© Osamah Abdulrhman/AP
The Obama administration "has offered to sell $115 billion worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia over its eight years in office, more than any previous U.S. administration," as The Guardian reported this week, and also provides extensive surveillance technology. As The Intercept documented in April, "In his first five years as president, Obama sold $30 billion more in weapons than President Bush did during his entire eight years as commander in chief."
Most important, according to the Saudi foreign minister, although it is the Saudis who have ultimate authority to choose targets, "British and American military officials are in the command and control center for Saudi airstrikes on Yemen" and "have access to lists of targets." In sum, while this bombing campaign is invariably described in Western media outlets as "Saudi-led," the U.S. and U.K. are both central, indispensable participants. As the New York Times editorial page put it in August: "The United States is complicit in this carnage," while The Guardian editorialized that "Britain bears much responsibility for this suffering."
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