Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, discusses his article “Washington’s War in Yemen Backfires;” how Yemeni President Saleh convinced the Bush administration to send aid, supposedly to fight Al Qaeda, but instead used the money to eliminate his rivals; how Obama’s frequent airstrikes, killing scores of civilians, have turned rural tribesmen into anti-American militants; video evidence that missile strikes were indeed from American forces, bolstering the WikiLeaks story that Gen. Petraeus and Saleh conspired to hide US involvement; continuing a US foreign policy that assumes a finite number of “terrorists” who can be killed off with airstrikes, and whose numbers won’t be replenished or increased in response; why Yemen’s tribesmen are willing to take bribes to be Iraq-style “Awakening Councils” to put down Al Qaeda in Yemen; and why Yemen is an imaginary nation, ready to fracture into several autonomous regions.

MP3 here. (20:36)

Jeremy Scahill, a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute, is the author of the bestselling Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, published by Nation Books. He is an award-winning investigative journalist and correspondent for the national radio and TV program Democracy Now!. You can read his blog on TheNation.com here.

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