Abbreviated papers on Monday

In what is becoming a sad and sick habit lately, I’m desperately trying to meet a deadline and keeping various editors at bay, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have a few minutes to post.

First, as Ibn Silliqi (I think that is the preferred transliteration) pointed out the new AQAP video – although the attack took place when it was just AQSAP – is now out. I have yet to watch it (it is nearly 38 minutes) but have big plans for this evening, when I will be watching it with a back issue of Sada al-Malahim giving the bios of the seven attackers.

Next up on this abbreviate version of the daily papers is this piece by Simon Tisdall of the Guardian on Yemen. For me the piece is illustrative of the new media attention that Yemen is getting and how much of this new attention is more interested in forcing the various situations in Yemen into a bed of their own making rather than going through the hassle of analyzing what is actually going on in the country. Much like it was for the Ottomans, Yemen is the graveyard of preconceptions. (The Arabic of this has Turks but I was once pulled aside and castigated during a conference at Princeton for adhering too closely to the Arabic at the expense of political correctness.)

I have already had my say about the Wall Street Journal editorial and criticized the Foreign Policy piece from Small Wars Journal, so I will leave both alone. But I must say that no matter how one slices the pie Salih’s government is not “Sunni-led government.” That is a howler.