Taking The Houthis At Their Word: The Bill Saudi Arabia Doesn't Want To Read Authored by Larry C. Johnson via Sonar21 , Riyadh has a simple method for dealing with Houthi claims. It announces that its air defenses intercepted something, says nothing about everything else, and hopes the world changes the subject.
Aramco, a company that publishes its quarterly earnings to the decimal point, suddenly develops a vow of silence whenever someone asks whether its refineries are on fire. So let me try something different. For the length of this column, I am going to ignore the Saudi government and Aramco entirely and take Ansar Allah's military spokesman, Brigadier General Yahya Saree, at his word.
Not because Saree is a paragon of precision. Military spokesmen everywhere, including in Washington, inflate their results. I do it because the exercise tells you what the Houthis believe they are doing, what they are aiming at, and what Saudi Arabia stands to lose if even half of it is true.
Since