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War, War, War See other War, War, War Articles Title: The School Bus Massacre and Pompeo’s Bogus Certification PBS NewsHour interviewed Larry Lewis last night in a report on Yemen and Pompeos dishonest certification of Saudi coalition conduct. Lewis worked for the U.S. government to try to improve Saudi coalition targeting up through 2016, but stopped after that. He wrote an analysis of Pompeos claims earlier this week. During the interview, Lewis made an important point about the coalitions supposed admission of error in the Aug. 9 school bus massacre that has been lost in a lot of the coverage: So, its good that they admitted a mistake. But, unfortunately, the details of the explanation dont look right. So they talked about problems in the timing of the airstrike. But the common understanding of what happened was, the problem was actually the target selection. I mean, they struck a school bus with kids [bold mine-DL]. And the fundamental problem is, if they are not getting the details right of what went wrong, its unlikely that they will be able to put solutions in place to get better. The Saudi coalition has never acknowledged that they were wrong to attack the school bus, and their spokesman said earlier this month that there were no children on the bus they destroyed. The coalitions admission of error amounted to saying that they attacked the bus later than they should have. The Saudis and their allies have never acknowledged that they killed dozens of schoolchildren, and instead they continue to claim that the target was legitimate. I bring this up once again because there is a widespread misunderstanding that the Saudi coalition made a meaningful admission of error in this case, and that misunderstanding has in turn helped Secretary Pompeo to issue a bogus certification that the coalition is making progress in reducing harm to civilians. Yesterdays Wall Street Journal article mentions that the coalitions shoddy investigation into the massacre probably played a role in the decision to give the coalition a pass: U.S. officials say that a contrite and robust Saudi response to its bombing of the school bus on Aug. 9 may have helped tip the scales in Riyadhs favor. The problem here is that the Saudi response was neither contrite nor robust. It was a cynical and deceptive response that paid lip service to the idea that the coalition had made a mistake, but it showed no understanding or acknowledgement of the appalling crime that their forces had committed against dozens of children. Contrition would have meant acknowledging that the attack on the bus itself was wrong and admitting that they had wrongfully killed 40 kids, and that should have been followed by profuse apologies and offers of compensation. Obviously none of that has happened, and the Saudi coalition has been let off the hook by Washington once again after shedding a few crocodile tears while clinging to the lie that their murder of 40 small boys was a legitimate military action. The good news is that the credibility of the coalition and the administration has been shredded in the weeks that followed this horrific attack. The coalitions investigation into the massacre and the administrations certification were both done in such obvious bad faith that they are practically begging Congress to cut off all U.S. military assistance and block all arms sales. That is exactly what Congress needs to do. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top Page Up Full Thread Page Down Bottom/Latest
#1. To: Ada (#0)
Ok,we have Arabs/Muslims killing other Arabs/Muslims. Why should I or anyone else give a shit? If anything,we should applaud them and encourage them to do more of it. You DO understand that Islam declared war on US,right? You also need to understand that wars are won by killing people and destroying infrastructure. These are things we need to be encouraging as long as they are killing each other. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ In the entire history of the world,the only nations that had to build walls to keep their own citizens from leaving were those with leftist governments.
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