Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Obama Targets US Citizen for 'Kill or Capture'
The Obama Administration has authorised the targeted killing of an American citizen in what is believed to be an unprecedented move in the War against Terror.
Anwar al-Awlaki has been approved for targeted killing. The Obama Administration has authorised the targeted killing of an American citizen in what is believed to be an unprecedented move in the War against Terror. (Youtube)
According to US media reports, the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who
has been linked to last November's attack on Fort Hood, Texas, and the
failed Christmas day airline bomb plot, has been approved for capture or
killing.
Mr Awlaki, who is in hiding in Yemen, is understood to have moved from encouraging attacks on the United States to participating in them directly, The New York Times reports.
He has been directly linked to Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the US army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, and to Umar Farouk Abdulmatallab, the Nigerian who tried to blow up a Detroit bound plane with a bomb in his underwear on Christmas Day.
American counter-terrorism officials told the newspaper that Mr Awlaki was an operative of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the affiliate of the terror network in Yemen and Saudi Arabia. He is also believed to actively recruit new members for the terror network.
Experts said that targeting him was was extremely rare, if not unprecedented. A former senior legal official in the administration of George W. Bush told The New York Times he did not know of any American who was approved for targeted killing under the former president.
But the director of national intelligence, Dennis Blair, told a House of Representatives hearing in February that such a step was possible, without naming Mr Awlaki as a possible target. "We take direct actions against terrorists in the intelligence community," he said. "If we think that direct action will involve killing an American, we get specific permission to do that."
The possibility that Mr Awlaki might be added to the target list was reported by The Los Angeles Times in January, and Reuters reported on Tuesday that he was approved for capture or killing.
"The danger Awlaki poses to this country is no longer confined to words," said an American official, who was not named. "He's gotten involved in plots."
The official added: "The United States works, exactly as the American people expect, to overcome threats to their security, and this individual - through his own actions - has become one. Awlaki knows what he's done, and he knows he won't be met with handshakes and flowers. None of this should surprise anyone."
Mr Awlaki was born in New Mexico of Yemeni descent. He was interviewed by the FBI after the September 11, 2001, attacks when he was accused of serving as "spiritual adviser" to two of the attackers at his mosque in Falls Church. He was detained by Yemeni authorities in August 2006 and held for more than a year as part of a secret investigation
Describing Mr Hasan's attack at Fort Hood on his website, which advocates violence against the West, he wrote: "Nidal Hassan [sic] is a hero. He is a man of conscience who could not bear the contradiction of being a Muslim and fighting against his own people. No scholar with a grain of Islamic knowledge can deny the clear cut proofs that Muslims today have the right - rather the duty - to fight against American tyranny."
On Tuesday, Jane Harman, the chairwoman of a House subcommittee on homeland security described Mr Awlaki as: "probably the person, the terrorist, who would be terrorist Number One in terms of threat against us."
- Posted in
177 Comments so far
Show AllExtrajudicial execution? What happened to innocent until proven guilty? They want to execute him without any trial? Nice.
Innocent until proven guilty went out the window when the media took over the roll of the courts.
it "role of the courts".
it's "it's"
lmmfao
Did you notice that "kill" came first?
milky way,
That's the problem, isn't it? The 'kill" part. Like those posters hung up out west: WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE. Under the rule of law, we wish to capture an alleged criminal and bring him to trial. In that way we can not only establish his guilt or innocence but find out more about the crimes he committed. Bounty hunter mentality is no better than taking vengeance against those who apparently wronged us.
I never thought this country would abandon the principles it was built on. Admittedly it failed to live up to those principles over the course of its existence, but the rule of law was always there as a goal if not as a guide to action. Now even the semblance of lawful order is gone. For shame.
Not to mention due process. If one person does not have the right to due process, none of us do. Obama is an attorney and therefore has no excuse for failing to restore the right to due process (habeas corpus) that Dubya and Congress took away from anybody who is labelled an "enemy combatant".
-If one person does not have the right to due process, none of us do
Ergo, none of you do.
How is that progressive alternative to the Democrats coming along?
The recently proposed McCain/Lieberman bill, Senate file 3081 "Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act" (a total misnomer since indefinite detention with no prosecution is part of the package):
1. The bill does not distinguish between U.S. citizens and non-citizens, and states that “suspected belligerents” who are “considered a “high-value detainee” shall not be provided with a Miranda warning and in fact "may be detained without criminal charges and without trial for the duration of hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners in which the individual has engaged, or which the individual has purposely and materially supported..."
http://willyloman.wordpress.com/2010/03/10/s-3081-enemy-belligerent-interrogation-detention-and-prosecution-act-of-2010-u-s-congress-opencongress/
2. A person is considered a “high value detainee” if they fulfill one of the following criteria:
(a) poses a threat of an attack on civilians or civilian facilities within the U.S. or U.S. facilities abroad; (b) poses a threat to U.S. military personnel or U.S. military facilities; (c) potential intelligence value; (d)is a member of al Qaeda or a terrorist group affiliated with al Qaeda or (e) such other matters as the President considers appropriate.
(wording of the bill itself)
Remember how all of this started with the War on Drugs? People were frightened into believing that pot smokers would kidnap and rape their children so they would allow illegal searches, asset forfeiture without due processs, profiling of certain people, etc.?
Then comes 9/11 and everyone is so afraid of a terrorist hiding under their bed, they would willing gives up everything they hadn't with the drug war.
Land of the free and home of the brave? ROTFLMAO!!! Mercans are anything BUT free and brave. Whoever thought that one up had quite the sense of humor, eh?
"I never thought this country would abandon the principles it was built on." Nothing lasts forever. That is a fundamental rule of nature. The US political system and the legal/constitutional system were going to undergo total fail at some point, and more and more signs point to the possibility that we are reaching that point. The US economic system also appears to be approaching a possible total fail moment, and certainly the failure of each of these interconnected systems will contribute to the failure of the others.
When US journalism died, and no significant self-correcting mechanisms were left for the political/legal/economic systems, runaway positive feedback loops developed that increasingly concentrated wealth and corrupted government and ensured system collapse in the near to medium term.
Good post kivals,
Just like Waterworld Global Warming, the question is not "if it will happen, but when".
Jefferson said he hoped we wouldn't go more than 20 years without a Shay's Rebellion to keep the government in line. But this government has morphed into the Roman Empire, complete with torture, senate corruption, and phony wars for conquest.
All that's missing is Coliseum sword battles, and guys hanging on crosses for all to see. And a dictator for life. Unfortunately, Rome lasted like this for many centuries. A coming American collapse? I'm fairly convinced we already collapsed back when Nixon took us off the Gold Standard; we were just not being honest about it. Maybe we can roll this Ponzi scheme for another ten or twenty years? Who knows?
I'm happy that I was at least, for a time, a free American. Nobody ever asked to "see my papers". Nobody read my private mail. Taxes were low and education available for all, based on the enlightenment not superstition or party ideology. I could drive around unafraid of harassment by police or self-aggrandizing public officials.
But every year that went by, one more freedom or liberty was erased or trampled upon. Until we have reached this totalitarian point, where an American can be killed by the government for being SUSPECTED of some trumped up charge.
What a crock of chit. Join the Libertarian Party Today.
TJ
"Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals, engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."
- JAMES MADISON
"Political Observations"
April 20, 1795
guilt by assertion
It's now "kill, baby, kill."
silly me. here i thought it was the too-big-to-fail banks that were our greatest threat. the propaganda provided by our gov't is disgusting.
Time to go get the shovel out of the tool shed and dig a bunker in the back yard. How deep do you have to make it if you get targeted by a Hellfire missile?
50 feet deep should do. Be sure to use reinforced concrete as the roof.
Galen is right. About 50 feet with reinforced concrete and I would also recommend an underground, well hidden ventilation system, as well, in case you need to seal it off. If the bastards decide to use a 'bunker buster' on you though, you're fooked.
Better safe than sorry.
You might be able to buy a house at a very reasonable price that already has a "bomb shelter," built during the McCarthy era. However, you might have to reinforce the structure to withstand bunker busters, etc.
That report makes me want not only a bomb shelter but my own planet, with its own biosphere and noone else around, only sunny meadows and fruit hanging on trees and cute, furry animals with big, trusting eyes bringing me nuts and stuff and always sweetly inventing new running games that keep me in shape. And a big stash of psychedelic plants for whenever I want to talk and socialize with some kind internal "friends". Yeah. - Not that I'm really an escapist or anything, but the mood around this planet here's gotten pretty rotten of late.
Six feet. That should be of sufficient depth when they shovel the dirt over our rotting carcasses.
This is what we have become: a nation whose President can order the murder of one of its citizens without a trial, and a nation which has thousands of paid assassins who are only too eager to carry out the murder.
This development raises a question: How many religious leaders do we suppose will object publicly to this development? My guess is that our religious leaders (popes, cardinals, bishops, ministers, priests, rabbis, etc.) will remain deliberately silent on the matter. But, let's wait and see.
Jim Shea
Sad but true. One of the most disturbing things about what is happening to the country is the deafening silence of America's so-called moral leaders like the clergy.
Perhaps they were paying attention when MLK was murdered a year to the day after he came out against the Vietnam war. It doesn't matter whether it's merely cowardice or something else, their silence makes them accomplices.
Exactly Jim Shea,
My guess is these so-called religious "leaders" will not say one word in protest about it.
My only conclusion is that these religious "leaders" are hoping to use "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" for winning millions of converts to their particular sects of Bible Thumpers.
TJ
"The In-quis-ition,
What-a-Show,
The In-quisi-tion,
Here-We-Go,
We know You're Wish-in,
That We'd Just Gooo Awwwwwaaaaay!
But the INQUISITION IS HERE TO STAAAAAY!" - Mel Brooks, Movie: History of the World
"To fight against American tyranny.":
...is understood to have moved from encouraging attacks on the United States to participating in them directly, The New York Times reports.
...The danger Awlaki poses to this country is no longer confined to words," said an American official, who was not named. "He's gotten involved in plots"
...Jane Harman, the chairwoman of a House subcommittee on homeland security described Mr Awlaki as: "probably the person, the terrorist, who would be terrorist Number One in terms of threat against us."
...Mr Awlaki was born in New Mexico of Yemeni descent... Describing Mr Hasan's attack at Fort Hood on his website, which advocates violence against the West, he wrote: "Nidal Hassan [sic] is a hero. He is a man of conscience who could not bear the contradiction of being a Muslim and fighting against his own people. No scholar with a grain of Islamic knowledge can deny the clear cut proofs that Muslims today have the right - rather the duty - to fight against American tyranny."
Muslims aren't the only ones who have a duty to fight against American tyranny--except I would call it American/Zionistic tyranny. As long as Israel exists in the Mid-East, there can be no truce with Islam and those supporting a just world. Lets get rid of the cancer first, then we can access where it's spread to.
"The danger Awlaki poses to this country is no longer confined to words," said an American official, who was not named. "He's gotten involved in plots."
---------------
And how does this differ from every board member at Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan?
Billy Tauzin drug industry conspirator, and many members of Congress have "gotten involved in plots" that harm millions of Americans.
...and Massey energy.
Obamabots would rationalize such actions just like they rationalize other pro-corporate, anti-constitutional Obama actions.
Such corruption is self-reinforcing, as the goal being to
keep Americans in fearful submission to authority, the
greater the violence the greater the submission.
At times like these one has to wonder if perhaps this world
has but one purpose, to prove the harm in it.
It's a slippery slope that Obama is on. His legacy might well be that of the first president to create a completely fascist state in America. The difference between him and Bush/Cheny is that he's a lot smarter and thus much more dangerous. If anyone should be targets, it should be those in our government who are betraying the people. The United States has truly become an Evil Empire. In much of the world (and not just the Islamic part) Anwar al-Awlak and those like him are heros.
While self styled US liberals criticized Dubya's supporters who demanded no evidence and were content to follow with blind faith, we now see Obamabots supporting Obama guided only by blind faith with no accountability.
Obama is also helped on his way by a substantial portion of the population, perhaps a majority, who have no problem with extrajudicial execution of American citizens.
Terrorist-Socialist-Communist-Anarchist-Peace Protester
Everyone who is not on board with The American Project is targeted either directly or indirectly. Anyone who dares get in the way of the Lords of Capital is deemed "terrorist."
A Story About A Leading Democratic Party Liberal: The Year 1917
Part One:
Most everyone has heard of the Palmer Raids which occurred immediately after WWI. They were directed specifically against immigrants, radicals, and union types and together made up one of the greatest wholesale suspensions of "the Rule of Law" in American history.
The raids started at the behest of the great liberal and Democrat, Woodrow Wilson, who warned as early as 1915 of, "hyphenated Americans who have poured the poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our national life. Such creatures of passion, disloyalty and anarchy must be crushed out."
As the labor movement, draft resistence, and opposition to the war deepened with U.S. entry into WWI, Wilson ordered Attorney General Alexander Mitchell Palmer to "put a stop to it". Palmer, in turn, raised the little tyrant J. Edgar Hoover from obscurity to lead the effort. What follows is a short excerpt of a mostly reactionary Wikipedia write-up on the subject:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_raids
Quote
Pressure to take action intensified after anarchists, communists and other radical groups called on draft-age males to refuse conscription and/or registration for the army, and for troops already serving to desert the armed forces. President Wilson ordered Attorney General Palmer to take action...
...Attorney General Palmer requested and promptly received a massive supplementary increase in Congressional appropriations in order to put a stop to the violence. Palmer then ordered the Department of Justice and the Bureau of Investigation to prepare for what would become known as the Palmer Raids, with the aim of collecting evidence on violent radical groups and arresting those in violation of federal criminal codes.
In 1919, J. Edgar Hoover was put in charge of a new division of the Justice Department's Bureau of Investigation, the General Intelligence Division. By October 1919, Hoover's division had collected 150,000 names in a rapidly expanding database. Using the database information, starting on November 7, 1919, BOI agents, together with local police, orchestrated a series of well-publicized raids against apparent radicals and leftists, using the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918. Palmer and his agents were accused of using various controversial methods of obtaining intelligence and collecting evidence on radicals, including harsh interrogation methods, informers, and wiretaps...
...In December 1919, Palmer's agents gathered 249 radicals of Russian origin, including well-known radical leaders such as Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, and placed them on a ship bound for the Soviet Union (The Buford, called the Soviet Ark by the press). In January 1920, another 6,000 were arrested, mostly members of the Industrial Workers of the World union. During one of the raids, more than 4,000 radicals were rounded up in a single night. All foreign aliens caught were deported, under the provisions of the Anarchist Act. All in all, by January 1920, Palmer and Hoover had organized the largest mass arrests in U.S. history, rounding up at least 10,000 individuals.
The public reaction to these raids was favorable, and, in fact, may have forestalled reactionary violence by the public in the form of vigilantes. A group of young men in Centralia, Washington, lynched Wesley Everest, an IWW member, from a railway bridge. The coroner's report stated that the man "jumped off with a rope around his neck and then shot himself full of holes."
The related outrages were endless and extended well beyond the legal lynching of Sacco and Vanzetti. A Connecticut clothing salesmen was sentenced to sixth months in jail simply for saying Lenin was smart. The Washington Post noted with approval how in Chicago, a sailor shot another man merely for failing to rise during the national anthem. The stories are endless.
All this is pretty well known, but one question remains: Who was Alexander Mitchell Palmer?
The answer is that Palmer was a leading Democratic Party liberal, a leader of the Progressive wing of the party, a Quaker, and a pacifist. In 1917, he had turned down the offer of appointment as Secretary of War because of his pacifism. It was then that he was appointed attorney general. His nickname, "The Fiighting Quaker", was "earned" for arresting people in the middle of the night. For his labors, Palmer almost became the Democratic nominee for President in 1920... only a hung convention because of a minor candidate prevented it.
Palmer himself justified his change of heart by commenting that "communism was eating its way into the homes of the American workman... "
In other words, "they hate our freedoms".
I really liked the coroner's report of the IWW-member who "jumped off [the bridge] with a rope around his neck and then shot himself full of holes."
Great feat! - He must've been really fed up with those vigilantes pursuing him...
A Story About A Leading Democratic Party Liberal: The Year 1917
Part Two:
Palmer wrote:
Quote
In this brief review of the work which the Department of Justice has undertaken, to tear out the radical seeds that have entangled American ideas in their poisonous theories, I desire not merely to explain what the real menace of communism is, but also to tell how we have been compelled to clean up the country almost unaided by any virile legislation. Though I have not been embarrassed by political opposition, I have been materially delayed because the present sweeping processes of arrests and deportation of seditious aliens should have been vigorously pushed by Congress last spring. The failure of this is a matter of record in the Congressional files.
The anxiety of that period in our responsibility when Congress, ignoring the seriousness of these vast organizations that were plotting to overthrow the Government, failed to act, has passed. The time came when it was obviously hopeless to expect the hearty cooperation of Congress in the only way to stamp out these seditious societies in their open defiance of law by various forms of propaganda.
Like a prairie-fire, the blaze of revolution was sweeping over every American institution of law and order a year ago. It was eating its way into the homes of the American workmen, its sharp tongues of revolutionary heat were licking the altars of the churches, leaping into the belfry of the school bell, crawling into the sacred corners of American homes, seeking to replace marriage vows with libertine laws, burning up the foundations of society.
Robbery, not war, is the ideal of communism. This has been demonstrated in Russia, Germany, and in America. As a foe, the anarchist is fearless of his own life, for his creed is a fanaticism that admits no respect of any other creed. Obviously it is the creed of any criminal mind, which reasons always from motives impossible to clean thought. Crime is the degenerate factor in society.
Upon these two basic certainties, first that the "Reds" were criminal aliens and secondly that the American Government must prevent crime, it was decided that there could be no nice distinctions drawn between the theoretical ideals of the radicals and their actual violations of our national laws. An assassin may have brilliant intellectuality, he may be able to excuse his murder or robbery with fine oratory, but any theory which excuses crime is not wanted in America. This is no place for the criminal to flourish, nor will he do so so long as the rights of common citizenship can be exerted to prevent him.
OUR GOVERNMENT IN JEOPARDY
It has always been plain to me that when American citizens unite upon any national issue they are generally right, but it is sometimes difficult to make the issue clear to them. If the Department of Justice could succeed in attracting the attention of our optimistic citizens to the issue of internal revolution in this country, we felt sure there would be no revolution. The Government was in jeopardy; our private information of what was being done by the organization known as the Communist Party of America, with headquarters in Chicago, of what was being done by the Communist Internationale under their manifesto planned at Moscow last March by Trotzky, Lenin and others addressed "To the Proletariats of All Countries," of what strides the Communist Labor Party was making, removed all doubt. In this conclusion we did not ignore the definite standards of personal liberty, of free speech, which is the very temperament and heart of the people. The evidence was examined with the utmost care, with a personal leaning toward freedom of thought and word on all questions.
The whole mass of evidence, accumulated from all parts of the country, was scrupulously scanned, not merely for the written or spoken differences of viewpoint as to the Government of the United States, but, in spite of these things, to see if the hostile declarations might not be sincere in their announced motive to improve our social order. There was no hope of such a thing.
Radicals seek to take our property, therefore radicalism is the simple crime of theft. Freedom of "thought and word" extends only to those ideas which "improve our social order".
Liberals, Democrats, Progressives, Pacifists?
Those are the people who want to arrest us, aren't they?
Let any "leftist" of any persuasion who wants to engage in the 2008 elections explain why they think that "Al", or "Hil", or "Barak" or "John" are not capable of exactly the same transformation as is recorded above... and at precisely this moment in time, sitting on the three legged stool of "terrorism", "immigration", and craven opportunism.
In different times- less urgent times- there is much to be said for courtesy. But these are not those times.
Thnaks for the excellent historical background on the role of "liberals" and "progressives" in the crushing of hope for the working man.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
- Santayana
Thanks...interesting post.
This, along with the internment of Japanese citizens during WWII, and now our attitude towards anyone who might be a "terrorist", seems to illuminate the fact that when the rule of law is truly needed, it is suspended.
A Constitution that promotes the rule of law is absolutely worthless if that rule can be suspended anytime one of our leaders becomes a little bit paranoid. If the rule of law can be suspended because of fear, it can be suspended for other reasons as well.
I'm not so sure old Joe Ratzinger himself didn't diddle a few little boys in his time. If that happens to be the case, and if it comes out, what then? Can a pope be defrocked? Would he voluntarily step down?
Its hard to fight celebrity culture in the star struck world we live in.
Like Dubya and the Pope, Obama has all of the authority without any accountability.
GRAND SCHEME OF THINGS
(1) Judaism taught us that the deadly force of government can never overcome evil, not even if the government were controlled by God himself. Not even if God was in a cloud above for 40 years wondering in the desert. Not even if God was in the holy temple in Jerusalem and government leaders could talk directly to him for 865 years
(2) Christianity first taught us to be pacifist, “Jesus said, Do not use force to overcome evil. If they strike you on the right cheek, turn to them the other.’”
(3) Christianity finally taught us to never trust Christian Crusaders who talk like pacifists, but act like the devils most valuable disciples. For they are “lukewarm” Christians, a mixture of hot-good and cold-evil such that is impossible for them to tell the difference between good and evil.
(4) Islam taught us that even the most harmless people on earth, Moslems who fight only in self-defense, even they cannot live in peace with Jews and Christians who kill in the name of God.
(5) For this world has but one purpose, to establish a full and perfect understanding of darkness. Darkness being an illusion of good hiding misery, a liars pretense of good hiding his intent to be enriched upon our misery, a mixture of good and evil such that one needs the Holy Spirit to show him the way out of darkness and evil.
(6) Evil: to enrich yourself upon the misery of another, a crime in any fair and just society.
How many TV ads do we see supporting #6?
By killing enemy resistance leaders, the military has a lame excuse for not knowing where bin laden is, dead or alive, making his tapes for the world and getting medical care.
But this is good for The War Biz.
Dead... they are martyrs and that gives the resistance more will to fight.
By not talking to "terrorist" leaders, and killing them instead, people sympathize with the resisters of occupation whoever they may be and there are hundreds of resistance groups all growing because fighting ghosts in foreign occupied land is a losing battle.
It is all a given of history and in the end, this is how Empires fall.
But since this American can argue well for the cause of resistance to the Empire of War, Obama must be afraid to order him captured alive.
This expanding war is what will determine how long we are going to continue on our road to ruin.
War is now spreading to fire up the right wing nuts and militants training for Armageddon.
I just want to end War before it Ends me.
Awlaki will be the excuse to open another war front in the ME just like OBL was the excuse to expand the war in Afghanistan to Pakistan....
I wonder what is really the goal in Yemen?
Other than Government Officials portraying "The Enemy" as a: Terrorist, Militant, Insurgent,Al Qaeda, or Taliban.........Where is the evidence? President Obama has approved adding Awlaki to "The Assassination List".........President Obama has approved the use of drones to kill and murder innocent unarmed civilians and alleged; terrorists, militants, insurgents, Al Qaeda, or Taliban. Where is the proof?
The Nazis would pay Soviet citizens to turn in Jews. The United States DOD has been paying bribes to those who turn in: militants, insurgents, terrorists, Al Qaeda, or Taliban.....Payment is made, but where is the proof?
We, the American People, have buried our heads in the sand as we trained our young men to go out and murder people who had NEVER attacked the United States and have never threatened to attack the United States, until now......What a Mafioso President Obama has become...."I will murder anyone I want!" "I will use nuclear weapons against Iran, if I want to!"
Yes, there was evidence that explosives were used in the Demolition of World Trade Center #7! (Eyewitness reports of explosions in the lower levels and traces of nano-thermite found in the ashes) But then, we bury our heads in the sand to what
"The Power Elite" are capable of doing.
"I wonder what is really the goal in Yemen?"
Yemen doesn't have any significant resources to steal, but it is in a strategic location.
A military base there could easily control access to the Red Sea, thereby controlling all traffic through the Suez Canal.
In addition, airbases in Yemen could easily threaten not only the middle east, but large areas of northeast Africa.
"I wonder what is really the goal in Yemen?"
The Blobama administration wants bases in Yemen to be able to strike directly at the Horn of Africa and Somalia. From Yemen, all of North Africa would be directly accessible by AFRICOM forces.