White House still weighing whether to join a war it already backed, in writing, on October 4th.

…(cont) Yemen's president, Rashad al-Alimi, said on that same report that the offensive would run "until the country is liberated from the grip of the terrorist militia." The territory he meant holds, by the same report's count, about seventy percent of the country's population. I'm sorry — there's that date again, from a different angle. Seventy percent, dated the fourth.

The town of Turbah fell that same day, before the government made the offensive official — "shortly before," is how the paper covering it on October 5th put it. So did the backing get ahead of the war, or behind it — behind a war that had already taken a town? I stood in the garage last night looking for a fan belt I don't think we own, and I kept doing the arithmetic on that one instead: town falls, then the announcement, then the backing, in that order, on paper. I'm sorry. The fourth keeps coming back, now by way of a town instead of a count.

A headline like that doesn't write itself, and it doesn't deliver itself either. Somebody carried a printed page into a room and read the sentence about liberation out loud, on the record, with a date on it. I'm sorry. The fourth, one more time, this time for the paper itself — the thing that had to be carried into a room before anyone could quote it back to me.

Here's today, the thirteenth. The Houthis have Taiz, Yemen's third-largest city, encircled, per this morning's wire. The same report has them still hitting the airport at Riyadh — deadly strikes, the paper's own words — and far enough into Saudi oil shipping that global energy prices are described as in further turmoil. A Houthi political bureau official, quoted today, said: "If the U.S. becomes involved in the aggression against Yemen, we will not deliberate over the decision to respond." One wire has the group's promise as "painful." Another has it as "swift and painful." A third, the same morning, reports the group also means to strike the Saudi state oil company directly. The president is described, across that same cluster of wires, as condemning the attacks on Saudi Arabia and, separately, mulling whether to join in striking back.

On October 4th the backing went out in writing, before Turbah had cooled, before Taiz was a ring on a map. The city got circled after. The threats got made after, three different ways. And the president, nine days later, is still described as weighing whether to join a war his own government already put in writing that it backs. I keep going back to the fourth.

Oh — before you go. Four wires today, three dated reports behind them, and not one of them carries a vote. Not a condemnation. Not a weighing. Which one of these four wires has the vote — the one in Congress, on whether the country enters a war it backed, in writing, on the fourth?