STILL ONE MORE FAMOUS VICTORY – AT 9:56 A.M. ET:  Only now are we starting to understand the implications of the fall of Yemen, once touted as a great Obama success.  This week has been awful.  From the Washington Post: 

The closure of the U.S. Embassy in Yemen has forced the CIA to significantly scale back its counterterrorism presence in the country, according to current and former U.S. officials, who said the evacuation represents a major setback in operations against al-Qaeda’s most dangerous affiliate.

The spy agency has pulled dozens of operatives, analysts and other staffers from Yemen as part of a broader extraction of roughly 200 Americans who had been based at the embassy in Sanaa, officials said. Among those removed were senior officers who worked closely with Yemen’s intelligence and security services to target al-Qaeda operatives and disrupt terrorism plots often aimed at the United States.

The departures were triggered by mounting concerns over security in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, where Houthi rebels have effectively toppled the government. Britain and France said Wednesday that they also would close their embassies, as news footage showed Houthi fighters driving off in vehicles that U.S. diplomats had abandoned at an airport during their exodus.

The collapse of Yemen’s government had already disrupted some U.S. counterterrorism operations in Yemen. The closure of the U.S. mission compounds the challenges and “is extremely damaging” to the CIA’s mission in Yemen, said a former senior U.S. official involved in the effort. That person said that the embassy had served as the primary base in Yemen for U.S. intelligence operations and that “the political turmoil in Sanaa and the closure of the embassy all play into the hands” of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, as the Yemeni franchise is known.

U.S. officials emphasized that not all CIA personnel were withdrawn from Yemen, saying that the agency would try to salvage an intelligence network that it had assembled in cooperation with Yemen, Saudi Arabia and other allies over the past five years.

COMMENT:  I have no doubt that Obama is readying a speech saying that the closure of our embassy was a result of the Crusades, the Vatican, and the Israel lobby.   And Bush.

February 12, 2015