Speaking today on the disappearance and murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, President Trump declared that he is “not going to walk away from Saudi Arabia.” He added that he doesn’t intend to do anything about it so long as the top members of the Saudi royal family aren’t implicated directly in the murder.
Khashoggi went missing October 2 at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Turkish officials say they have recordings of him being murdered by Saudi forces inside the consulate. Turkish media reported that the audio recording showed Khashoggi was dismembered while he was still alive.
President Trump appeared to try to throw some doubt into this, saying he’s asked to have the audio “if it exists.” He did admit, however, that it “probably does exist.” Turkey had reported they’d provided the recordings to the US days ago, and reiterated today that the US already has copies of the audio in question.
Early reports of Saudi Arabia’s planned report on the incident suggested they planned to call it an “interrogation gone wrong,” and one the crown prince didn’t know about. Given how many of the killers are part of the prince’s personal security team, it’s going to be difficult to claim he was totally in the dark about it.
President Trump’s new standard that he won’t punish the Saudis unless the top royals are implicated certainly suggests that however the Saudi report chooses to spin this, that’s going to be part of the bottom line. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo confirmed earlier in the day that the Saudis have been given a few more days to finalize the report.
By all means, give the evil bastards in Riyadh time to get their story straight. Meanwhile, if I six year old with a cold in Iran sneezes without covering it, Deranged Orange threatens nuclear war.
Here is a problem for the Royals. Find a culprit who will not spill all beans when threatened with jail time or execution.
Nah!. The real problem for the Royals is can they torture the scapegoats enough to make them credibly confess and stick to the script until they are executed without leaving tell-tale signs of physical abuse? And can they keep the Western press away from the accused killers?
Obviously. If the US did not “walk” away after 9/11 then why would they after a journalist was chopped up.
The 9/11 terrorists were mostly Saudis, so the US attacked other countries. Expect the US to put the blame on anyone not Saudi, and then attack that country.
The 9/11 patsies were said to be “mostly Saudis”. New York was crawling with Mossad agents set up to film it ahead of time. Their Urban Moving company truck had a mural of a plane hitting the towers painted on it. I am not wanting to start a 911 thing here, but we need the investigation that Mueller (yes that one) didn’t conduct 17 years ago. I was foolish enough to actually think Obama would. Trump? Drain the swamp? He just went swimming.
Maybe the Russians did it!
Trump, like the Clintons, only cares about the money.
Well, at least he is honest about it, it’s kind of refreshing.
Good satire. In Trumpspeak, the truth is always the opposite of what he says.
Trump is a supreme narcissist who also cares about power and the praise from his followers. Look how he gets off on showing his big signature on his proclamations.
If Trump were the “Peace President” Justin Raimondo believes him to be, Trump would never have a better opportunity to end US support for the Saudi genocide in Yemen. But Trump has clearly stated that his top priority is to save the $110 billion arms deal with KSA. I wonder how Justin will spin Trump’s defense of the Saudi Royals? This is the same Trump who bombed Syria with no evidence that Assad was behind chemical attacks. If Trump won’t walk away from MBS after KSA murders a journalist, then it is time for Justin Raimondo to walk away from Trump. Here’s hoping.
Justin will just stick to reporting on the peace in North Korea and possible summits with Kim and Putin. He’s probably regretting Monday’s article since he missed on that one by a country mile.
I remember three years ago when Justin commended candidate Trump for having the courage to declare that if elected Trump would be neutral in the Israel/Palestine conflict.
I remember when trump came down the elevator, I thought, Pat Paulsen with no humor ? I looked him up, found a statement where he backed single payer health, huh who is this guy ? 20 minute search later had him all over the health spectrum. In trump, you can always find what you want to hear.
And he was right to commend Trump for that.
Of course, about five minutes later Trump found out how much campaign money was on the line and reversed himself completely and with vigor.
Peace appears not to be the major reason why Justin defends President Trump come hell or high water. It is that Trump is the first libertarian president since Reagan. The reason why Justin might break with Trump now is that deficits under libertarian governance are not supposed to go up even if these raises may be used to gut the social safety nets which is the supreme task of libertarianism.
Of course even Reagan was only a so-so libertarian. Somewhat suspect and so is Trump. Rand Paul thinks he is.
Reagan wasn’t “libertarian,” Trump isn’t “libertarian,” and Rand Paul has specifically contested the absurd idea that he’s “libertarian.”
None of those errors are surprising, though, seeing as how you obviously have no idea what the “supreme task of libertarianism” is (and in fact define it as one of its opposites).
Common mistake, Reagan era Republicans began “government is the problem ” rhetoric, and “no more big government”. They have repeated it ad nauseam for decades. This has led some to believe the GOP to be a quasi libertarian party. The actions of the GOP are exactly the opposite. Somewhere in tea party land, someone sold people that having no knowledge or experience in government would lead to a smaller more efficient government, to the embarrassment of libertarianism. If anything, the GOP game plan is to destroy government thru incompetence, and corruption, and looting of the treasury.
The problem is that most of our taxes go to war and the war industry, and the ever bigger government power this creates.
You can add the way we treated Putin and Russia with the alleged poisoning of the Skripals in Britain. America’s hypocrisy and double standards are breathtaking.
Turkey is a NATO ally hence there are sound reasons that our CIA already has copies of the material that President Trump is demanding. Hence he either grandstands or does not read the daily top-secret CIA reports.
Only a moron would believe anything Trump says. I give it to Trump though, he’s able to bang porn stars while his wife just had a baby, get Russians to help him win elections, and get dumb ass red neck farmers and ranchers to believe they where the forgotten men and women, and still get the evangelical votes. Say what you want about him but, he gets everything and delivers nothing in return. Trump got pornstar pu**y,they got called liars,Trump got Russian help during the elections and got elected ,Russians got more sanctions and the threat of the most massive military build up in history ,he gets farmers and ranchers votes ,they get a trade war with China and the E.U. that targets there industry costing them millions combined, the Evangelicals blindly voted for a man that, is helping a Saudi Muslim King cover up a murder over ,the business ties he has with the Saudis. Am I missing something? This is the guy the Antiwar site creator is claiming is the messiah? Antiwar people drink the kool-aid at this site at your own risk . Too much of this kool aid will have you blindly supporting a slick talking ,entitled ,spoiled ,man child, that people including Antiwars founder blindly supports. If you reply to my comments, don’t expect a response, Mr.Knapp set the settings to where I cannot respond because people where whining I was a bot or some kinda cyborg. Yeah, this really happened tells you alot about people’s mindset on this site,moderator included.
“This is the guy the Antiwar site creator is claiming is the messiah?”
Nope.
“Mr.Knapp set the settings to where I cannot respond”
Liar.
Ok Mr.Knapp than why am I allowed to respond on other sites with Disqus accounts? I’ll tell you why because, they didn’t fu*# with the Guest settings.
You can “tell me why” all you want.
The only setting in question is whether or not to allow commenting by guests. That setting is set to “yes” (screenshot attached).
Everything else relating to guest commenting is completely under the control of Disqus. I have no way whatsoever of allowing you to comment but forbidding you to reply, nor would I do that if I could.
Those are the facts. You don’t have to like them, nor does pretending that you consulted Disqus and got a different answer change them. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/adeb4d293f33bb7a184bf7e58314c8f0e56b893d9158701648825a4d064256df.png
In the scheme of things, one life however horrendously it ended, is not worth going hog wild in squandering our good relations with despotic Saudi Arabia, unless we plan an invasion of same, getting their vast oil resources.
Just because the person was a so-called journalist for the pitiful Washington Post, doesn’t make his life worth any more than a Yemeni or Palestinian, or an Iraqi for that matter.
“In the scheme of things”
True. If we didn’t have a problem with 15 of the 19 hijackers being Saudis or if we weren’t enabling their genocidal war on Yemen why should one journalist make us go “hog wild”? So, by all means, keep our “good relations” in good order.
But if he were a US soldier, he would become a hero, and the subject of national grieving.
Trump: ‘US Won’t Walk Away From Saudi Arabia Until Bibi Says So’.
FTFY
So ‘plausible deniability’ is the standard now set, but the plausibility is already quite slim. Trump is pretty much declaring that as long as MBS didn’t announce his order to execute that journalist in front of video cameras, no foul will be declared. But the damage is done and will continue… continuing to side with the Saudis will only further tarnish America’s standing and credibility.
No of course Trump won’t. The Saudis are the main conduit of support for ISIS. ISIS’s job was or is to replace Assad with a puppet vassal that will concede the Golan Heights permanently to Israel. Genie Energy a company owned by the inbred dynastic banker clans has the drilling rights to the oil there. The board of this company is a who’s who of Neocon war mongers like Michael Steinhardt, Dick Cheney, Marry Landrieu, Rupert Murdoch, Bill Richardson, Jacob Rothschild, Lawrence Summers, James Woolsey. They also want a pipeline across Syria opposed by Assad.
Trump has to chastise Saudi Arabia for a cold blooded murder . He does not have to walk away . WE have punished other countries only for suspicion of attempted murder . If we going to claim to moral standards we should have consistent moral standards .
What a difference from any sort of accusation against Russia! Punishment immediately-no investigation there!
Trump is the real Moslem. He dances with a sword with the medieval Saudi royalty. He’d like to being Saudi “law” to America.
Here is a question which-to the best of my knowledge- has not been publicly asked nor answered. If Mr. Khashoggi needed documents pertaining only to himself why did he have to go to a Saudi consulate in Turkey to pick them up? Why were these not made available at the Saudi embassy in Washington where the Saudi’s would not have dared to kill him? The almost certain answer is that it was a ruse to entrap him in the Saudi consulate of Istanbul.
Khashoggi’s fiancee is a crown witness. Did she volunteer to remain outside? Did Mr. Kashogghi ask her to remain outside? If so, was that his own decision or had he been asked to enter the consulate alone?
And who is that person standing just outside the door of the Saudi consulate when Mr. Khashoggi entered? A traditional doorman? A member of the killer team who signaled to the killers inside that Mr. Khashoggi was coming? Did he see the fiancee of Mr. Khashoggi? Did she see him?
All of these questions can be easily answered by Saudi and/or Turkish investigators. They are so simple that it is hard to believe that they have not yet been asked and answered.
“If Mr. Khashoggi needed documents pertaining only to himself why did he have to go to a Saudi consulate in Turkey to pick them up?”
The documents allegedly pertained to his upcoming marriage to a Turkish national.