Flashpoint: Yemen

A lot seems to be happening in the Middle East as the world focuses on the just-completed kerfuffle in Copenhagen:

On orders from President Barack Obama, the U.S. military launched cruise missiles early Thursday against two suspected al-Qaeda sites in Yemen, administration officials told ABC News in a report broadcast on ABC World News with Charles Gibson.

One of the targeted sites was a suspected al Qaeda training camp north of the capitol, Sanaa, and the second target was a location where officials said "an imminent attack against a U.S. asset was being planned."

Yemen is becoming an item lately. The administration is now saying six Yemenis will be repatriated soon, which could lead to more, yet at the same time they are calling it a failed state and an AQ reserve base. The Saudis are involved in a hot war in the north with Houthi rebels (a Shia brand), while the London Telegraph recently reported that US Special Forces were in-country training members of the Yemeni military. One has to wonder what kind of deals were made with Yemen in order to move those Gitmo guys.

There was also the killing of AQ kingpin Saleh al-Somali in Pakistan last week, a terrorist who was suspected of facilitating transfers of jihadies out of Africa and elsewhere. He had been high on the hit list since Black Hawk Down days.

Of course there was also the alleged Iranian Army attack on a dormant oil well in Iraq, and further east in Pakistan:

Islamist elements in Pakistan’s military unhappy with President Asif Zardari are reported to be plotting to remove their country’s civilian government and replace it with a military dictatorship.

And with that, we executed a major drone attack in Waziristan. Things really don't seem much different than when Bush was president, do they? No complaints here.