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Yemen Rejects American Forces After Disaster

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Inside the botched U.S. Navy Seal raid in Yemen and the fallout now.

A man walks amid the rubble of a house destroyed by a Saudi-led airstrike on the outskirts of Sanaa, Yemen. (Hani Mohammed/AP)
A man walks amid the rubble of a house destroyed by a Saudi-led airstrike on the outskirts of Sanaa, Yemen. (Hani Mohammed/AP)

The Navy Seals came at night, but that did not protect them late last month in Yemen. Their raid on an Al Qaeda enclave was telegraphed in advance.  Al Qaeda fighters were waiting. The US took casualties. Had to call in desperate air strikes. Women and children died. Their pictures are all over Yemen now. The US had to blow up its own $75 million airplane. The attack was long-planned, but it was President Trump’s first. This hour On Point, the Yemen raid, and what we’ve learned. — Tom Ashbrook

Guests

Sudarsan Raghavan, Cairo bureau chief for the Washington Post.  (@raghavanwapo)

Thomas Gibbons-Neff, military reporter for the Washington Post. (@Tmgneff)

John Arquilla, professor and chair of defense and analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School. Author of "Insurgents, Raiders and Bandits."

From Tom’s Reading List

New York Times: Yemen Withdraws Permission for U.S. Antiterror Ground Missions — "Angry at the civilian casualties incurred last month in the first commando raid authorized by President Trump, Yemen has withdrawn permission for the United States to run Special Operations ground missions against suspected terrorist groups in the country, according to American officials."

Washington Post: A deadly U.S. raid in Yemen reveals strength of al-Qaeda affiliate — "Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, as the branch is known, had collected enough intelligence to anticipate the raid last weekend, Yemeni officials and analysts said. The militants also had the firepower to counterattack from their bastion, which was surrounded by land mines and other traps.

Reuters: Trump risks deeper entanglement in Yemen's murky war -- "Yemen is emerging as a test ground for U.S. President Donald Trump's forceful approach to al Qaeda and Iran, but his first actions there risk drawing his administration further into its convoluted two-year-old war. A U.S. raid last month killed several al Qaeda militants but also left a Navy SEAL and several civilians dead, while the deployment of a destroyer to patrol the Red Sea coast drew the ire of Yemen's Houthi movement, an ally of Iran"

This program aired on February 9, 2017.

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