On January 17, Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder gave a press briefing at which he said, "I'm not aware of any U.S. forces on the ground." Just a few days prior, the White House released a report stating that some U.S. military troops are, in fact, on the ground in Yemen.
When the Pentagon was later asked why Brig. Gen. Ryder made an opposing claim on January 17 that defied what the White House previously said, the Pentagon refused to acknowledge that Brig. Gen. Ryder ever even made the statement in the first place.
"A small number of United States military personnel are deployed to Yemen to conduct operations against al-Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula and ISIS," the White House told Congress in a December 7 report.
.@JackPosobiec on US troops in the Middle East: "This crooked administration want them as human meat shields." pic.twitter.com/q2zxw9lsbI
— Human Events (@HumanEvents) January 29, 2024
(Related: Did you hear? The International Court of Justice [ICJ] has found that Israel's military operation in Gaza is not "self-defense," but rather genocide.)
The Intercept, which conducts extensive investigative work into these types of matters, reportedly reached out to the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) for clarification about the matter, only to receive yet another contradictory claim from DoD spokesman Lt. Col. Bryon McGarry.
"Maj. Gen. Ryder's prior assertion that there are no U.S. forces on the ground in Yemen remains accurate," Lt. Col. McGarry said.
According to Erik Sperling, executive director of Just Foreign Policy, the contradictory messaging could simply mean that there are now so many U.S. troops spread so thinly all around the world that even the Pentagon is no longer aware of where they all are at any given time.
"It's possible that U.S. forces are spread so widely around the globe that not even the professional tasked with knowing that can keep track of it all," Sperling said. "But it's also possible that, given the dramatic expansion in U.S. presence in the region in recent months, he is trying to skirt the question to avoid greater scrutiny."
Concerning the White House report from back in December, it further states that the U.S. military "continues to work closely with the Republic of Yemen government and regional partner forces to degrade the terrorist threat posed by" alleged terrorist groups throughout the Middle East.
To commence 2024, the U.S. launched a military campaign against the Houthis in Yemen for attacking shipping vessels passing through the Red Sea. The purpose of the Houthi attacks is to deter Israel from continuing its military operation against the Palestinians in Gaza, which many agree constitutes genocide.
The Biden regime does not seem to like to talk about Yemen all that much, part of the reason being that it says it does not want Israel's war on Gaza to expand into a full-scale regional, or even worldwide, war.
"We don't think that we are at war," said Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh just one day after Brig. Gen. Ryder claimed that the U.S. does not have any troops in Yemen. "We don't want to see a regional war."
One member of the press corps who heard Singh make these statements struck back with a statement about how "we've bombed them five times now," referring to the U.S. military in Yemen.
"If this isn't war, what is war?"
The latest news about the escalating situation in the Middle East can be found at WWIII.news.
Sources for this article include: