Yemen: Fake ‘News’ in America’s Mainstream Outlets

Eric Zuesse

On Friday, August 10th, CNN headlined “Saudi-led strike kills dozens of children on school field trip in Yemen” and reported as if the United States doesn’t have any important role to play in targeting and supplying the bombs and missiles for what the news-report refers to as “the Saudi-led coalition.”

It even says at 0:15 in the video, “Saudi Arabia, through air strikes, leads the coalition, including the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, and Sudan” and doesn’t even mention there the main party, other than the royal Saud family — the U.S. Government itself — which provides not only detailed authorization of each target but also the weapons and the training on how they’re used. The accompanying printed CNN news-article says nothing at all about the U.S. Government’s involvement until the very end of the article, where a U.S. propagandist is quoted:

After the strike, the United States, which largely supports the coalition’s campaign, issued a statement.

“US military support to our partners mitigates noncombatant casualties,” said Pentagon spokeswoman Rebecca Rebarich, according to the statement.

“Our support to the coalition consists of aerial refueling and intelligence support to assist our partners in securing their borders from cross-border attacks from the Houthis. Our noncombat support focuses on improving coalition processes and procedures, especially regarding compliance with the law of armed conflict and best practices for reducing the risk of civilian casualties,” the statement said.

Here are more photos and videos of the air-strike’s victims, as posted to twitter by opponents of the Saudi, and UAE, and American dictatorships.

The CNN report alleges that the war in Yemen is between “the internationally recognized government in Yemen and against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels.”

However, on 3 February 2018 the Washington Post had headlined “Yemen’s war is so out of control, allies are turning on one another” and reported by burying, within their article, clear evidence that that from CNN is a rabidly deceptive representation of the reality — a lie. Here are the relevant excerpts:

The three-year-old Yemen conflict has largely been cast as a war that pits an internationally recognized government against Iranian-backed rebels who ousted it. … Said April Longley Alley, a senior Yemen analyst for the International Crisis Group, “The narrative of a ‘legitimate government’ fighting the ‘Iranian-backed Houthis’ obscures a complex local reality, and it hinders efforts to achieve peace.”

[The Sauds’ chosen leader of Yemen] Hadi … has presided mostly from the Saudi capital, Riyadh…Alley added, “Now what we see is the UAE and [Saudi Arabia] scrambling to paper over differences between the two so that they can maintain, at least while the war with the Houthis continues, the myth of a unified front under an internationally recognized government.”

“The Emirates [the 7 Emirs who collectively own UAE] has ambitions in the south, and one of its most important ambitions is [grabbing] the port of Aden,” said Hassan Aljalal, a Yemeni journalist.

Hesham Alghannam, a Saudi researcher at the University of Exeter, said … “where did the money go?” … The coalition, he added, also needed to put more pressure on the government to “deliver for the people.”

That Washington Post article mentioned nothing, at all, about the U.S. Government’s role invading Yemen.

The owner of the Washington Post is Jeff Bezos, who also is the main owner of Amazon, whose web services division is the supplier of cloud computing services for the U.S. federal Government, which division — serving the Pentagon, CIA, NSA, etc., instead of consumers — is the only consistently profitable division of Amazon, and thus the key to Bezos’s having a net worth that’s already approximately 10% as large as is the Saudi King’s net worth.

In the United States, conflict-of-interest laws don’t pertain to the ‘news’media. However, a landmark 26 June 2017 ruling by the state of California’s Supreme Court, in the case of People v. Superior Court (Sahlolbei), could lead to a transformation of America into a democracy (which it isn’t currently), and that would mean ending the U.S. empire, including NATO, which has no democratic but only an imperial reason for existing after the end in 1991 of the Soviet Union and of its communism and of its Warsaw Pact military alliance mirroring America’s NATO military alliance.

CNN’s news-report on the Yemeni schoolbus-bombing closes:

US State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the United States did not have the “full details of what happened on the ground” but said “we’re concerned about these reports.”

“We call on the Saudi-led coalition to conduct … an investigation,” Nauert said.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

SUPPORT OFFGUARDIAN

If you enjoy OffG's content, please help us make our monthly fund-raising goal and keep the site alive.

For other ways to donate, including direct-transfer bank details click HERE.