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Saudi military base also targeted by missile fired deep inside the kingdom near holy city of Mecca.
Source: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/10/navy-ship-targeted-missile-attack-yemen-161010034052132.html
A US Navy destroyer has been targeted in a failed missile attack from territory in Yemen controlled by Houthi rebels, a US military spokesman says.
In another attack, a ballistic missile launched from Yemen targeted a Saudi airbase near the Muslim holy city of Mecca, Saudi and rebel media reported Monday, the deepest strike yet into the kingdom by the rebels and their allies.
Two missiles failed to hit the US Navy ship after being launched on Sunday, Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis told Reuters news agency.
"USS Mason detected two inbound missiles over a 60-minute period while in the Red Sea off the coast of Yemen. Both missiles impacted the water before reaching the ship," he said. "There were no injuries to our sailors and no damage to the ship."
Lieutenant Ian McConnaughey, a Navy spokesman, said on Monday that it was unclear if the Mason was specifically targeted, though the missiles were fired in its direction.
The destroyer at the time of the missile fire was north of the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, which serves as a gateway for oil tankers headed to Europe through the Suez Canal, a defence official said.
[...] On Monday, Saudi state television broadcast a brief clip of what appeared to be a projectile landing in Taif and the flash of an explosion, followed by images of emergency vehicles.
Taif is home to Saudi Arabia's King Fahad Air Base, which hosts US military personnel training the kingdom's armed forces.
The Saudi military said the missile fired late on Saturday caused no damage. The US military's Central Command, which oversees troops in the Middle East, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Al-Masirah, a satellite news channel run by the Houthis, identified the missile as a local variant of a Soviet-era Scud missile. It said the Volcano-1 missile targeted the airbase.
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When President Trump arrives in Riyadh this week, he will lay out his vision for a new regional security architecture White House officials call an “Arab NATO,” to guide the fight against terrorism and push back against Iran. As a cornerstone of the plan, Trump will also announce one of the largest arms-sales deals in history.
Behind the scenes, the Trump administration and Saudi Arabia have been conducting extensive negotiations, led by White House senior adviser Jared Kushner and Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The discussions began shortly after the presidential election, when Mohammed, known in Washington as “MBS,” sent a delegation to meet with Kushner and other Trump officials at Trump Tower.
After years of disillusionment with the Obama administration, the Saudi leadership was eager to do business. “They were willing to make a bet on Trump and on America,” a senior White House official said.
[...] The most concrete part of the idea is a mammoth U.S. arms package for Saudi Arabia that Trump will also announce in Riyadh. Final details are still being worked out, but officials said the package will include between $98 billion and $128 billion in arms sales. Over 10 years, total sales could reach $350 billion.
The sales include huge upgrades for the Saudi army and navy to include Littoral Combat Ships, THAAD missile defense systems, armored personnel carriers, missiles, bombs and munitions, officials said. Some of the production and assembly could be located in Saudi Arabia, boosting MBS’s project to build a Saudi domestic defense industrial capability. But most of the items would be built by American defense contractors.
Additional coverage:
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 11 2016, @02:00AM
but whatever, fucking USA has been helping saudis' genocide on Yemen
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Tuesday October 11 2016, @03:16AM
I've heard that a hospital and clinic were bombed, and according to an NGO there was no valid military reason. That sounds like war crimes have been committed. But why do you use the term "genocide"?
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/09/27/middleeast/yemen-msf-hospital-attack/index.html [cnn.com]
https://web.archive.org/web/20160929134825/http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/09/28/aid-group-coalition-bombed-yemen-hospital-to-hit-vehicle.html [archive.org]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 11 2016, @04:22AM
Check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yemeni_civil_war_(2015%E2%80%93present) [wikipedia.org] for more detail, but this is basically a civil war along Sunni/Shia boundaries. Both sides haven't been playing nice with local populations. Saudi Arabia has been using US supplied weapons, including cluster munitions, and there is some evidence they targeted Shia civilians on a number of occasions. There is also evidence of Sunni populations being targeted by Shia forces.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 11 2016, @05:03AM
From today's news:
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday October 11 2016, @11:33AM
...but this is basically a civil war along Sunni/Shia boundaries.
Ah. So they are fighting over which version of their fairy tail is the better version.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Arik on Tuesday October 11 2016, @01:40PM
It's kind of like Northern Ireland, the combatants are mostly identified with religions but what they are actually fighting over isn't religious as much as national at root. The locals in much of Yemen are Zaydis, have been for centuries, but religion only became an issue relatively recently, with the importation of Saudi Wahhabism and eventually Al Qaeda. One of the responses this has triggered is a heightened interest in religion and increase in religiosity among the Houthi.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by BK on Tuesday October 11 2016, @04:57PM
Ok... Help me out. What is a Zaydi and how will I know if I meet one?
...but you HAVE heard of me.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Tuesday October 11 2016, @06:02PM
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 11 2016, @09:34PM
Islam is far more diverse than Christianity. There are hundreds of different sects within the broad umbrella. All it really takes to be muslim is to practice the five pillars of faith. Everything else is up for debate. One effect of being such a broad and inclusive religion is that it is considered a big insult to accuse someone of not being a real muslim. Nevertheless it still happens a lot (the ISIS types do it all the time because they are assholes) and you'll occasionally hear it between Iran and Saudi when things get really tense between the two countries.
Zaydis are just one of the many sects.
(Score: 2) by BK on Sunday October 16 2016, @03:37AM
But how diverse is it compared to buddhism? Since you wish to provide comparative context, I need context that is relevant to me and not other groups. Can you be a real muslim if you believe that raping 9 year olds [usc.edu] is evil?
...but you HAVE heard of me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 11 2016, @02:49PM
> So they are fighting over which version of their fairy tail is the better version
No. And religion is never the cause of war, at most it is just the uniform that the sides wear.
But understanding that takes effort. Easier to blame the uniforms.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Tuesday October 11 2016, @01:54PM
Genocide still isn't the correct term because Iraq which was previously Sunni under Saddam's dictatorship is now a Shia democracy because of the US.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 3, Informative) by bob_super on Tuesday October 11 2016, @04:44PM
> Iraq which was previously Sunni under Saddam's dictatorship is now a Shia democracy because of the US.
You mean The Sunni minority used to control Iraq, but boycotted elections (which they can only lose) after the US intervention, giving full control to the Shia, who then made a clear point about the temperature revenge should be served at, in a display few would bother to call democracy.
The end result was polarization and physical exodus along religious lines, of people who used to live next door under the mostly secular dictator...
(Score: 2) by tibman on Tuesday October 11 2016, @05:10PM
Excuse me, but i don't think you were there when we were digging up tens of thousands of Shia corpses from their failed rebellion after Gulf War 1. There is a good reason why those Sunni didn't vote, they were Ba'ath party and literally couldn't. If non-Ba'ath Sunni did not vote then that is on them. (I will personally be voting 3rd-party in the next US election because i think Trump and Clinton both suck.) Allowing Ba'ath to vote and have a real party is like saying you think the Nazi party should have been allowed to exist post WW2.
As far as Sunni killing Shia (and vice-versa) that was going on long before the elections. Then we have the Sunni practically invite ISIS in and they have paid for it dearly. Sunni having their cities saved by southern (Shia) militias is very ironic, imo. It also shows that some Shia believe in a nation composed of more than one religion. Though, maybe they look at it from a "let's get converts" angle. We can guess all day probably.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday October 11 2016, @05:27PM
Just trying to figure out if you're misinformed or confused... It's like you see all the pieces of the puzzle but you seem to be hammering them at odd angles.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Tuesday October 11 2016, @05:45PM
A lot of my information is first-hand. There can be a blindness when standing too close. So let's call it confusion for now : )
To get back to the original argument, i say that the US can't be committing genocide on the Shia when they helped create a nation of (mostly) Shia. Genocide isn't the right word here. US foreign policy seems too fluid for such a thing anyways. Ten years from now the US might be courting the Yemen Shia as allies, lol.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday October 11 2016, @07:01PM
Actually, bob_super, that's exactly what democracy always is. Oppression of minorities by the majority. The thing is, looked at properly, everyone belongs to a minority. Democracy guarantees everyone will have their rights trampled.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday October 11 2016, @07:18PM
In a perfect democracy filled with fair humans (don't wake me up if you find one), the boundary between oppressed and oppressors would be constantly changing depending on the topic of that day. Only people constantly in the minority in behavior and opinions would find themselves permanently repressed. Obviously, who cares about those?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 11 2016, @09:40PM
> Actually, bob_super, that's exactly what democracy always is.
That's direct democracy which doesn't exist in any group much larger than a town.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Tuesday October 11 2016, @08:44AM
Brits too: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/28/britain-war-yemen-saudi-arabia-military-advisers [theguardian.com]
Fuck the tories.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Tuesday October 11 2016, @02:41AM
My guess is the guidance was via Samsung phones GPS co-ordinates, and when the phones burned the missles went into the ocean.
/ not really, I think Samsung is an unlucky victim with the exploding phones
// iPhones are also burning
/// sux, I plan to buy a phone next month and would prefer one that does not have spontaneous combustion in the feature list.
My ducks are not in a row. I don't know where some of them are, and I'm pretty sure one of them is a turkey.
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 11 2016, @04:09AM
Sorry to bring Physics to the discussion, but the speed of a Scud missile is 1.1 miles/second, which is 3960 mph.
The maximum speed shown by GPS units is 999 mph. Also the height at which GPS receiver can work is severely limited.
(Score: 3, Touché) by butthurt on Tuesday October 11 2016, @06:50AM
In 1960, Aerospace Corporation was founded for the purpose of applying then advanced technology to space and ballistic missile problems. In 1963, the company started work on Project 621, the Global Positioning System, a scheme for replacing strategic aircraft astro-navigation systems with satellite navigation.
-- http://ausairpower.net/TE-GPS-Guided-Weps.html [ausairpower.net]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 11 2016, @08:24AM
That is a bold affirmation based on ignorance and arrogance - Physics, yeah sure.
Only true for consumer units or COTs chips. Military (or custom discrete designs) have no such arbitrary restrictions at all.
(Score: 4, Funny) by mhajicek on Tuesday October 11 2016, @07:53AM
For cluster munitions they could just drop crates of Galaxy Note 7's.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 11 2016, @11:16PM
I'm giving Galaxy Note 7s for Christmas presents...to people I don't like.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Arik on Tuesday October 11 2016, @02:51AM
But that's really minor compared to the second omission. Probably the most important single fact that could be mentioned about this event was skipped. The attacks on the Saudi bases are in retaliation for an attack two days ago, when the Saudis bombed a big funeral and killed 140 Yemenis, many prominent ones. This has convinced many Yemenis to quit talking peace and go full warpath, apparently including some folks that have the more fancy weapons and have been keeping them out of play prior to this.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Chrontius on Tuesday October 11 2016, @03:01AM
Do we know if they fell out of the sky outside the threat perimeter, or are we just very politely not pointing out that they were shot down by the Phalanx guns or laser cannons or whatever now provides the outermost layer of the point-defense network on a modern destroyer?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Arik on Tuesday October 11 2016, @03:57AM
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2016/10/10/two-missiles-fired-yemen-land-near-us-warship/91844032/?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=usatoday-newstopstories
"Two missiles fired from rebel-held territory in Yemen landed near a U.S. warship in the Red Sea, the U.S. Navy said Monday.
Ian McConnaughey, a spokesman for U.S. Navy Forces Central Command, said it was unclear if the USS Mason — a guided missile destroyer — was specifically targeted, but the missiles were fired in its direction in the space of an hour from 7 p.m. local time Sunday."
So no, that's not proof of a negative, it's only indicative, but they have no reason to minimize this, if anything their motivation is to do the opposite. So my characterization would appear to be extremely likely to be correct. It sounds to me like the US Navy spokesman chose his words very carefully.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 11 2016, @05:28PM
In that URL, all of this is unnecessary to get the page:
?utm_source=feedblitz
&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss
&utm_campaign=usatoday-newstopstories
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday October 11 2016, @05:42PM
Join the editing team and you can be our special URL processor. Did the URL cause your computer to catch fire, crash, or otherwise cease to function correctly? No? Then there is no problem. If it did, please join our very small and busy team and support us by preventing this sort of problem for occurring again.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 11 2016, @11:35PM
...if you download the site's CSS and run it.
I don't.
(I like a white background with black text and no sidebars.)
As such, ridiculously long strings of text with no whitespaces spill past the right edge of my screen.
(I liked the way that was handled back at the start of the site, which worked for any browser setup.)
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday October 12 2016, @04:45AM
And most of the time that is exactly what you get, However, it is a time consuming part of our task and we are currently very stretched. There are two options, as I pointed out to you in my earlier post. You either accept that, from time to time and despite our best efforts, such things will slip through or you join the team and help out by providing additional editorial support. We would, of course, prefer the latter,
(Score: 2) by Arik on Monday October 17 2016, @04:46AM
I have to agree with anon that that is a bit too glib.
I normally strip such junk out manually before posting, in this case I failed. Mea culpa.
However, if I understood the problem the other gent had, it sounds like a browser issue. It's usually a mistake in the long run to fix a problem at the wrong level. You shouldn't be expected to work around all the buggy browsers out there, they should fix them instead.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 12 2016, @03:57AM
The firefox extension PureURL [mozilla.org] strips that crap off by default.
You can manually add other crap to the list of crap to strip off.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 11 2016, @04:16AM
Do we know if they fell out of the sky outside the threat perimeter, or are we just very politely not pointing out that they were shot down by the Phalanx guns or laser cannons or whatever now provides the outermost layer of the point-defense network on a modern destroyer?
So far no news agencies have indicated whether the missiles were actively shot down. The USS Mason [wikipedia.org] has 20mm Phalanx CIWS for its PDN. If the missiles were actively targeting then I'm a bit disappointed that the USS Mason didn't mark the point of launch and send a BGM-109 as a response.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 11 2016, @05:51AM
With how much those suckers cost I'm gonna go with "happy" they didn't let one loose. There's plenty of waste so it would be a drop in the bucket, but hey why add the extra drop?
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday October 11 2016, @11:37AM
Because I'm not getting more hooker and blow money you selfish clod! -Raytheon exec
(Score: 2) by Arik on Monday October 17 2016, @04:49AM
http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/15/politics/uss-mason-fired-on-again/
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday October 11 2016, @08:15AM
"a couple of missiles fell out of the sky somewhere vaguely near the US ship but apparently outside its threat perimeter"
I've seen that before, first hand, with guns. 1981, we were tasked with keeping tabs on Iran's "Million Man Army" and Hussein's Merciless Mothers. We went in closer to shore one day, to get a better look at a battle in progress. I think it was both sides that turned their artillery our way, and started firing. Everything fell way short, like two miles and more short. We were kinda pissed that they were shooting at us, but we didn't really feel threatened. All the same, we got out of Dodge before they had time to learn from their mistakes. I have no way of knowing if their guns even had the range to reach us, but I do know that we were in range to hammer them with our guns.
The range to the beach was about fifteen miles, the closest guns (that we could see) were about a mile inland, but there may have been more guns behind hills.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 11 2016, @10:25AM
Oh look, there's a battle over there. Let's get involved!
You guys are fucked in the head.
(Score: 2) by ticho on Tuesday October 11 2016, @11:24AM
Alas, it's what you do when you consider yourself "World Police".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 11 2016, @04:54PM
And who is the unarmed black person in this scenario?
Oh wait it fits, all the innocent civilians that the US bombs.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday October 11 2016, @01:58PM
Dude, life is just a temporary condition. Fucked in the head, you say? I say, "What's to worry about?" Besides, didn't I make it clear that those silly assed Muslims can't hit anything? I've been told that they don't aim, they point the weapon down range somewhere close to the target, close their eyes, pull the trigger/lanyard, and recite "Allah be willing, this shell will hit the target!" The rest of us know that Allah don't give a damn about mortals, so we take careful aim before we fire. These are the same people who bought all those dousing sticks based on some wild assed claim that a high tech dousing stick could find explosives.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 11 2016, @02:45PM
> I've been told that they don't aim,
You've been told a lot of things. You seem to be extremely credulous.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday October 12 2016, @02:12AM
So, Iraq didn't really buy those dousing sticks?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 12 2016, @08:42AM
Yeah, not really worried about you getting hit. Except that the Good Ol' USA would use it as an excuse to kill yet more people. You're still fucked in the head.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Tuesday October 11 2016, @02:19PM
That's nothing new: Back in 1961, at the First Battle of Bull Run / Manassas, a bunch of members of Congress packed a picnic lunch and rode out in their carriages to watch the carnage unfold in person. This stopped seeming like a good idea right about the point when the Union army retreated and the congresscritters had to make a mad dash back to Washington to not get caught by the advancing Confederate forces.
More recently, there was the firefight between the Boston marathon bombers and the police, with all sorts of random people hanging outside their window trying to get a better view of what was going on even though that was just making it harder for the cops.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by number6x on Tuesday October 11 2016, @02:55PM
1961?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Tuesday October 11 2016, @03:06PM
Sorry, typo, I of course meant 1861.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 11 2016, @05:30PM
...though it wouldn't surprise me a bit to know that there were reenactors on the 100th anniversary out there, giving it all they had (including spectators in antebellum garb).
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday October 11 2016, @02:03PM
I'm sure some will try to paint this as part of the "War on Terror" and how this is showing that those Yemenis are dangerous terrorists. But those weren't terrorist attacks at all: This was the group of people that more-or-less are the government of Yemen, going after military targets of nations that have been attacking them, most recently hitting about 700 people that were attending a funeral.
Just in case people in the US were under the delusion that their news media told them the truth about what was going on in faraway places.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 11 2016, @04:56PM
Saudi Arabia are the biggest sponsors of terrorists, if you don't count the US sponsoring them.
They deserve to be bombed even further back into the stone age than they already are.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Arik on Tuesday October 11 2016, @06:05PM
Get with the times!
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday October 11 2016, @09:15PM
Just in case people in the US were under the delusion that their news media told them the truth about what was going on in faraway places.
I'm not in the US but that is exactly how my local media characterise this. The Houthi are rebels, and the Saudi forces are invading to protect legitimate interests.
I have never heard or read a single piece with any real insight into the facts (as far as they are known).
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday October 11 2016, @09:54PM
The Houthi were rebels once, but they control the capital city and much of the country, and the president (who was elected in what was decidedly not a free election, since he was the only candidate) fled to his good buddies in Saudi Arabia.
Regardless of Saudi Arabia's or the United States' motives for doing what they're doing, what the Houthis are doing is attacking hostile military forces and bases, which is exactly what you'd expect a combatant force in a war to do.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday October 11 2016, @10:53PM
Quite right, all I'd like is for my local media to make the effort to explain those simple facts to their audience.
None of the people involved are reality TV stars however, so I don't imagine it will happen.