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Jamal Khashoggi - Journalist Killed in Saudi Consulate (3 Viewers)
- Thread starter Don Quixote
- Start date
Dedfin
Footballguy
I wonder how long it would take for me to find a meme from a righty about throwing a journalist out of a heliocopter.
Don Quixote
Footballguy
Just all a big misunderstanding. They were going to build him some lovely cabinetry with that bone saw.
badmojo1006
Footballguy
jonessed
Footballguy
Makes sense. I doubt they intended to kill him. It’s hard to explain away blame when someone walks in and doesn’t walk out.
badmojo1006
Footballguy
whoknew
Footballguy
skycriesmary
Climbing up the Walls
jonessed
Footballguy
Yes. The Turks have the audio. Everybody already knows what happened. It’s not like the Saudis can bluff there way out of it....Really?
Seems like a really bad way to kill someone if your objective is to keep it a secret.
Banger
Footballguy
sorry missed this thread...
so the Saudi's who didn't know anything about the disappearance of Khashoggi are now prepared to admit that he died under interrogation gone bad...you can see how they get along so well with the Trumps...how long will it be until this story changes? how are they going to explain accidentally cutting up/destroying his body to cover up the murder? this isn't going to end well...
Jim SciuttoVerified account @jimsciutto
Breaking: Saudis are preparing report acknowledging Jamal Khashoggi's death was the result of interrogation that went wrong, one that was intended to lead to his abduction from Turkey - @clarissaward @TimListerCNN reporting
12:15 PM - 15 Oct 2018
so the Saudi's who didn't know anything about the disappearance of Khashoggi are now prepared to admit that he died under interrogation gone bad...you can see how they get along so well with the Trumps...how long will it be until this story changes? how are they going to explain accidentally cutting up/destroying his body to cover up the murder? this isn't going to end well...
Jim SciuttoVerified account @jimsciutto
Breaking: Saudis are preparing report acknowledging Jamal Khashoggi's death was the result of interrogation that went wrong, one that was intended to lead to his abduction from Turkey - @clarissaward @TimListerCNN reporting
12:15 PM - 15 Oct 2018
Banger
Footballguy
Trump: the King did the courageous thing and admitted it was an accident. It's time to move on....
jonessed
Footballguy
Wag a finger. We make deals with countries that run terrorist organizations on the side. He’s not a US citizen. I don’t see why we would make our stand here.
jonessed
Footballguy
I assume they would have medical personnel around if their intention was to “interrogate” him. It just doesn’t make sense to me that they would kill him there.
It doesn’t really matter anyway does it? If the kidnap, torture, and accidentally kill him vs. kidnap, torture, take him to Saudi Arabia and disappear him. They are both pretty damn awful.
ShamrockPride
Footballguy
This is the best they can come up with?
whoknew
Footballguy
Don't you want to do better? The US is in a unique position to potentially change the behavior of a brutal regime. Why wouldn't they use some of that leverage to make the world a better place?
And he may not have been a US citizen, but he went to school here, lived here, and worked for a US company.
Plus murdering journalists is really bad. We should probably get on the right side of that argument.
jonessed
Footballguy
We aren’t changing them. If we could change them we would have done it already.
Murdering anybody is bad. I really don’t care if he was a plumber, a journalist, or a broker.
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whoknew
Footballguy
timschochet
Footballguy
jonessed
Footballguy
No, we wouldn’t. Not if we determine the cost to be too high (which I assume we have).
They are an ally and apparently we have let some of these things slide. Of all the “bad” things Saudi Arabia has done I just don’t see why this would be the sudden flash point.
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Chemical X
Footballguy
if we didn’t care that 15 of the 19 9/11 terrorists were saudi citizens, why care now? we shoulda put SA in the #### along time ago, oil be damned.
whoknew
Footballguy
Because its happening now. Our failure to act in the past shouldn't influence our decision to act now.
jonessed
Footballguy
We didn’t act because the risk outweighed the reward. I don’t see how this really changes that. There aren’t going to be sanctions.
whoknew
Footballguy
But that's basically a political decision. How we value the risk or the reward can easily change. We just move some of the value we place on money over to the human life and freedom of the press columns. And then the risk/reward decision tips the other way.
We didn’t act because the risk outweighed the reward. I don’t see how this really changes that. There aren’t going to be sanctions.
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jonessed
Footballguy
Obviously, these are all political decisions. I just don’t see why this would rise to much in the grand scheme of things.
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ren hoek
Footballguy
Well, incinerating school buses full of children with the weapons and air support of the US/UK militaries for 3.5 years, blockading a civilian population in Yemen causing mass starvation, suffering and death unlike anything imaginable. It seems like the problem isn’t so much that Saudi Arabia executed someone, but that that someone was a connected journalist.
whoknew
Footballguy
Why do you care? I really don't understand your's and @jonessed's positions on this.
Who cares WHY this would cause people to wake up to the brutality of the Saudi Arabian regime? Isn't the fact that its causing people to want to do something to help change it good news by itself? I would think you would be ecstatic that people want the current administration to stand up to the Saudis.
jonessed
Footballguy
Sure. Stand up and get angry. Chastise them.
I have no desire to get into a sanctioning vs. oil battle with them though.
timschochet
Footballguy
jonessed and ren hoek do not have the same position on this, if I understand them correctly.
jonessed thinks the risk is too great for us to punish the Saudis. I think there is something to this argument; I listed some of the risks earlier in this thread. On the other hand we’re engaged in a trade war with a China with much bigger risk to us, so in terms of Trump this attitude seems rather inconsistent.
ren hoek regards our entire foreign policy as hypocritical- he believes the USA and Israel are the immoral bad guys in the world and that we have no right to judge the actions of anyone else.
Snorkelson
Footballguy
Yes, also good to have a bone saw handy in case your interrogation goes south. Because when interrogations end in death it’s usually prudent to cut the victim up into pieces to smuggle them out of the consulate to be buried.
Also, there is quite a big leap from “autopsy expert” to “medical personnel.”
Ditkaless Wonders
Footballguy
timschochet
Footballguy
A competent administration would never have allowed this to get as far as it has. My understanding is that many State Department employees that were specialists in the Middle East have been let go and not replaced, and this sort or incompetence is the result.
Even now, an either/ or alternative of confrontation or shameful do-nothing is not inevitable; a competent administration would work behind the scenes for Saudi Arabia to issue a formal public apology, compensation for the family, along with condemnation from the USA and a warning about trade being impaired if relations don’t improve, etc., etc. But I don’t think we’re competent enough to pull this off. So a shameful do nothing is what it looks like it will be.
Even now, an either/ or alternative of confrontation or shameful do-nothing is not inevitable; a competent administration would work behind the scenes for Saudi Arabia to issue a formal public apology, compensation for the family, along with condemnation from the USA and a warning about trade being impaired if relations don’t improve, etc., etc. But I don’t think we’re competent enough to pull this off. So a shameful do nothing is what it looks like it will be.
Sabertooth
Footballguy
I think intent is a big difference here. Do you think the intent of the US is to kill civilians and starve people?
timschochet
Footballguy
msommer
Footballguy
It seems to me that Ren thinks the Saudis are pretty bad too.
Probably only Russia is squeaky clean (IBT "Russia's done bad stuff too" fig leaf post from ren)
jonessed
Footballguy
No, but I think the intent of Saudi Arabia is. At the very least they have a limited threshold for collateral damage.
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Shula-holic
Footballguy
And then if we did who are we ok sending to the unemployment line here in order to do so?
jonessed
Footballguy
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Shula-holic
Footballguy
Meaning if we did something like pulling our arms sales then it has a negative effect in the US
Snorkelson
Footballguy
ren hoek
Footballguy
Sabertooth asked what was worse than killing a journalist. I think killing thousands of people in a brutal war is worse. It’s good that people are being critical of US ties to Saudi Arabia. But it bothers me that this has evoked a response where Yemen really didn’t. The message is clear: this guy’s life mattered and thousands of poor men, women and children didn’t. But why?
Now that people see what the US really is, they want to pretend Trump was the uniquely evil spin on it, that we had some claim to humanitarian intentions before. I really miss those days when Obama was politely inking $100B weapon deals of hope with MBS. I really miss the days when the US cared about human rights and provided targeting/fuel assistance the Saudis while they blew Yemen to smithereens. It’s kind of a joke really.
I’m all for abandoning Saudi Arabia, even if it means sacrificing our comfortable lives and petrodollar. But I’m not going to sit here and rewrite history with you. This thing where people launder every horrible, long-standing US policy onto the Trump administration and pat themselves on the back for it really just wears me out.
You can’t dismantle Saudi influence in the US without understanding the politicians, journalists, thinktanks, business people and defense contractors on the take from them. You can’t have accountability in public office while fawning over war criminals from previous admins. And you can’t change the policies without understanding all the factors that contribute to them.
ren hoek
Footballguy
I don’t think the intent makes a difference at all. They knew full well that assisting the Saudis in such a way would lead to the conditions we’re seeing now, so killing civilians might as well have been their intent.
ren hoek
Footballguy
I think your brand of ‘exceptionalism’, which is really just western/Israeli supremacy, is much more inline with a moral good guys/immoral bad guys view of the world than mine.
Sand
Footballguy
It's interesting the political realities here. Say 6 years ago the administration would be more inclined to sanction, but much less able to due to the established anti-oil policies enacted (and much lower outputs than now). Currently, this administration has less desire to wrangle with SA, but much, much more freedom to do so thanks to our oil production posture.
In the balance, though, Shula has the right idea - I don't see us stirring up this nest over one guy. Sucks, but that's the reality.
badmojo1006
Footballguy
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