Since when does International Law operate in the middle east? The US and anyone they support get a free pass whenever they want to impose their economic and military might on anyone who might oppose them. The GCC, Turkey and Israel are combining to try and destroy the ‘arc of resistance’ Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and the Shia majority government in Iraq,they are using any terrorist they can recruit, from anywhere in the world to achieve their aims. At the moment the resistance is taking huge punishment, it will continue because the GCC have unlimited funds and, it would appear the backing of the US. That is until somehow the resistance can find a way to strike back. Maybe the resistance can take a leaf out of Arial Sharon’s playbook and apply it in practice when he said “They [the Arabs] have the oil, but we have the matches”

Posted by: harry law | May 8 2015 17:23 utc | 4

‘ Saudi-led forces … warned all civilians to leave … ‘
which is right out of the US/Israeli playbook used during operation Protective Edge in Gaza in 2014.
And Gaza is still devastated. Of the 5.3 billion ‘pledged’ to rebuild Gaza after its wanton destruction by Israel, 300 thousand is what has actually been delivered.
Gaza is one of the most densely populated places on earth. There’s no where to go, just as b points out in Yemen – there’s no way to get there.
Like shooting fish in a barrel …
This is how we fought in Gaza (pdf)

While the testimonies include pointed descriptions of inappropriate behavior by soldiers in the field, the more disturbing picture that arises from these testimonies reflects systematic policies that were dictated to IDF forces of all ranks and in all zones. The guiding military principle of “minimum risk to our forces, even at the cost of harming innocent civilians,” alongside efforts to deter and intimidate the Palestinians, led to massive and unprecedented harm to the population and the civilian infrastructure in the Gaza Strip. Policymakers could have predicted these results prior to the operation and were surely aware of them throughout.
This policy was evident first and foremost during the briefings provided to the forces before entering Gaza. Many soldiers spoke of a working assumption that Palestinian residents had abandoned the neighborhoods they entered due to the IDF’s warnings, thus making anyone located in the area a legitimate target – in some cases even by direct order.

The Saudis, too, like the Israelis and Americans, want “minimum risk to our forces, even at the cost of harming innocent civilians”.
Keep those Saudi fighter pilots safe in their Bentleys.
The USA, the KSA, and Israel. What a disgusting Axis.

Posted by: jfl | May 8 2015 18:32 utc | 6

Kerry in Riyadh: A meeting of war criminals

The United Nations has put the death toll from the Saudi-led war at more than 1,400, with thousands more wounded, the overwhelming majority of the casualties civilians. Some 300,000 people have been forced to flee their homes. Bombs have demolished at least 30 schools and the violence has left nearly 2 million school children unable to attend classes.
An estimated 20 million people, or 80 percent of the population, are going hungry as a Saudi-led blockade of Yemen’s harbors together with repeated air strikes that have destroyed runways at the country’s airports have cut off its food supplies.
Speaking in Djibouti, a stop on his way to Saudi Arabia, Kerry postured as if the imperialist power he represents were just one more humanitarian enterprise. He declared that Washington was “deeply concerned about the humanitarian situation that is unfolding in Yemen” and urged “all sides, anybody involved, to comply with humanitarian law and to take every precaution to keep civilians out of the line of fire.”

@7
Well that solves the problem of where to go to avoid the onslaught … Saudi Arabia. Move in with brother and dad who are at work there. Be sure to bring them their guns …

Posted by: jfl | May 8 2015 18:52 utc | 8

Those of us, who were old and critical enough to live through the last years of the VN war, thought the US ruling classes had reached the bottom of their moral depravity; clearly, we were utterly wrong and naive. The genocide the profligate Saudis are perpetrating in Yemen is a crime against humanity, such disregard for human life has been historically imputed to the Nazis, now the US is fully supporting it and partnering in the killing of defenseless human beings. Seeing Kerry happily meeting a tyrant with a mindset straight out of the darkest Dark Ages, the one who is ordering the carnage the world is witnessing (or not) with total impunity, is nauseating to say the least. One would have thought people like John McCain and John Kerry could have learned something from their experience in VN, they didn’t. They bounced back from the defeat in VN, and compensated the consequent emasculation, with a projection of imperialist power bared of any moral restraint. I was afraid when Bush II was elected the gates of hell will open, and my fears have been validated in spades. The twin tragedies of Ukraine and Yemen in which people are massacred wholesale, sacrificed before the altar of geopolitical objectives, speak volumes of how far the empire is willing to go, and the millions is willful to kill to sustain its global domination and control of the world’s material resources. Hopefully the Yemeni and other peoples will learn the lesson of VN, that with the empire and its henchmen in total control of the sky, liberation and resistance movements have to go underground as Sun-Tzu counseled, “Those skilled in defense hide in the deepest depth of the earth” (Art of War.)

Posted by: Lone Wolf | May 8 2015 20:10 utc | 10

When i visited Saudi Arabia for religious pilgrimage (non hajj time) 3 years ago i saw how filthy poor the people are, how filthy and sick that whole society is. I had a feeling in my heart that the country wouldnt last 10 more years and that the gov would fall and it will be a shit fight.
3 years down, 7 to go, but by the looks of things lol i might be wrong, it could be 5 years if these houthis give em a run for their money
You know why Pakistan refused to send in ground troops ? Just to visit KSA , they treat them like animals
And most security guards are black africans lol
Weird place i pray for their downfall

Posted by: Deebo | May 8 2015 21:19 utc | 12

Opening graph of an article at WaPo:

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama will meet one-on-one with Saudi Arabia’s new monarch, King Salman, in Washington next week as the two allies struggle to reduce turmoil across the Middle East.

Someone typed that with a straight face

Posted by: ran | May 8 2015 22:10 utc | 14

@Alberto@12
Did you ever stop to wonder why the guy negotiating the Paris Peace Accords barely spoke English? Where is he from anyways?
Mind to refresh my memory? Which negotiations, the open ones or the secret ones between Kissinger and Le Duc Tho? AFAIK, Le Duc Tho spoke French, I don’t know in which language he and Kissinger conducted the negotiations. So, which guy and whose side are you referring to?

Posted by: Lone Wolf | May 9 2015 1:10 utc | 16

I continue to be shocked by the war on Yemen. I know other people round these parts aren’t so shocked. They expect this from the U.S. But there’s something new and frightening about the way this is being carried out. The emperor has no clothes and he doesn’t care. The fake halt to the bombing a few weeks ago, the renaming of the Operation by the Saudis: they’re not even bothering to make the facade look real. The declaration of war from the Saudi embassy: an eerie, oblique significance in that location. The use of cluster bombs, the clearly deliberate bombing of food-delivery infrastructure and civilians, all while the U.S. claims to be guiding the bombing to minimize civilian casualties. Ha. The criminal blockade. The war’s timing – it started right before the formation of a unity government. The puppet Hadi, elected just like Kim Jong-un: in an election with no opponent, amid the usual photo-ops of voters’ purple-ink stained fingers.
Though Yemen is obscure to most Americans, and figures little in the news, and while the objectives there are petty and incomprehensible, is it fair to say there’s something about this campaign that’s orders of magnitude more sinister than the Iraq war (2003), and maybe stands out across even decades? They’re designing a new Somalia. Why, and what the fuck is going on? Please someone explain it.

Posted by: Anonymous | May 9 2015 7:36 utc | 18