Our Friends the Saudis

It’s just a fact that Saudi Arabia is the largest state sponsor of what our Republican compatriots call ‘radical Islamic terrorism’ (I looked that up just to make sure I got it exactly right). Not for nothing 15 of the 19 9/11 terrorists were Saudi and it’s been Saudi state policy to spread Wahhabism, one of the most militant types of fundamentalist Islam, for about a century, often subverting more secular regimes to do so.

They behead and maim people with an abandon that johnny-come-latelies like Daesh emulate in envy and it’s not a conspiracy theory to suggest that Daesh is a product of Saudi Intelligence designed to de-stabilise the Alawite Syrians and Shia Iraqis.

It’s their avowed aim at the moment to drive high recovery cost Oil out of the market which is causing a certain amount of disruption in other exporting states and world financial markets (not that it’s necessarily a bad thing).

But I think you get the idea that they’re pretty much assholes and bullies at best and more realistically international gangsters and criminals.

Oh, and like the United States, and I think this is what makes us bestest buds in that hand holding walks through the Rose Garden way, is that they like to bomb Hospitals.

I mean they really, really like to bomb Hospitals in that Israeli trademarked double tap kind of way, so you make sure you kill anyone with a shred of compassion and dignity.

Don’t shoot the rescuer: U.S.-backed Saudi-led coalition likely targeting medical workers with “triple tap” strikes in Yemen
by Ben Norton, Salon
Friday, Jan 22, 2016 02:30 PM EST

Scores of hospitals and medical facilities in Yemen have been destroyed by the Saudi-led, Western-backed coalition, which human rights organizations have accused of committing war crimes.

New evidence suggests the Saudi military, which is armed and trained by the U.S. and U.K., might be purposefully targeting medical staff and rescuers.

A Saudi-led coalition airstrike struck the ambulance of the Doctors Without Borders-supported al-Gomhoury Hospital in Yemen’s Saada governorate on Friday, killing the driver, who was a ministry of health staff member.
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“Just as [the ambulance] arrived and people were gathering to assist the victims of the initial bombing, the same site was hit again with another airstrike, wounding many people,” Doctors Without Borders, which is known internationally as Médecins Sans Frontières, MSF, said in a statement.

“A third strike was then launched, hitting the ambulance and killing its driver,” MSF added.
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“Double tap” refers to a military tactic in which an air force bombs an area immediately after hitting it the first time, in order to ensure there are no survivors.

The Israeli military is notorious for carrying out double-tap strikes in its summer 2014 war on Gaza, in which more than 2,250 Palestinians were killed, the vast majority of whom were civilians, according to the U.N.

This military tactic led to the deaths of many medical workers, who were trying to rescue the survivors of earlier strikes. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent said the Israel Defense Force’s use of double tap strikes is one of the primary reasons that scores of its staff were killed and injured in the war, according to a report by Physicians for Human Rights.

The Saudi-led, Western-backed coalition appears to be taking this military tactic to the next level in Yemen, carrying out “triple tap” bombings.

This triple tap attack was not far from another MSF-supported medical facility, Shiara hospital, which was bombed by the Saudi-led coalition on Jan. 10, killing six people.

At least three medical facilities run by MSF have been destroyed by the Saudi-led coalition.

“This latest loss of a colleague is devastating, and it demonstrates the ruthlessness with which health care is coming under attack in Yemen,” remarked Teresa Sancristoval, emergency coordinator at MSF, in a statement.

“People there are being subjected to this kind of violence on a daily basis. No one, not even health care workers, is being spared,” Sancristoval added.
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The U.S. has sold more than $100 billion in weapons to Saudi Arabia in the past five years, and the Saudis have dropped cluster bombs that were made in an Army factory in Tennessee on civilian neighborhoods in Yemen, in what Human Rights Watch called “outrageous” and a “war crime.” Cluster munition are banned in 118 countries, although the U.S. and Saudi Arabia refuse to ratify the international treaty banning them.

Britain has also funneled weapons to the Saudis, despite knowledge that the extremist absolute monarchy is committing war crimes in Yemen. The U.K. sold Saudi Arabia more than $1.43 billion of bombs in just three months.

American and British military officials are in the command and control center for the Saudi bombing in Yemen, and have access to lists of targets.