Do you remember the USS Cole...?

[kentuck]

It happened in the last few months of the Clinton Administration. Remember how the Repubs criticized Clinton for not finding the culprits? Remember how Bush forgot about it after he became President? Yemen has been active in killing Americans for quite some time.
===================

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Cole_bombing

<snip>
On the morning of Thursday, October 12, 2000, USS Cole, under the command of Commander Kirk Lippold, set in to Aden harbor for a routine fuel stop. Cole completed mooring at 09:30. Refueling started at 10:30. Around 11:18 local time (08:18 UTC), a small craft approached the port side of the destroyer, and an explosion occurred, putting a 40-by-40-foot gash in the ship's port side according to the memorial plate to those who lost their lives. According to former CIA intelligence officer, Robert Finke, the blast appeared to be caused by explosives molded into a shaped charge against the hull of the boat.<1> Around 400 to 700 pounds (200–300 kg) of explosive were used.<2> The blast hit the ship's galley, where crew were lining up for lunch.<3> The crew fought flooding in the engineering spaces and had the damage under control by the evening. Divers inspected the hull and determined the keel was not damaged.

Seventeen sailors were killed and 39 were injured in the blast. The injured sailors were taken to the United States Army's Landstuhl Regional Medical Center near Ramstein, Germany and later, back to the United States. The attack was the deadliest against a U.S. Naval vessel since the Iraqi attack on the USS Stark (FFG-31) on May 17, 1987.

The asymmetric warfare attack was organized and directed by Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda.<4><5><6><7> In June 2001, an al-Qaeda recruitment video featuring bin Laden boasted about the attack and encouraged similar attacks.<8><9>

Al-Qaeda had previously attempted a similar but less publicized attack on the U.S. Navy destroyer USS The Sullivans (DDG-68) while in port at Aden, Yemen, on January 3, 2000, as a part of the 2000 millennium attack plots. The plan was to load a boat full of explosives and explode near The Sullivans. However the boat was so overladen that it sank, forcing the attack to be abandoned.<10><11>

.....more

[EFerrari]

1. Yemen or radicals based in Yemen?

[Cool Logic]

2. If a state permits "radicals" to organize, train, plan and execute attacks on others...

is not that state responsible for the attacks?

[rustydog]

4. So the state that housed the army unit that trained McVeigh

is responsible for the Murrah Bombing? Do we attack that state militarily?

[tblue]

5. That's different. We are the USA!!!!!!!

Rules don't apply here because we are exceptional because, well, because we say so!

[Cool Logic]

12. I am not aware of any evidence that suggests McVeigh was sponsored by a state entity...

are you?

[MNBrewer]

7. Pakistan?

[Cool Logic]

13. Indeed.

[MNBrewer]

16. So shall we go to war with them, too?

[Cool Logic]

17. Absolutely not; however,...

just as an individual has the right of self-defense, so does a free state, if attacked.

[EFerrari]

8. Then we should have invaded Germany for 9/11, no?

And Cuba should declare war on us for all the Miami based terrorists that carried out operations in Havana?

"Permits" is a squishy term.

[Cool Logic]

11. You make a valid point re: Cuba...

However, as far as I can tell, the US has not "permitted" attacks on Cuba since the Bay of Pigs. In fact, Cuban-Americans have been convicted and imprisoned for planning such attacks.

Although I would have been strongly opposed to the Bay of Pigs invasion, I believe that is morally justifiable for a free state to attack a slave state. Even so, a free state is not morally obligated to do so.

In any case, the US policy re: Cuba is a failure. Rather than instituting an embargo, we should have simply overwhelmed Cuba with free-market Capitalism. For that would have caused the collapse of communism and set the Cuban people free a long time ago.

[msongs]

9. nice description of the USA nt

[Puregonzo1188]

18. Well the US is in trouble since we harbor more terrorist and war criminals than any other country in

the world.

We're the only country ever found guilty by the ICJ of aggression, something we hanged people for at Nuremberg and Tokyo--we merely got civil damages--which we to this day refuse to pay.

[Cool Logic]

19. "We're the only country ever found guilty by the ICJ of aggression..."

I would argue that Iraq was a far greater act of aggression than supporting the Nicaraguan resistance.

Do you believe that the US is the only country in the world that has ever committed an act of aggression?

[Puregonzo1188]

20. Did I say that? No I said the only country ever found guilty by the ICJ of aggression.

And while I would agree with you that Iraq may have been a larger war crime than mining the harbors of Nicaragua and supporting a terrorist campaign against a democratically elected government that included the intentional targeting of civilians and civilians infrastructure infrastructure associated with social improvements, and routinely engaged in rape, amputations, and eye gouging I find it telling that you refer to such acts as "resistance."

[Cool Logic]

21. "I find it telling that you refer to such acts as "resistance."

Actually, the Nicaragua and Sandinista matter was going on when I was boy--I didn't pay much attention to politics. But a quick review tells me that we were engaged in a Cold War during that era and nature of the Soviet-Nicaragua relationship was what drove the Iran-Contra affair.

The world was a larger, more dangerous place back then; thus, it stands to reason we would have been some national security concerns regarding Soviet influence in Central America. On the other hand, there was no justification whatsoever for the Iraq war.

[MineralMan]

3. Sometimes, states allow radicals to operate in the state

as part of their less than public beliefs. It happens a lot. Yemen lets the US use some facilities in Yemen. That does not necessarily mean they are friendly to the United States. We have facilities in several unfriendly nations.

[Cool Logic]

15. That is true; however, it does not release them from the responsibility...

of facilitating the criminal actions of those who harm others.

[ChandlerJr]

6. Terrorism in Yemen

The U.S. first said it used targeted killing in November 2002, with the cooperation and approval of the government of Yemen. A CIA-controlled Predator drone fired a Hellfire missile at an SUV in the Yemeni desert containing Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, a Yemeni suspected senior al-Qaeda lieutenant believed to have been the mastermind behind the October 2000 USS Cole bombing that killed 17 Americans. He was on a list of targets whose capture or death had been called for by US President George W. Bush. In addition to al-Harethi, five other occupants of the SUV were killed, all of whom were suspected al-Qaeda terrorists, and one of whom (Kamal Derwish) was an American.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_Yemen

Don't remember it the way you do I guess.

[Obamanaut]

10. I remember the USS Cole, and the unarmed EC 121 shot down in

1969, killing all crewmen on board. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EC-121_shootdown_incident

Different group doing the killing, but I remember them nonetheless.

[Zax2me]

14. You need to read your own link.

"Remember how Bush forgot about it after he became President"?




On November 3, 2002, the CIA fired a AGM-114 Hellfire missile from a Predator UAV at a vehicle carrying Abu Ali al-Harithi, a suspected planner of the bombing plot. Also in the vehicle was Ahmed Hijazi, a U.S. citizen. Both were killed. This operation was carried out on Yemeni soil.

On September 29, 2004, a Yemeni judge sentenced Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri and Jamal al-Badawi to death for their roles in the bombing. Al-Nashiri, believed to be the operation's mastermind, is currently being held by the U.S. at Guantanamo Bay detention camp.<35> Al-Badawi, in Yemeni custody, denounced the verdict as "an American one." Four others were sentenced to prison terms of five to 10 years for their involvement, including one Yemeni who had videotaped the attack.