UPI: Who writes this nonsense?

UPI is out with a new article that makes the unfounded and ridiculous claim that Saudi Arabia is fighting the Huthis because it is worried about al-Qaeda.

The level of willful ignorance it takes to write something like this is astounding. Yes, Saudi Arabia is worried about al-Qaeda in Yemen, but Saudi Arabia has many more concerns than just al-Qaeda. This is not the US we are talking about here.

Could it be, might it be, perhaps that Saudi Arabia is also concerned with potential problems in Najran and Jizan not to mention more general concerns about instability in Yemen? There are numerous, numerous challenges, problems, issues – whatever you want to call them – in Yemen and al-Qaeda is only one of them. To argue that al-Qaeda is the determining factor in why Saudi Arabia is engaged in fighting the Huthis suggests that UPI has either swallowed a Saudi briefing book and barely given the thing time to digest before regurgitating it back onto the page or that UPI and the writer of this article has little understanding of either Saudi Arabia or Yemen. Maybe both.

Then, to write that Ibrahim al-Rubaysh is AQAP’s “Grand Mufti” reveals further depths of ignorance that I didn’t believe UPI to be capable of. In order to be a “mufti” one has to issue fatawa – something that al-Rubaysh has not done in any public fashion to date. So unless UPI has some super-secret source that can prove that al-Rubaysh is issuing fatawa then it should not be calling him a mufti and certainly not a “Grand Mufti.”