The brutal war in Yemen has killed well over 10,000 people since Saudi Arabia began bombing the country in 2015, but in recent months, cholera has been killing people much faster than bombs. The International Committee on the Red Cross estimates that by the end of the year, a million people will have contracted the contaminated water-born disease. One U.S. senator is breaking the Senate silence — and even going further, explaining how U.S. support for the war has enabled the world’s largest humanitarian crisis. “There is a humanitarian catastrophe inside this country – that very few people in this nation can locate on a map – of absolutely epic proportion,” said Murphy. “This humanitarian catastrophe – this famine … is caused, in part, by the actions of the United States of America.” Murphy has been speaking out about the war in Yemen nearly as long as it’s been going on, criticizing both the Obama and Trump administrations. Together with Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul, he has introduced multiple measures in the Senate trying to block weapons sales to Saudi Arabia, but none have passed.
Murphy argued on the Senate floor, Saudi Arabia, led by its headstrong crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, is hoping to use disease and starvation to force the country to surrender to its terms, a strategy that is on its face a war crime. Since the bombing campaign began, Saudi Arabia has targeted the country’s water infrastructure. In April 2015, a month after the bombing campaign began, coalition planes destroyed equipment at a water treatment plant in Yemen’s capital city, Sana’a. The plant stopped functioning a few months later, after Saudi Arabia knocked out the city’s electrical grid, cutting off access to clean water for millions of people. “That bombing campaign that targeted the electricity infrastructure in Yemen could only happen with U.S. support,” Murphy said. “It is the United States that provides the targeting assistance for the Saudi planes.”
“It is U.S. refueling planes flying in the sky around Yemen that restock the Saudi fighter jets with fuel, allowing them to drop more ordnance,” said Murphy. “It is U.S.-made ordnance that is carried on these planes and dropped on civilian and infrastructure targets inside Yemen. The United States is part of this coalition. The bombing campaign that has caused the cholera outbreak could not happen without us.” “We have a responsibility to make sure that the coalition, of which we are a part, is not using starvation as a weapon of war,” said Murphy. “This is a stain on the conscious of our nation if we continue to remain silent.”
https://theintercept.com/2017/11/14/chris-murphy-accuses-u-s-of-complicity-in-war-crimes-from-the-floor-of-the-senate/
