Senator Lieberman calls for ‘preemptive’ attack on Yemen

Stephen C. Webster
Raw Story
Monday, Dec 28th, 2009

Speaking on Fox News Sunday, Senator Joeseph Lieberman (I-CT), who
leads the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee,
has a vision of “tomorrow’s war.”

“Somebody in our government said to me in Sana’a, the
capital of Yemen, Iraq was yesterday’s war,” Lieberman
explained. “Afghanistan is today’s war. If we don’t
act preemptively, Yemen will be tomorrow’s war. That’s the
danger we face.”

Senator Arlen Specter (D-PA), also appearing on the program, seemed
to agree, calling an attack against Yemen “something we should
consider.”

“Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan — the Army officer who killed 13
people in a shooting rampage at Fort Hood in November — was
linked to Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Muslim cleric now based in
Yemen,” The Hill noted.

Unnamed administration officials told US media in the aftermath of
the thwarted attack that their suspect had confessed to traveling to
Yemen and receiving training by Al-Qaeda.

Lieberman’s saber rattling against Yemen is “likely to
be echoed in the days ahead as a growing number of neoconservative and
conservative foreign policy voices have used the attempted airline
attack to call into question the tactics Obama has applied to curb
terrorism,” Sam Stein added.

In a borderline-livid post, Firedoglake writer Spencer Ackerman assailed Lieberman’s hawkish stance.
“Is it a mistake to respond to this with more than ridicule?
Maybe, but if not: it’s a ludicrously blithe and cost-free
assertion to say that we need to take preemptive action in Yemen. What
the fuck does Joe Lieberman know about Yemen? What does anyone in the
Washington policy community know about Yemen? Fucking nothing except
that (a) there is an apparently growing al-Qaeda presence there;
Abdulmutallab told investigators that he got hooked up with his botched
explosive there; the USS Cole was bombed there; there’s an
important port there; and… that’s it.”

“The good news is that while progressives basically need Joe
Lieberman’s vote in the Senate to pass domestic legislation, thus
giving him a ton of leverage over what happens, nobody needs to listen
to him about Yemen,” blogger Matt Yglesias opined.