Middle East: Saudis Murder & Dismember Washington Post Contributor

[Newenglanddeac]

 

[DeaconSig]

Nah, Nikki Haley and theReff say we are more respected.

 

[Newenglanddeac]

 

[PhDeac]

So US intelligence knew that Saudi officials were planning to kill a US permanent resident and did nothing about it.

 

[Newenglanddeac]

So US intelligence knew that Saudi officials were planning to kill a US permanent resident and did nothing about it.

Or they took the proper steps, notified the appropriate people (ie the White House or State Department) and those people did nothing about it.

 

[Newenglanddeac]

I can confirm that the National Security Agency, America’s big ear, indeed intercepted Saudi communications that indicated Riyadh had something unpleasant in store for Khashoggi. Listening in on foreign governments, after all, is NSA’s main job, and that includes frenemies like Saudi Arabia as well as hostile regimes. At least a day before Khashoggi appeared at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, an NSA official told me, the agency had Top Secret information that Riyadh was planning something nefarious—though exactly what was not clear from the intercepts. This was deemed important because Khashoggi is a legal resident of the United States, and is therefore entitled to protection. According to the NSA official, this threat warning was communicated to the White House through official intelligence channels.

It needs to be asked what, if anything, the White House did with this Top Secret warning. Intelligence without action is merely expensive noise, and if no action was taken in this case, Congress should ask why not. If action was taken—meaning a warning was issued to Saudi officials to keep their hands of Khashoggi—and Riyadh ignored it, that too is something worth investigating. Saudi Arabia is a difficult ally of the United States, but our influence in Riyadh remains significant. This is particularly the case due to the close relationship between President Donald Trump’s administration and MBS, which is reported to be cordial and then some. At press time, the White House had not responded to a request for comment.

NSA did its highly classified job and provided the White House with threat information, direct from Saudi sources, which might have saved Jamal Khashoggi from whatever grim fate he met on October 2 at the hands of Saudi officials. If the Trump administration failed to take necessary action to protect a journalist and dissident who was resident in our country, the guilt in this case will not lie solely with Riyadh.

 

[bym051d]

Guys, it's ok. He wasn't a citizen.

And he's probably still alive.

 

[WakeForestRanger]

 

[Newenglanddeac]

 

[Newenglanddeac]

 

[RJKarl]

The Saudi royal Family just booked two floors at Trump's hotel in DC for the next two years at $1M/week.

POTUS said, "One dead A-rab ain't my business. Did the credit card clear?"

 

[DeaconSig]

The Saudi royal Family just booked two floors at Trump's hotel in DC for the next two years at $1M/week.

POTUS said, "One dead A-rab ain't my business. Did the credit card clear?"

Is that a direct quote?

 

[RJKarl]

Absolutely...didn't you see the tweet welcoming them to the hotel? Or the picture of Ivanka and Melanie putting chocolates on their pillows?

 

[deactherunner]

Guys, it's ok. He wasn't a citizen.

And he's probably still alive.

He took our jobs. He's the reason Herbert from Erie isn't a Middle East affairs journalist for the Washington Post.

 

[ConnorEl]

Pretty sure Trump and a lot of Trumpublicans are really just jealous of SA’s willingness to get rid of a dissenting media voice.

 

[RJKarl]

The King and Crown Prince say they didn't do it.

Trump believes them.

What a shock!

 

[ConnorEl]

They probably deny it “strongly”.


So that makes it more true, you see.

 

[RJKarl]

If we do anything against the Saudis, they will ask their friends who saved Jared's 666 building and his loans will be called.

 

[Newenglanddeac]

John Brennan: The U.S. should never turn a blind eye to this sort of inhumanity


As history has shown, authoritarian leaders such as Mohammed become increasingly paranoid over time and use the instruments of national power to eliminate real and perceived sources of opposition. By leveraging his absolute control over subservient internal security services, the crown prince has methodically intimidated and neutralized political opponents.

The news reports and Turkish government accounts of Khashoggi’s disappearance from the Saudi Consulate, and the contemporaneous arrival of two planeloads of Saudis, have the hallmarks of a professional capture operation or, more ominously, an assassination. As someone who worked closely with the Saudis for many years, and who lived and worked as a U.S. official for five years in Saudi Arabia, I am certain that if such an operation occurred inside a Saudi diplomatic mission against a high-profile journalist working for a U.S. newspaper, it would have needed the direct authorization of Saudi Arabia’s top leadership — the crown prince.

Maybe Mohammed thought that his close ties to the Trump administration and the virtual absence of U.S. moral leadership on the global stage would help protect him from fallout. In particular, a visceral, shared animus for the Iranian regime probably gave him the impression that the U.S.-Saudi relationship is bulletproof.

I am confident that U.S. intelligence agencies have the capability to determine, with a high degree of certainty, what happened to Khashoggi. If he is found to be dead at the hands of the Saudi government, his demise cannot go unanswered — by the Trump administration, by Congress or by the world community. Ideally, King Salman would take immediate action against those responsible, but if he doesn’t have the will or the ability, the United States would have to act. That would include immediate sanctions on all Saudis involved; a freeze on U.S. military sales to Saudi Arabia; suspension of all routine intelligence cooperation with Saudi security services; and a U.S.-sponsored U.N. Security Council resolution condemning the murder. The message would be clear: The United States will never turn a blind eye to such inhuman behavior, even when carried out by friends, because this is a nation that remains faithful to its values.

Full: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...d52e1ae4570_story.html?utm_term=.2eb3bbf62117

 

[WakeForestRanger]