Have US counterterrorism operations in Yemen actually strengthened the threats they were designed to eliminate? This morning on Democracy Now!, Jeremy Scahill laid out the arrogance of US policy in the country and how it has played right into the Islamists’ hands. The thinking in Washington was always that “whatever US official was sent to Yemen was smarter than Ali Abdullah Saleh. He was a master chess player, and he milked counterterrorism as his cash cow.”

For more, see Scahill’s article “Washington’s War in Yemen Backfires” in this week’s issue of The Nation.

—Erin Schikowski