Former US official: Our support for the UAE destructive

Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to US Secretary of State Colin Powell from 2002-2005, wrote an article on Lobelog, attacking the US support for Saudi and the United Arab Emirates in their foreign policies, particularly the Yemen war, which he described as devastating.

Wilkerson accused the US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, of laying, after his comments on the causes of the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, where Pompeo said that Iran alone who caused the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.

“Pompeo himself might just constitute the greatest threat to U.S. security,” said Wilkerson, an academic in public policy and government. “I know something about U.S. secretaries of state lying to the American people and the international community. I assisted one of them to do so on February 5, 2003.”

“Yes, Colin Powell and I had been spoon-fed the lies by a too-compliant intelligence community leadership and a Machiavellian vice president, but we delivered those lies with vigor. For that, I at least am ashamed. I will let the former secretary of state speak for himself.” Wilkerson said, “But our crimes in that regard pale before the current lies of the present secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, because he, unlike Powell and me at the time, knows that he is lying.”

“If you want to know who’s caused the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, you need look no further than the Islamic Republic of Iran. Judy,” said Wilkerson, referring to what Pompey said at the Sheraton Hotel in Warsaw on February 13, 2019, Speaking to media reporter Judy Woodruff of PBS. “for example, how many dollars has Iran provided for humanitarian assistance in Yemen? I can tell you. Do you know?”

Wilkerson also said “anyone even cursorily keeping up with the most brutal war in the Middle East knows without any doubt who caused and continues to cause the overwhelming majority of the suffering, the starvation, the unprecedented exposure to cholera, and the utter brutality of what’s going on in Yemen. The states that started and have been waging this war since 2015, horribly and brutally, are Saudi Arabia and the UAE.”

Wilkerson pointed out that “in the last year, both kingdoms have spent billions to change that stark reality, but they have failed. Emaciated babies, intentionally destroyed food stocks, just-as-intentionally contaminated water sources, dead children in school buses, food assistance halted at the sea line while people starve, it all cannot be hidden by even the very best Saudi-hired U.S. propaganda firms. The truth is so enormous that even their expertise, oiled by Saudi billions, cannot completely hide it.”

“Iran, on the other hand, simply responded to a target of opportunity,” said Wilkerson, who served 31 years in the US military. “When the Saudi-led war commenced, Iran saw a relatively inexpensive chance to get involved more deeply in yet another catastrophic strategic failure of its archenemy across the Persian Gulf, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and its brutal ruler, Mohammad bin Salman.” According to the writer.

Wilkerson said that with limited and low-cost support, Iran has begun to support the Houthi rebel group fighting Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and they have already inflicted heavy losses, a clear fact that the Pentagon seems to be completely oblivious to.

The author states that the United States is “ignominiously” supporting the Saudi-UAE alliance, “pernicious” support that some recent reports have included pictures of US-made weapons supplied to the Saudis, but now in the hands of Al Qaeda fighters.

To justify the United States’ support for that war, Pompeo made the comments, just like the “lies” rendered on February 5, 2003, with regard to Iraq, could pave the way to another war in that region, this time with Iran, He says.

“But this wasn’t the end of Pompeo’s strategic nonsense,” Wilkerson said about journalist Roxana Saberi of CBS News when she asked Pompeo on February 14, 2019, why the United States’ approach to North Korea differed from its approach to Iran: ‘We’ve made very clear that these situations are very different. We take each of them where we find them. North Korea today has weapons, nuclear weapons, capable of reaching the United States of Americ.’ So, Pompeo just signaled quite dramatically to the hardliners in Tehran that they need to get a nuclear weapon or two before the U.S. will treat them with some fairness and in a way that, let’s face it, any other state would want to be treated—with some respect.”

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which was violated by Trump and Pompeo, restricted Iran’s efforts to develop such a nuclear weapon. Now, Trump, Pompeo and Bolton’s team want to force Iran to develop a nuclear weapon.

The former US official said “Pompeo is, to be sure, a yes-man par excellence, and much of the censure should be heaped on his boss, Donald Trump. But Pompeo’s dramatic incompetence as the number-one U.S. diplomat is killing this country, session by session, moment by moment, inept word by inept word.”

Wilkerson concluded, “that abject incompetence is also murdering U.S. alliances, alienating U.S. friends, and giving aid and comfort to Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping—so much so that Pompeo himself might just constitute the greatest threat to U.S. security.”