National Security and Foreign Affairs
The U.S. military has withdrawn from Saudi Arabia its personnel who were coordinating with the Saudi-led air campaign in Yemen, and sharply reduced the number of staff elsewhere who were assisting in that planning, U.S. officials told Reuters.
Fewer than five U.S. service people are now assigned full-time to the "Joint Combined Planning Cell," which was established last year to coordinate U.S. support, including air-to-air refueling of coalition jets and limited intelligence-sharing, Lieutenant Ian McConnaughey, a U.S. Navy spokesman in Bahrain, told Reuters.
During a rare trip to West Los Angeles last week, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told the story of a 6-year-old boy from Southeast Asia whose family fled their homeland during the Korean War.
“The United Nations recognized that there were millions of displaced persons during and after the war that were fleeing their countries. They provided everything for resettlement,” Ki-moon told refugee families from Syria, Iran, El Salvador, Bosnia and Iraq during an Annenberg Foundation-sponsored event in Century City.
“They provided food, clothing, shelter. Everything.”
Members of Congress are pushing to block the sale of $1.15 billion worth of military equipment to Saudi Arabia as reports of civilian casualties continue to emerge from Yemen following strikes by the Saudi Arabia-led coalition.
Last week, the U.S. Department of State gave its preliminary approval for the sale of over 100 tanks, over 300 machine guns, scores of ammunition, and other land force weapons to Saudi Arabia.
A House Democrat is urging the Obama administration to stop assisting Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen following reports that its forces bombed a school.
“I have tried numerous times to work with the Administration to stop the United States from assisting Saudi Arabia in their indiscriminate killing of civilians in Yemen. But when Saudi Arabia continues to kill civilians, and in this case children, enough is enough," Rep. Ted Lieu (Calif.), who is also an Air Force Reserve colonel, said in a statement Monday.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Washington - Congressman Ted W. Lieu (D | Los Angeles County) has issued the following statement regarding the news that a Saudi-led coalition airstrike killed 10 children while they were studying in a local school in Haydan, Yemen.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
WASHINGTON - Today, Congressman Ted W. Lieu (D I Los Angeles) issued the following statement in response to the proposed sale of tanks to Saudi Arabia.
A California congressman wants answers as to why a federal funding source for local Jewish institutions to beef up security has mostly dried up.
Last fiscal year, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) issued about $1.9 million in security grants to 27 California nonprofit organizations — all but one of them Jewish — as part of its Nonprofit Security Grant Program (NSGP).
The following funding cycle, the amount was reduced to $297,950 — an 84 percent decrease.
In November, the American people will elect not just a President who signs and vetoes legislation, but the Commander in Chief of our Armed Forces. This distinction is critical because the checks and balances in the Constitution largely go away when the President acts as a military commander. That was an acceptable trade-off when weapons of war were muskets and cannons. Today, the President is vested with the unparalleled responsibility to order a nuclear strike without approval from Congress or the courts.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Washington - Today, Congressman Ted W. Lieu (D | Los Angeles County) issued the following statement regarding his work on a legislative proposal to reform the nuclear weapons launch process.