"It's Time To Go Now In Yemen"

Militants linked to al-Qaida launched a brazen attack against the U.S. Embassy in the Yemeni capital Wednesday, firing automatic weapons and setting off grenades and a car bomb in a furious fusillade that failed to breach the walls but killed 16 people, including a newly wed New York woman.

It was the deadliest direct assault on a U.S. Embassy in a decade claiming the lives of six attackers, six guards and four civilians.

Yemeni security officials said civilian casualties could have been far worse. The streets were relatively empty because many people sleep late during the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to press.

About 9:15 a.m., multiple explosions from the car bomb and grenades shook the affluent Dhahr Himyar district, a residential area dotted with five-star hotels and other embassies. Palls of black smoke rose over the street, lined with modern buildings in the style of the centuries-old white-trimmed mud brick houses that are a landmark of San'a's Old City. Snipers hidden across the street fired on emergency personnel rushing to the scene.

The attackers, some dressed in army uniforms, were stopped short of the compound's walls by guards and massive security barriers, but civilians waiting in line for visas outside the embassy were among the casualties. Three police officers and seven civilians were injured, including children in a residential compound across the street from the embassy, home to many Westerners.

President George W. Bush called the attack "a reminder that we are at war with extremists who will murder innocent people to achieve their ideological objectives."

The U.S. counts Yemen as an ally in the war on terrorism. But American officials have long been frustrated over what is seen as a "revolving door" policy toward al-Qaida militants by President Ali Abdullah Saleh's government.

Yemen has let some convicted militants go free after promising to refrain from violence.

In 2006, a group of 23 militants escaped from a high-security prison, including 10 figures convicted in al-Qaida's 2000 bombing of the USS Cole destroyer in Aden harbor. There were widespread reports of security officials' collusion in the escape, and experts say Yemen's security and intelligence services are riddled with militant sympathizers.

State control is weak in the impoverished country — the ancestral homeland of Osama bin Laden — tribes are strong and many mountainous rural areas are lawless, giving ample room for militant training camps.

In separate statements, the U.N. Security Council and Secretary General Ban Ki-moon condemned the attacks and called for the perpetrators to be brought to justice.

The U.S. Embassy has been attacked four times since 2003, most recently in March when a volley of mortars targeting the compound hit a neighboring girls high school instead, killing a Yemeni guard and wounding dozens of girls.

Just last month, the State Department allowed the return of non-essential embassy personnel and family members who had been ordered to leave after the mortars.

But Wednesday's attack was by far the deadliest and best coordinated.

Yemen has been a focus of American counterterrorism efforts ever since the 2000 Cole attack, in which 17 American sailors were killed by suicide bombers on a boat. A similar attack two years later hit a French oil tanker, killing one person. Since that attack and the Sept. 11 attacks, Yemen has been cracking down on militants, earning praise from Washington.

But American officials have increasingly grumbled over what they see as Yemen's failures to keep suspects in custody and its willingness to compromise with militants.

Seventeen suspects in the Cole bombing were arrested, but 10 escaped in the 2006 prison break although some have since been recaptured or killed or surrendered.

The bombing's mastermind, Jamal al-Badawi, was sentenced to death in 2004, though the sentence was commuted to 15 years in prison. He escaped jail in 2004. He surrendered in October but was set free once he renounced terrorism, according to Yemeni security officials. After pressure from the U.S., Yemen announced he had been taken back into custody.

Washington was also angered when a Yemeni-American, Jaber Elbaneh, convicted in Yemen for planning attacks on oil installations, was freed as he appealed his 10-year prison sentence. Elbaneh has since been taken back in custody, but San'a has refused American requests that Elbaneh be handed over to the U.S. for trial on charges of provide material support to terrorism.

Several other lower-level militants have been freed after promising not to carry out attacks. The promises were made as part of a government rehabilitation program, which has frequently allied with Islamic extremist political groups.

During a June visit to San'a, President Bush's homeland security adviser Kenneth Wainstein pushed Saleh for "strong and serious measures to be carried out in Yemeni courts to try the terrorists and to hold them accountable."

    Though Yemen is a Muslim country with the trappings of democracy it's failure to root out Islamic terrorism is reason to end US diplomatic and economic ties with this country, as I see it. To continue to maintain a US embassy in Yemen is an unnecessary risk and expense to our country. As I see it, nothing that happens in a country in Europe, Asia or Africa is in America's vital interests, especially in the light of the pressing issues here at home. It's time to go now in Yemen, in my opinion. What do you think?

tags: yemen  bush  war on terror  africa  us non interventionism  war  warpeace  

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