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First Shots Fired as Part of Obama’s Latest Terror Alert
7 August 2013
(LPAC)—The first shots in the latest round of terror alerts and threats were fired in Yemen early Tuesday, after the U.S. began issuing warnings of a vastly increased terror threat in the Middle East and North Africa, last Friday. According to Reuters, tribal leaders in the central Yemen province of Maarib reported that four people were killed when five rockets slammed into a vehicle early Tuesday morning. The attack appears to have followed, by only hours, a statement issued by the Embassy of Yemen in Washington, D.C., of the 25 "most wanted terrorists" in Yemen who are thought to be planning terrorist attacks in Sana’a and elsewhere in the country. "The Yemeni government has taken all necessary precautions to secure diplomatic facilities, vital installations and strategic assets," the statement said. Whether this latest attack in Yemen was launched from the secret CIA base in southern Saudi Arabia, or the U.S. military base at Camp Lemonier in Djibouti, is not yet known, but what is being reported is that U.S. special forces in the region of the Mediterranean have been put on high alert, able to launch within an hour of getting the order. An anonymous Obama Administration official told CNN, yesterday, that those forces would be ready to go after any potental Al Qaeda target if those behind the most recent terror threats against U.S. interests can be identified. The official declined to give any details as to which units and their locations, but what is known about relevant U.S. force posture in the region is this: A Marine Corps special operations unit has been split between bases in Moron, Spain, and Sigonella, Sicily, for the last three or four months; U.S. special forces units have long been known to operate from the aforementioned Camp Lemonier; a U.S. Air Force special operations squadron is based in Mildenhall, England; the USS Kearsarge amphibious ready group, consisting of three amphibious warfare ships carrying 2,000 Marines, has been reported, for weeks, to be in the Red Sea, and finally, if the special forces need air support, the aircraft carrier USS Harry Truman is currently in port in Marseille, where it’s scheduled to be until Aug. 9. Yesterday, the State Department issued a travel alert for Yemen and began evacuating its "nonemergency personnel" from the country using Defense Department-provided aircraft. The State Department alert warns Americans against traveling to Yemen due to "the high security threat level in Yemen due to terrorist activities and civil unrest." It also said that Americans in Yemen should plan to depart "immediately." In London, an anonymous spokesman at the Foreign office told the New York Times that "Due to increased security concerns, we have withdrawn all staff today in the British Embassy in Sana, and the embassy will remain closed until staff are able to return. We have closed the embassy because we assess there is an increased threat." The whole affair has the White House on the defensive. It wasn’t that long ago that the administration was declaring Al Qaeda "on the verge of strategic defeat," but now it claims it has to keep a dozen-and-a-half embassies closed for at least a week (with hints that the closures may last longer), because the threat is so serious. White House spokesman Jay Carney was hit on this at yesterday’s White House press briefing, and he went to great lengths to make a distinction between the "core al Qaeda" and its affiliated organizations. The "core Al Qaeda," Carney insisted, has been "greatly diminished," though it and its affiliated organizations remain a "continued threat" to Americans. "And for that reason, we have focused a great deal of attention on those affiliated organizations, and we have made clear over the past several years that AQAP, Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, is of particular concern and has demonstrated both an interest in and a willingness to attempt serious attacks on the United States, our allies, and our people." [CJO] |