The crisis in Yemen is growing following high-level defections from the regime of U.S.-backed President Ali Abudullah Saleh. On Monday, a dozen top military leaders announced their pledge to protect the protest movement after 45 people were killed and some 350 were wounded when Yemeni forces opened fire on demonstrators in the capital of Sana’a on Friday—after two months of nationwide demonstrations. In recent years, the United States has provided hundreds of millions of dollars in military and security aid to Yemen. “The Obama administration has really escalated the covert war inside of Yemen and has dramatically increased the funding to Yemen’s military, particularly its elite counter-terrorism unit, which is trained by U.S. special operations forces," says Democracy Now! correspondent and independent journalist Jeremy Scahill. "It could get much worse if President Saleh decides to release the U.S. trained counter-terrorism units on his own people."