Obama’s Smart Power: Marines Forced to Destroy Weapons Before Escaping Yemen

February 12, 2015 by Daniel Greenfield 3 Comments

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While Obama collaborates under the table with Iran, Iran’s terrorist proxies are once again using that to humiliate America.

 Houthi rebels took all U.S. Embassy vehicles parked at the Yemeni capital’s airport and wouldn’t let departing U.S. Marines take their weapons with them, a top Sanaa airport official said about the latest evidence of unrest in an Arab nation long seen as key in America’s fight against terrorists…
According to the official, the Houthis seized many U.S. Marines’ weapons at the airport, and the American troops also handed over some to random airport officials.
However, a senior U.S. military official told CNN the Marines disabled their weapons and gave them to a Yemeni security detail, which had escorted them to the airport, because the Marines were flying commercial.

So instead of sending transport planes to evacuate American personnel, there was this humiliating departure.
The Marines have clarified that no weapons were directly turned over to terrorists. Certainly no working weapons.

The U.S. Marine Corps sharply denied the allegations.
“All crew served weapons were destroyed at the embassy prior to movement. None of them were ‘handed over’ in any way to anyone. The destruction of weapons at the embassy and the airport was carried out in accordance with an approved destruction plan,” the statement read.
The previous night, embassy officials burned tens of thousands of documents and destroyed weapons that were inside the Sanaa embassy’s storage warehouses, Yemeni employees of the embassy said.

More details come from the Marine Corps Times.

Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren told reporters that the embassy’s Marine security guard detachment destroyed larger weapons, including machine guns, and added that he believed they had turned over personal weapons to Yemeni officials because they could not take them on commercial flights.
But the Marine official, who asked that he not be identified because he was unauthorized to discuss the situation, said no working Marine weapons, whether crew-served or personal rifles and sidearms, were seized or handed over as the troops departed.

This is what Obama’s smart power looks like.

Filed Under: The Point

About Daniel Greenfield

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. He is completing a book on the international challenges America faces in the 21st century.