amy: we're joined now by toby jones an associate professor of , history and director of middle easterndies at rutgers university. author of, "desert kingdom: how oil and water forged modern saudi arabia." jones was previously the international crisis group's political analyst of the persian gulf. let's start with operation decisive storm. it sounds like operation desert storm. toby jones, can you talk about was saudi arabia is doing right now in yemen with u.s. support? >> the saudi's are interested in destroying and a grating yemen's military capacity -- degrading yemen's military capacity. they have a series of mixed objectives. one, the state a claim they want to protect their borders in any threat to saudi arabia. houthi thes have never represented a threat and still don't, even though they control much of yemen. the other is to restore the legitimate government president hadi. in reality, his position of power was orchestrated by the gcc after the air uprising. the bottom line is this, yemen has long been the backyard of saudi arabia. it is a deeply impoverished place that the sau