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WikiLeaking Covert Wars

Jeremy Scahill

On September 6, 2009, President Obama's deputy national security adviser, John Brennan, met with Yemen's president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, to discuss the rising influence of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). "President Saleh pledged unfettered access to Yemen's national territory for U.S. counterterrorism operations," according to a secret diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks. While the Obama administration was insisting publicly that its role in Yemen was limited to training the country's military forces—the same claim it made about Pakistan—US Special Operations forces were conducting offensive operations in Yemen, including airstrikes, and conspiring with Yemen's president and other leaders to cover up the US role.

On December 17, 2009, an alleged Al Qaeda training camp in Yemen at al-Majalah, Abyan, was hit by a cruise missile, killing forty-one people. According to an investigation by the Yemeni Parliament, fourteen women and twenty-one children were among the dead, along with fourteen alleged Al Qaeda fighters. A week later another airstrike hit another village in Yemen.

Amnesty International released photographs from one of the strikes, revealing remnants of US cluster munitions and the Tomahawk cruise missiles used to deliver them. At the time, the Pentagon refused to comment, directing all inquiries to Yemen's government, which released a statement on December 24 taking credit for both airstrikes, saying in a press release, "Yemeni fighter jets launched an aerial assault" and "carried out simultaneous raids killing and detaining militants."

US diplomatic cables now reveal that both strikes were conducted by the US military under orders from Gen. David Petraeus, then head of US Central Command (Centcom). "We'll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours," President Saleh told Petraeus during a meeting in early January 2010, according to one cable. Yemen's Deputy Prime Minister Rashad al-Alimi then boasted that he had just "lied" by telling Parliament "that the bombs...were American-made but deployed by" Yemen. According to US Special Operations sources, US teams also conduct targeted killing operations and raids inside Yemen.

On December 17, 2009, an alleged Al Qaeda training camp in Yemen at al-Majalah, Abyan, was hit by a cruise missile, killing forty-one people. According to an investigation by the Yemeni Parliament, fourteen women and twenty-one children were among the dead, along with fourteen alleged Al Qaeda fighters. A week later another airstrike hit another village in Yemen.

Jeremy Scahill of MI 4:18PM March 28, 2011