on the downtrodden that only the Global Empire can protect. You'd think no one told the President about the above. Rachel Maddow said there are 10,000 American troops on those 9 ships. Talk about provocative.

$13 billion dollars for the 80% finished USS Gerald R Ford. Yup, UNFINISHED.

$6 billion dollars for a fucking destroyer (USS Zumwalt)? (Psst - that's what Nimitz-class aircraft carriers usta cost.)

All those Littoral Combat Ships have gas turbine power plants and they are gas hogs - to the tune of around $71 million dollars of annual fuel usage. Each.

goes a long way. I'm with you. There was some tongue in cheek in my post.

Oppose Shiite factions and governments, aid and abet their overthrow and defeat.

That policy is followed even when the consequence is to promote the ambitions of radical Sunni jihadists.

That policy is pursued even while fighting the very same Sunni jihadists we created.

It is an amazingly fucked rule.

He does ramble around in interesting ways, I'm beginning to like him.

I thought he might be a little too optimistic in this piece, but there isn't much point in being gloomy either.

The first disclosure regarding Saudi Arabia’s impending announcement on the termination of its air strikes on Yemen didn’t come from Riyadh. It came from Tehran. The Saudi Ministry of Defence formally made its statement a few hours later. (FARS news agency). Clearly, intense consultations preceded the announcement and Iran was not only in the loop but had positioned itself in a key role.

No doubt, consultations involving the United States and Iran preceded the Saudi decision. President Barack Obama has acknowledged that the U.S. was in touch with Iran, sending “very direct messages” to Tehran not to do anything that might threaten shipping traffic in the region. Obviously, the consultations couldn’t have been restricted to freedom of shipping in the Gulf of Aden.

Again, the call by the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon in the weekend for an immediate ceasefire certainly played its part, and it could, perhaps, be understood as a parallel effort in coordination with the US-Iranian consultations. Curiously, the GCC ambassadors in New York didn’t even realize how rapidly the ground was shifting when just a day back they had “rejected” Ban’s call. Which means the Iranians operated at a high political level.

It will be recalled that President Barack Obama Obama spoke with King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud and with the Crown Prince of the UAE over the weekend. The Saudis ultimately sensed that the law of diminishing returns would be at work if the operations had continued.

http://atimes.com/2015/04/yemen-talks-a-defining-moment-for-us-iran-ties/