. “We need a reckoning. We can’t simply move on.”

Republished from CommonDreams.org under Creative Commons

The post “Horrifically Catastrophic”: Report Finds War on Terror Has Displaced as Many as 59 Million People appeared first on We Are Change.

The drone operator turned whistleblower, Staff Sergeant Brandon Bryant, gave an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail detailing the horrors of his job deciding who lives or dies from the comfort of bases in Nevada, New Mexico, and Iraq. Bryant described how he spent six years in the U.S. Air Force operating Predator drones where he controlled multiple camera systems and was responsible for using the targeting system while a co-pilot navigated the drone.

Bryant signed up to the Air Force when he was only 19-year-old and made his first kill in 2007. From 2006 to 2011 his squadron hit 1,626 targets including women and children, according to the whistleblower. According to the Sun. Bryant killed 13 people while in service.

Bryant even said how when he registered his first kill his colleagues celebrated with one shouting “splash” and another saying “Bryant’s popped his cherry.”

Still to this day, the horror of the bombing lives with him as he watched the blood shoot from his victim.

Bryant told the Sun:

“I saw the blood squirt out of his leg, then I watched him cool down.

That image on the screen is still in my head. Whenever I think about it, it still hurts me.

When I pulled the trigger, I knew that it was wrong. When the missile struck I knew in my soul I had become a murderer.“

Following orders to bombard an enemy target believed to be inside a building with missiles in Afghanistan resulted in the death of a child. It was then when Bryant was told by a superior “It’s just a dog” after raising his concerns.

Bryant then knew he could not keep doing his job and quit the military to speak out against the U.S. drone program. The man stated that he suffered post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after his time aiming missiles at people on the other side of the world.

We know from the Intercept’s Drone Papers release that during one five-month period of Operation Haymaker in northeastern Afghanistan, “nearly 90 percent of the people killed in airstrikes were not the intended targets. In Yemen and Somalia where the U.S. has far more limited intelligence capabilities to confirm the people killed are the intended targets, the equivalent ratios may well be much worse.”

Bryant has blown the whistle on the U.S. military’s use of the drone program, testifying before the United Nations and Germany about America’s overseas drone operations, stating, “We think about the Nuremberg Trials. All these guys that got convicted during the trials, the one thing that convicted them all was, ‘well I was just doing my job‘.” Bryan added, “they [the military] are worse than the Nazis because we should know better.”

In May 2016, a Norwegian documentary filmmaker named Tonje Hessen Schei produced a film featuring Bryant’s experiences on the battlefield, called Drone – This Is No Game! In the documentary Bryant and his colleague Michael Haas were displayed as examples of how the CIA recruits video gamers and trains them to kill from a distance by remote control.

Since becoming an outspoken critic of the U.S. drone program Bryant says his family has been threatened for his actions.

After he spoke to a German parliamentary inquiry committee in 2015, two American Air Force officers showed up at the house of Bryant’s mother in Missoula, Montana. He said that officers told his mother that she was on an ISIS “hit list,” which Bryant’s attorney called a clear sign of whistleblower intimidation, according to Shadowproof.

Bryant received an award in Germany honoring his bravery as a whistleblower in 2015. There have also been other drone whistleblowers who have come forward including Matt DeHart, Senior Airman Stephen Lewis, Senior Airman Michael Haas, and one former drone program infrastructure technician, Senior Airman Cian Westmoreland. All men have denounced the U.S. drone program.

Republished from TheMindUnleashed.com with permission

The post Former Air Force Drone Operator Says US Military is “Worse Than Nazis” appeared first on We Are Change.

The comments came from Pentagon spokesperson Jonathan Hoffman and Navy Rear Admiral William D. Byrne Jr. during a press briefing in which the two men were asked repeatedly about the legal basis the U.S. is claiming to control Syrian oil fields.

The briefing came less than two weeks after Defense Secretary Mark Esper said, “That’s our mission, to secure the oil fields” in the Deir ez-Zor area of eastern Syria. President Donald Trump’s comments before and after that remark —”We’re going to be protecting [the oil], and we’ll be deciding what we’re going to do with it in the future,” and “The oil… can help us, because we should be able to take some”— were seized on by critics who claimed Trump was suggesting violating international law by plundering another country’s resources and openly saying the U.S. was pursuing war for oil.

Hoffman, in his comments Thursday, gave a different message—that “the revenue from this is not going to the U.S. This is going to the SDF,” referring to the Kurdish-led and U.S.-allied Syrian Democratic Forces, who are battling ISIS. Byrne claimed that the U.S. has been waging the oil field control mission alongside SDF and that the goal was to prevent ISIS from obtaining the oil revenue.

But, as one reporter pointed out, ISIS fighters “have no armor. They have no aircraft.”

“Do they have the capability to actually seize the oil fields?” the reporter asked. “And isn’t this really about Russia and Syria seizing those oil fields?”

Hoffman replied that the goal was “to prevent a resurgence” of ISIS which would be facilitated if the terrorist group had access to the oil revenue.

When the Pentagon officials were pressed on whether “U.S. troops have the… authorization to shoot if a representative of the Syrian government comes to the.. oil fields and says, ‘I am here to take property of these oil fields,'” Byrne said, “our commanders always retain the right and the obligation of self-defense when faced with a hostile act or demonstrated hostile intent.”

The officials were reminded by a reporter that “the government of Syria is still, based on international law… [the] recognized legitimate government.” Hoffman said, “Everyone in the region knows where American forces are. We’re very clear with anyone in the region in working to deconflict where our forces are. If anyone—we work to ensure that… no one approaches or has—shows hostile intent to our forces, and if they do, our commanders maintain the right of self-defense.”

Hoffman later said that the oil field mission couldn’t be separated from the fight to defeat ISIS. Operations in “Syria are done under the commander-in-chief’s authorities to—with regards to protecting Americans from terrorist activity.”

Pressed again by a reporter about the “legal basis for… the United States military to take and control the natural resources inside the boundaries of another country,” Hoffman responded, “the legal basis for this comes under the commander-in-chief’s authority for us to be conducting counter-terrorism efforts against D-ISIS. And I —I get your point when you’re trying to decouple the ISIS issue from the Syria issue, but it is not a decoupled issue.”

Later Hoffman was asked by a reporter if “President Trump [has] legal authority to take over these oil fields or is the United States stealing the oil?”

Hoffman repeated his stance that the operations were a part of the effort to defeat terrorists and stopping “ISIS from obtaining the oil fields is an effort to prevent them from obtaining revenue so that they can fund their terrorist operations globally.”

The Pentagon official also appeared to push back against the notion that the mission to control the oil fields is new. “Just to be clear, we’ve been in this area with the same mission of preventing ISIS from getting those oil fields for the last four years. This is not a new mission. Everybody seems to be—believe that that has changed. That is not —that is not the case.”

U.S. forces may also stay with that effort for years to come, Hoffman suggested.

“We’re committed to [the defeat of ISIS], and we’re committed to staying in the region,” he said. “We’re committed to, in this particular case, having troops in Syria in a way that helps us continue the D-ISIS mission as long as we believe it’s necessary.”

Republished from CommonDreams.org with permission

The post Pentagon: We’ll Shoot Any Syrian Gov’t Official Who Tries to Access Syrian Oil appeared first on We Are Change.

In some cases, songs would be played in repetition for hours or days on end, as to drive the prisoner to insanity. Music was also used to prevent detainees from sleeping, which is another way of creating delirium and vulnerability in the detainees.

Some songs were chosen because they were annoying, while others were chosen because they may have been offensive to the prisoner’s culture or religion.

Below are some of the songs that have been identified most often as being used by the US military in their torture programs. Some of the songs are annoying and could understandably be considered torture, specifically the Barney & Friends theme song and the Meow Mix commercial.

However, some of the artists featured like 2Pac, Rage Against The Machine and (hed)pe are actually pretty good, and are actually philosophically opposed to what the military is doing.

Deicide: Fuck Your God
Dope: Die MF Die, Take Your Best Shot
Eminem: White America, Kim
Barney & Friends: theme song
Drowning Pool: Bodies
Metallica: Enter Sandman
Meow Mix: commercial jingle
Janeane Garofalo/Ben Stiller: chapter from the Feel This Audiobook
Sesame Street: theme song
David Gray: Babylon
AC/DC: Shoot to Thrill, Hell’s Bells
Bee Gees: Stayin’ Alive
Tupac: All Eyez On Me
Christina Aguilera: Dirrty
Neil Diamond: America
Rage Against the Machine: unspecified songs
Don McLean: American Pie
Saliva: Click Click Boom
Matchbox Twenty: Cold
(hed)pe: Swan Dive
Prince: Raspberry Beret

Republished from TheAntiMedia.com under Creative Commons

The post See the Playlist Used by the CIA to Torture Detainees appeared first on We Are Change.

Many, seeing the drone and missile attacks on Saudi oil plants, may have declared it to be a false-flag attack carried out by Riyadh to boost Aramco’s market value; either that or it was an operation carried out by Iran or even Israel. On Saturday September 28, the Houthis put paid to such speculation by confirming what many, like myself, have been writing for months; that is, that the asymmetrical tactics of the Houthis, combined with the conventional capabilities of the Yemeni army, are capable of bringing the Saudi kingdom of Mohammed Bin Salman to its knees.

The Yemeni army’s missile forces are able to carry out highly complex attacks, no doubt as a result of reconnaissance provided by the local Shia population within the Kingdom that is against the House of Saud’s dictatorship. These Houthi sympathisers within Saudi Arabia helped in target identification, carried out reconnaissance within the plants, found the most vulnerable and impactful points, and passed this intelligence on to the Houthis and Yemeni army. These Yemeni forces employed locally produced means to severely degrade Saudi Arabia’s crude-oil-extraction and processing plants. The deadly strikes halved oil production and threatened to continue with other targets if the Saudi-conducted genocide in Yemen did not stop.

On Saturday 29 the Houthis and the Yemeni army conducted an incredible conventional attack lasting three days that began from within Yemen’s borders. The operation would have involved months of intelligence gathering and operational planning. It was a far more complex attack than that conducted against Aramco’s oil facilities. Initial reports indicate that the forces of the Saudi-led coalition were lured into vulnerable positions and then, through a pincer movement conducted quickly within Saudi territory, the Houthis surrounded the town of Najran and its outskirts and got the better of three Saudi brigades numbering in the thousands and including dozens of senior officers as well as numerous combat vehicles. This event is a game changer, leaving the US, Mike Pompeo and the Israelis and Saudis unable to lay the blame on Iran as all this took place a long way from Iran.

The large-scale operation was preceded by Yemeni rocket artillery targeting Jizan airport, with 10 missiles paralyzing any movements to and from the airport, including denying the possibility of air support for the encircled troops. The Houthis also hit the King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh in a key operation that targeted Apache helicopters, forcing them to leave the area. Nearby military bases were also targeted so as to cut off any reinforcements and disrupt the chain of command. This led to the Saudi forces fleeing in disorganization. Images shown by the Houthis show a road in the middle of a valley on the outskirts of Najran with dozens of Saudi armored vehicles trying to flee while being attacked from both sides by Houthi RPGs together with heavy and light weapons. Visual confirmation of the debacle can be seen in the number of casualties as well as in the number of prisoners taken. Images show lines of Saudi prisoners walking under Yemeni guard towards prison camps. This is something extraordinary to behold: the Saudi army, the third largest purchaser of weapons in the world, getting comprehensively walloped by one of the poorest countries in the world. The numbers say it all: the Houthis were able to control more than 350 kilometers of Saudi territory. Given that the Saudi military budget is almost 90 billion dollars a year, this achievement is made all the more extraordinary.

Houthi forces employed drones, missiles, anti-aircraft systems, as well as electronic warfare to prevent the Saudis from supporting their troops with aviation or other means to assist their trapped men. Testimony from Saudi soldiers suggest that efforts to rescue them were half-hearted and of little effect. Saudi prisoners of war accuse their military leaders of having left them prey to their opponents.

The Yemeni army and the Houthis were within less than 10 days able to inflict a devastating blow to both the credibility of US defense systems and the Saudi military. They did this by employing creative methods suitable for the objective at hand.

They initially revealed the internal vulnerability of the Kingdom through such a level of penetration into Saudi Arabia that they were able to conduct internal reconnaissance through the assistance of infiltrators or local collaborators so as to know exactly where to hit the oil installations for maximum effect and damage.

They subsequently demonstrated their technical and cyber capabilities through an asymmetrical operation employing drones of various types as well as electronic warfare to blind the US Patriot system’s radars, in the process halving Saudi Arabia’s oil production for a period of time Aramco is yet to determine.

Finally, the most surprising and astounding aspect of these recent events is this most recent Yemeni ground operation that was carried out in hostile territory and succeeded in surrounding three brigades consisting of thousands of men and their equipment. Thousands of Yemeni soldiers loyal to Ansarullah (Houthis) took part in this successful operation, supported by drones, ground-attack aircraft and air-defense batteries. Such capabilities are ordinarily better associated with well-trained and well-equipped militaries rather than militaries coming from the Third World.

The Houthis issued a clear message to Riyadh when they hit its oil installations. They effectively let it be known that they had the means and capability to damage the Kingdom irreparably, leading ultimately to the overthrow of the House of Saud.

The Yemeni army spokesman announced, after hitting the Saudi oil facilities, that they would stop all offensive actions using drones and missiles, leaving it up to Riyadh to decide whether things stopped there and they sat down at the negotiating table to end the conflict, or whether Saudi Arabia was in the mood for more of the same treatment.

Mohammed bin Salman would no doubt have received manifold reassurances from the Americans, explaining away the failure of the Patriot systems and assuring him that more American assistance was on the way; and that it would, moreover, be impossible to come to an agreement with the Houthis, especially given that they are considered to be a proxy of the Iranians (a debunked lie); not to mention, of course, the huge loss of prestige that would befall the Saudis, Israelis and Americans were such a capitulation to occur.

There is already talk in Riyadh of receiving new supplies of the THAAD system (similarly useless against Houthi asymmetrical warfare) and other very expensive American air-defense systems. It is too bad for the Saudis that the US has nothing like the Pantsir and the Russian BUK systems, which allow for a multi-layered air defense, ideal for defending against small, low-flying drones and missiles that are difficult to intercept with such systems as the Patriot and THAAD.

Instead of starting peace talks to stop the ongoing genocide in Yemen and being hit again by the Houthis in response, Mohammed bin Salman and his advisors seem to have seen it fit to commit further war crimes in Yemen.

Faced with such intransigence, the Houthis went ahead with a new attack even more devastating for Saudi morale and discombobulating for Western policy-makers. Thousands of men and their equipment were either killed, wounded, or taken captive in a pincer movement reminiscent of the DPR and LNR’s actions in Ukraine in 2015 where Kiev’s forces was similarly surrounded and destroyed.

Usually such pincer movements require thorough reconnaissance to determine where best to surround the enemy. Furthermore, air support and air-defense systems would be necessary to ward off American and Saudi responses. In addition to all this, troops and their equipment are needed together with the necessary training for such assaults that require coordination as well as quick and effective execution of orders. All these requirements were met as a result of the excellent preparation and knowledge of the terrain by the Yemeni army and the Houthis.

If the attack on Saudi oil facilities had such an impact, then the even more dramatic attack of this last Saturday will have forced Mohammed bin Salman and his American allies to face a very harsh reality. Saudi Arabia, it will now need to be recognized, does not have the capacity to defend its borders from Yemen, leaving the Houthis and the Yemeni army free to enter Saudi territory at will while showing little regard for the opinion and feelings of the Saudis and Americans.

This is a triple checkmate for the Houthis against Riyadh. Firstly, they showed that they had enough local support within Saudi Arabia to have ready internal saboteurs in the event of an all-out war with Iran or Yemen. Then they showed they have the capacity to cripple Saudi Arabia’s oil production. Ultimately, Yemen’s conventional forces could redraw the boundaries between Saudi Arabia and Yemen in the latter’s favor should Yemeni leaders decide to invade and occupy a strip of Saudi territory to secure a buffer zone, given that Saudi forces have been violating Yemen’s sovereignty and massacring civilians willy nilly for the last five years.

It bears reflecting on the significance of these events. The third-biggest arms spender in the world is incapable of defeating the poorest Arab country in the world. It is, moreover, incapable of protecting its national interest and borders from this impoverished Arab country. The Houthis are showing to the world what a poor but organized and motivated armed force can do using asymmetrical methods to bring one of the best-equipped militaries in the world to its knees. This conflict will be studied all over the world as an example of how a new means of warfare is possible when technological and cyber capabilities are democratized and available to those who know how to use them appropriately, as the Houthis have shown with their use of drones and electronic warfare.

With the Houthis enjoying a high level of leverage, through a combination of missile capabilities, the holding of many prisoners of war, and saboteurs spread throughout Saudi Arabia (apropos, a strange fire occurred in Jeddah on Sunday at the Al-Haramain railway station), it may be time for Riyadh to accept the tragic consequences of this useless war and sit down at the negotiating table with Ansarullah.

Washington and Tel Aviv will try in every way to prevent such negotiations. But if Mohammed bin Salman and his family wish to save their kingdom, it is better to start talking to the Houthis immediately. Otherwise it is only a matter of time before another attack by Ansarullah leads to the complete collapse and ruin of the House of Saud and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Republished from Strategic-Culture.org with permission

The post 500 Saudi Troops Reportedly Killed in Devastating Houthi Attack on Saudi Arabia appeared first on We Are Change.

“The senior Twitter executive with editorial responsibility for the Middle East is also a part-time officer in the British Army’s psychological warfare unit, Middle East Eye has established.”

Apparently, Gordon McMillan – twitter’s head of editorial for Europe, Middle East and Africa – not only works for the British government, but is a reservist in the 77th Brigade.

In case you don’t know what the 77th Brigade is, it’s a “counter-intelligence” unit set up to “combat disinformation” on social media.

Translation: They spread pro-Western propaganda on Twitter and Facebook. The unit was announced in 2015, in response – you can imagine – to a series of losses on the information warfare front, mainly re: Syria and Ukraine.

The Guardian happily reported it at the time, calling them “Facebook Warriors”:

“The British army is creating a special force of Facebook warriors, skilled in psychological operations and use of social media to engage in unconventional warfare in the information age.”

Whereas Sky News went with “Twitter Troops”, in a piece that has since disappeared from their website, but is thankfully still available as an archive {our emphasis]:

“Using creative thinking it is hoped that 77 Brigade will influence the minds and shape the behaviour of the enemy and local populations.

This has led to the early nickname “Twitter troops” for the Brigade, which will be formally created on 1 April.”

America has their own unit launched in 2011, and Israel has one too. These are not state secrets, but widely reported.

None of this counts as foreign intervention. Three whole armies never influenced and election, but 13 Russians did.

However, that Twitter is actually literally employing officers from this corps as executives is more brazen and unpleasant than many would expect.

Ian Cobain’s piece is meticulously sourced and cited, and a must-read.

It should be on the front page of every newspaper and website in the country, it’s the kind of journalism you just don’t get in the mainstream anymore.

Go here, digest it all, and share it widely. It deserves it.

[We would also recommend downloading a copy of the LinkedIn screencap, it’s important direct evidence that they are trying to memory hole]

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