That's what the chatter is telling us, and I've fallen behind and lost track of the terrorists.
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"Yemen says it foiled Al Qaeda plot" by Ahmed Al-Haj and Maggie Michael | Associated Press, August 08, 2013
SANA, Yemen — Military and intelligence officials in Yemen said Wednesday they uncovered an Al Qaeda plot to fire missiles at foreign embassies in the capital and to attack naval forces guarding international shipping in the Red Sea.
Oh, never mind.
Details of the plot, which was reminiscent of the suicide attack on the USS Cole in 2000 that killed 17 American sailors, emerged as Yemen remains in a heightened state of alert that has seen the US and British embassies evacuated and a new suspected US drone strike that killed seven alleged militants from the terrorist group.
Related: The USS Cole bombing against the backdrop of Israeli "Black Propaganda" Operations
Did you also know that Israel did 9/11?
The discovery of the Al Qaeda plot prompted the Defense Ministry to step up security around the strategic Bab el-Mandeb waterway, which connects the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden. Officials banned speedboats or fishing vessels from the area, and military forces have been ordered to shoot to kill anybody who arouses suspicion or refuses to identify themselves.
Our ally has a kill on sight policy!
General Mohammed Nasser Ahmed, the defense minister, visited the area Sunday and urged the forces, known as Battalion 117, to stay on high alert for possible suicide attacks, according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.
An estimated 3.5 million barrels of oil passed daily in 2010 through the Bab el-Mandeb strait, increasing the importance of impoverished Yemen, which has only a relatively small production of oil and natural gas. Revenue from oil and gas production is declining, worsening its ability to provide social services.
Now you know why we have the whole dog-and-pony cock-and-bull "Al-CIA-Duh" show here.
The militants from the terrorist group’s Yemeni branch — known as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula — also were said to be plotting to use long-range missiles to target embassies and diplomats’ residences, or try to take foreigners as hostages, the officials said.
Related: Yemen's Xmas Gift to Obama
But it's August!
Ahmed urged the forces to stay ‘‘on alert against any sabotage operations aiming at destabilizing the country,’’ according to the officials.
Drastic security measures have been instituted across Sana, with multiple checkpoints set up, and tanks and other military vehicles guarding vital institutions.
In Sana, an Associated Press reporter said a drone buzzed over the capital for hours during the day.
Residents speak of their fears about possible terrorist attacks, although life is going on as normal, with shoppers buying new clothes and food for the four-day Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr.
As normal as possible with drone strikes pocking the desert and mountains, although I guess that is normal for Yemen.
A Yemeni government spokesman said earlier Wednesday that it had foiled a separate plot to target the southern cities of Mukalla and Bawzeer, then send militants disguised as Yemeni troops to attack two nearby strategic oil ports on the Arabian Peninsula, government spokesman Rageh Badi said.
Badi said other Al Qaeda militants would also try to sabotage oil pipelines to ‘‘create panic among Yemeni army and Yemeni security services.’’ Pipelines in the lawless south have been repeatedly attacked by Al Qaeda militants and armed tribesmen who maintain ties with the terrorist group.
Details of the plot were first reported by the BBC.
Pffft!
The Mideast official said the recent rise in drone strikes — five in 10 days — had been carefully coordinated with US officials together with Yemeni action on the ground in response to the threat from the Al Qaeda branch, which is considered the most active of the terrorist network.
That's so odd, because just a couple of months ago the propaganda was "Al-CIA-Duh" was all but defeated.
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"Drone offensive in Yemen kills 34 militant suspects; US began sharp increase less than two weeks ago" by Ahmed Al-haj and Maggie Michael | Associated Press, August 09, 2013
If the ratios hold true that means 1,700 people have been killed.
SANA, Yemen — The United States has sharply escalated its drone war in Yemen, with military officials in the Arab country reporting 34 suspected Al Qaeda militants killed in less than two weeks, including three strikes on Thursday alone in which a dozen died.
The action against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, as the Yemen branch is known, comes amid a global terrorism alert issued by Washington. One Mideast official says the uptick is due to its leaders leaving themselves more vulnerable by moving from their normal hideouts toward areas where they could carry out attacks....
Thursday’s first reported drone attack hit a car carrying suspected militants in the district of Wadi Ubaidah, about 109 miles east of Sana, and killed six, a security official said.
Badly burned bodies lay beside their vehicle, according to the official. Five of the dead were Yemenis, while the sixth was believed to be of another Arab nationality, he said.
That means he is Saudi Arabian; otherwise, they would have told you from where.
The second drone attack killed three alleged militants in the al-Ayoon area of Hadramawt province in the south, the official said. The third, also in Hadramawt province, killed three more suspected militants in the al-Qutn area, he added.
All the airstrikes targeted cars, added the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.
The drone strikes have become a near-daily routine since they began July 27. So far, they have been concentrated in remote, mountainous areas where Al Qaeda’s top five leaders are believed to have taken refuge.
But drones also have been seen and heard buzzing for hours over Sana, worrying residents who fear getting caught in the crossfire.
Why would worried residents be fearful of the wonderful US military and their liberating drone strikes?
While the United States acknowledges its drone program in Yemen, it does not talk about individual strikes or release information on how many are carried out. The program is run by the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command and the CIA, with the military flying its drones out of Djibouti, and the CIA out of a base in Saudi Arabia.
Pentagon spokesman Army Lieutenant Colonel Todd Breassale declined to comment Thursday and would not confirm the existence of a military drone program in Yemen. The CIA also declined to comment.
Since July 27, drone attacks have killed 34 suspected militants, according to an Associated Press count based on information provided by Yemeni security officials.
Suspected?
The terrorist network’s Yemeni offshoot bolstered its operations in Yemen more than a decade after key Saudi operatives fled here following a major crackdown in their homeland. The drone strikes and a US-backed offensive that began in June 2012 have driven militants from towns and large swaths of land they had seized a year earlier, during Yemen’s political turmoil amid the Arab Spring.
The sudden drone barrage could further upset a population already angered by bombings that have killed civilians, said Gregory Johnsen, the author of ‘‘The Last Refuge: Yemen, Al Qaeda and America’s War in Arabia.’’
‘‘This has a lot of people in Yemen on edge,’’ Johnsen said in an interview.
Yeah, well, when you kill 50 innocent people to get one "suspected terrorist" things like that are going to happen.
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U.S. claims it didn't kill that many:
"US acknowledges it has killed 4 US citizens in drone strikes" by Charlie Savage | New York Times, May 23, 2013
WASHINGTON — One day before President Obama is due to deliver a major speech on national security, his administration formally acknowledged on Wednesday that the United States had killed four US citizens in drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan.
In a letter to congressional leaders obtained by The New York Times, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. disclosed that the administration had deliberately killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Muslim cleric, in a drone strike in September 2011 in Yemen.
Related: AmeriKan Missiles Keep Things All in the Family in Yemen
The US responsibility for Awlaki’s death has been widely reported, but the administration had until now refused to confirm or deny it.
The letter also said that the United States had killed three other Americans: Samir Khan, who was killed in the same strike; Awlaki’s son Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, who was also killed in Yemen; and Jude Mohammed, who was killed in a strike in Pakistan.
Related: US drone strike kills 16 in Pakistan
While rumors of Mohammed’s death had appeared in local news reports in Raleigh, N.C., where he lived, his death had not been confirmed by the US government until Wednesday.
According to former acquaintances of Mohammed in North Carolina, he appears to have been killed in a November 2011 drone strike in South Waziristan, in Pakistan’s tribal area. Mohammed’s wife, whom he had met and married in Pakistan, subsequently called his mother in North Carolina to tell her of his death, the friends say.
Holder, in a speech at Northwestern University Law School last year, laid out the administration’s basic legal thinking that US citizens deemed to be operational terrorists, who pose an “imminent threat of violent attack” and whose capture is infeasible may be targeted. That abstract legal thinking — including an elastic definition of what counts as “imminent” — was further laid out in an unclassified white paper provided to Congress last year, which was leaked earlier this year.
See: Nominated For Your Consideration: On Drones Brennan Confirmation
But Holder’s letter went further in discussing the death of Awlaki in particular, an operation the administration had previously refused to publicly acknowledge. He said it was not Awlaki’s words urging violent attacks against Americans that led the United States to target him, but direct actions in planning attacks.
Holder said that Awlaki not only planned the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner on Dec. 25, 2009, a claim that has been widely discussed in court documents and elsewhere, but also played a key role in an October 2010 plot to bomb cargo planes bound for the United States, including taking “part in the development and testing” of the bombs.
Related: Underwear Bomb Made Me Crap My Pants
“Moreover, information that remains classified to protect sensitive sources and methods evidences Awlaki’s involvement in the planning of numerous other plots against US and Western interests and makes clear he was continuing to plot attacks when he was killed,” Holder wrote.
He sounds like Dick Cheney.
He added, “The decision to target Anwar al-Awlaki was lawful, it was considered, and it was just.”
Every thing the Nazis did was cloaked in legality.
Obama announced the death of Awlaki on Sept. 30, 2011, and credited US intelligence, but he did not explicitly acknowledge that Awlaki was killed by a US strike.
Critics were not assuaged by Holder’s letter.
“The Obama administration continues to claim authority to kill virtually anyone anywhere in the world under the ‘global battlefield’ legal theory and a radical redefinition of the concept of imminence,” said Zeke Johnson, an official with Amnesty International. “President Obama should reject these concepts in his speech tomorrow and commit to upholding human rights, not just in word but in deed.”
See: Obama Opens His Mouth Again
I wish he would keep it closed.
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