Nevermind bombing children in a school bus - The top priorities of Mike Pompeo are pleasing the Saudis, making Raytheon richer, and cashing in.
September 21, 2018

In between the Kavanaugh and Michael Cohen stories on Thursday's 'All In,' Chris Hayes slipped in this very short segment about Mike Pompeo and the war in Yemen.

Don't let your eyes glaze over about this far-off war. Trump's Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has decided arms sales are worth it.

CHRIS HAYES: Back in August, you might remember we've reported on this show about a Saudi led coalition attack on a school bus full of children in Yemen with a bomb reportedly sold to Saudi Arabia by the united states killing more than 40 children. Today there's new reporting about the role of the united states in perpetuating the war in Yemen. The European Union described described the war bluntly, last month. Quote, Yemen is the worst humanitarian crisis including a famine that now threatens over 5 million Yemeni children and over 15,000 dead mostly because of air strikes by the Saudi-led coalition. It is the United States government who has consistently helped that coalition. It's gotten so bad that a bipartisan group of Congresspeople want to stop American support for the war. But Secretary of State Mike Pompeo seems to think otherwise. According to "The Wall Street Journal," Pompeo, over the objections of his own staff, backed continued US support for the war because he didn't want to jeopardize $2 billion worth of weapon sales to Gulf nations. Quoting the piece,

"Mr. Pompeo overruled concerns from most of the State Department specialists involved in the debate, who were worried about the rising death toll in Yemen. He sided with his legislative affairs team after they argued that suspending support could undercut plans to sell more than 120,000 precision-guided missiles to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates."

If you are watching this and you think that children's lives are more important than selling missiles, and if you think "not bombing children" is more important than weapon sales, this might be a good time to call your Congressional representative.

Dwight Eisenhower warned us about the Military Industrial Complex. He didn't warn us that we would still be subservient to it 75 years later.

Discussion

We welcome relevant, respectful comments. Any comments that are sexist or in any other way deemed hateful by our staff will be deleted and constitute grounds for a ban from posting on the site. Please refer to our Terms of Service for information on our posting policy.
Mastodon