Who was behind the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. Saudi Arabia was, but to hear President Trump tell it in his latest daily diatribe on how he’s not going to punish Saudi Arabia, we’re really all to blame, except of course for the Saudis.
After his usual praise of the Saudis’ vast wealth, Trump declared that “maybe the world should be held accountable, because the world is a vicious place. The world is a very, very vicious place.” He went on to complain about China.
That leaves the Saudis, as ever, safely off the hook, with Trump insisting they are creating “really tremendous jobs” and keeping oil prices down. He also claimed Israel couldn’t exist in the Middle East without Saudi help.
Trump further disavowed the CIA assessment that the Saudi crown prince ordered the murder, saying he thinks the CIA just had “feelings” that was the case. Even if it was true, he mocked the notion of giving up “hundreds of thousands of jobs” and having the standard of not allying with people who assassinate reporters.
“Frankly, if we went by this standard, we wouldn’t be able to have anybody as an ally,” Trump added. It is not clear why President Trump continues to try to feign uncertainty about the Saudi murder, when even the Saudis are pretty clear they murdered the journalist. His position at this point is that the Saudis are secure in their alliance no matter what they do.
Meanwhile the junior senator from Tennessee, Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, is teeing off on El Trumpo–
> denounces Trump Saudi decision
> “astounded” by Trump statement on Saudi Arabia
> ‘took our nation to a very low level’
Bob Corker is right . If the United States is going to be a moral country Saudi Arabia should be rebuked for these kind of crimes . Making weapon sales should not affect our moral values . But in government way to often moral values seem to take second place to economic values .
from Moon of Alabama
https://www.moonofalabama.org/images7/MbSTurkey-s.jpg
Sure do like your picture I wonder how the crown prince likes it .
Based on the words that come out of Trumps mouth he should have an approval rating in the low single digits. I just don’t understand how anybody can still back this twit.
I don’t know if you’ve checked out a trump rally, but these fools are literally acting like they’re at a pentecostal revival. Eyes closed, arms up waving in the air…it’s the closest thing you’re gonna get to a nazi rally this side of the ukraine…
Pentecostals are a long way from NAZIs
You’re being disingenuous. You know you are, and just trolling. I hope you enjoy watching this slow motion train wreck undermine everything that actually makes America great and keeps turning it into a fearful police state, so long as the Dear Leader keeps us safe from the Mexican rapists. Eyeroll.
Maybe the world really is a vicious place?
Maybe not, his approval ratings probably are in the low single digits outside of the US. Not that they are mutually exclusive.
Get rid of the political parties. That will get rid of the people that vote for a political party’s candidate regardless of any facts or truth about that candidate. Americans would vote for a group of candidates based on their merits and not their party! The leading vote-getters are then placed in office and MUST do their jobs within the scope of what’s expected AND legal and also, of course, Constitutional. If they don’t do their jobs by the letter of the law then a panel of Federal judges will decide his(her) fate. This way the laws DO apply to everyone, not just people with power and connections and money. The current two-party monopoly on American politics allows these powerful people to use the Democratic and Republican parties as tools to “divide and control” the American people instead of representing them! I guess Trump couldn’t stay an “outsider” long enough to clean the swamp! When in Rome . . .
“Get rid of the political parties.”
And how would you go about doing that?
“If they don’t do their jobs by the letter of the law then a panel of Federal judges will decide his(her) fate.”
And if the federal judges are just political flacks who decide that anyone not affiliated with their group isn’t doing “their jobs by the letter of the law?”
Maybe you think to much Thomas
It’s not something that can happen overnight or be legislated into existence. The dissolution of the two major parties may lead to a period where a mosaic of smaller parties appear, largely platform based and seeking to enfranchise what amounts to a political tribe.
We’re still really in the infancy of the information age. The effect communication technology has had on politics is profound. It’s having an evolutionary effect where more people are able to communicate on a much deeper and meaningful way than they ever have before. Bridging not only distance and geographical barriers, but also societal ones such as language and culture.
We may see a resurgence and re-imagining of the political movements that defined the end of the 19 and beginning of the 20th centuries. Due to the forces of economics, the argument over the necessity and role of an American empire will once again come to the fore. Perhaps Mark Twain’s ghost will have the last laugh on that one, if we can avoid another Wilson.
We back Trump more for what he does than what he says .
Do you back him for:
His Appointees? Especially Haley, Bolton and Pompeo?
His first official visit? To Saudi Arabia where he rubbed orbs and sword danced with headchoppers while vilifying Iran with tired bulls**t?
Escalating in Afghanistan? Dropping the MOAB? Lifting rules of engagement resulting in more civilians being killed?
Doing two missile attacks on Syria based on zilch for evidence that Assad was responsible?
Enabling the Saudis to continue and even escalate in the Yemen war he inherited from Obama that is an ongoing humanitarian disaster?
How about dropping out of the JCPOA?
Increasing the bloated defense budget?
Moving the Embassy?
You stated all the things I don’t back Trump for with the exception of moving the Embassy to Jerusalem .I back Trump on that . I back him on curtailing the funding for the none existent rebels , allowing Russia and Syria to keep Assad , Trying to keep U.S borders secure , trying to stop Islamic terrorists from coming into our country as refugees , canceling the homosexual agenda in our schools and embassies around the world . making a lasting possibility of peace in Korea . Come to think of it Trump is not at all perfect . But generally speaking I can’t think of one single thing our last three presidents did that I could generally agree was O.K. So I consider Trump a great improvement at least .
You really don’t sound like you back him all that much either. And thank gOD he nipped that homosexual thing in the bud especially being able to do it in the embassies around the world. So impressive.
His actions are almost as erratic as the words that stumble out of his face orifice. He’s threatened North Korea and Iran with violence “the likes of which the world has never seen,” he’s overseen a continuously bloated Pentagon budget he openly wishes were bigger, and he’s turned administration of our illegal wars over to “his” (career) generals. He hasn’t done anything positive in the foreign policy realm that wouldn’t have happened without his presence. He is, however, tamping down on bipartisanship by labeling anyone who disagrees with him as a liar and/or evil, which his brain dead and/or ever fearful and weak supporters eat up with a big spoon. I’m sorry you got sucked in by the most blatantly obvious used-car-salesman bullsh*t artist of his generation, and amazed that anyone would take this clown seriously, but I guess(?) he pushes your buttons.
The current president may want to look up the farewell message of the first and best … Paraphrase: no permanent and entangling alliances. Seriously, we need Saudis as allies why?
Their straregy, purposely or happenstance, appears to be working, betraying a brain dead statecraft and moral depravity too. Jamal who..?
But there is the sticky wicket, of the unaccounted for disposal of the body. Maybe they would be better off with the Obama “,buried at sea” than this current “disolvned in acid” scenario sloshing around the net and netwerks. As they so cluelessly have proceed thus far, one can only imagine what blunders lay in wait as they work to paper over the glaring of the missing body.
Yup, gotta admit, Obama was very neat and suave. Torture and Guantanamo a problem ? Jes missile em where they are….Dead body ?…..dumped in the ocean…all with style and manners.
Obama at least made mouth noises about closing Guantanamo. Maybe the same Deep State that’s keeping dovish Trump from his obvious anti-war goals restrained Obama, hmm? But Trump has openly remarked that torture works. That he believes ww should put more people in Guantanamo. The end result is the same, but the fact that of the current executive had his way, we’d continue torture with his blessing and lock up even more people who were in the wrong wedding party at the wrong time in Kabul or wherever.
I’ll give Trump credit for being fairly honest that he has no intention of doing anything, and that if we stopped allying ourselves with murderous regimes we would no longer have any allies. Then we shouldn’t have any allies!
But here is where the reasoning is always backwards from reality: “to maintain a relationship with a country it considers a vital counterweight to Iran.” The Saudis and Israel want the US to be in conflict with Iran far more than the US intrinsically does. We can’t dispense with the Saudi alliance because we need Saudi help to do the Saudi bidding of knocking off a regional rival of Saudi Arabia who doesn’t threaten the US in any meaningful way?
Acknowledging the flawed reasoning in that question would admit that America doesn’t set it’s own foreign policy based on its own national interests, which is about the last thing Trump will be willing to do. BTW for all her feisty words Sen Shaheen (D) seems to have almost exactly the same position as Trump.
Well, if that is the case then all of this vicious world must also be accountable for the murders in the Synagogue. And the assassination of JFK. And 9/11. And the killing of Czar Nicholas II and his family. And…well, I must begin my daily sleep starting about 10 hours from now which means that I must have stopped creating this list by then. Impossible!
I was constantly told when I was a child that the “world is what you make of it”. This is especially true of an American President! Unfortunately, this power has been used by special interests to fatten their wallets practically since the beginning of the American republic! JFK was in a position as President to threaten to make radical changes that would have called for “sacrifices” among the wealthy in this nation. Their massive wealth was being threatened, particularly by Kennedy’s stance AGAINST wars in Cuba and Viet Nam and Laos. Add to this his covert communication with Russian Premier Nikita Khrushchev, which I’m sure many in DC knew about, and you have massive amounts of prospective military/industrial profits being threatened. The very WAR industry was being gagged by JFK’s diplomatic approaches. Jesus Christ Himself would be brutalized if He was in a position to stop wars. Actually , come to think of it, He was!
Tomorrow Trump will blame Sasquatch for killing Khashoggi. By Sunday he’ll be blaming Free-form Jazz and the common cold…. Stay tuned….
Note how no one bothers to check the “100’s of thousands of jobs” claim that really should never be an issue in the first place ?
This is just admitting that our economy is based upon mass murder and genocide as well as the destruction of infrastructure for the sake of procuring sweetheart no-bid contracts to rebuild what gets blown up.
When you make reality and morality a commodity, anything goes. We could create another “100,000” jobs if we started another civil war here in the US.
Any takers ?? We could Bezos the headquarters for each side and build fences around every state so people had to stand under the bombs.
Just think of how well the “investors” would do lending money to both sides while strategizing to make it last forever while killing all those “others” that weren’t born to rich parents !!
After delivering a Thanksgiving Day message to troops deployed to Afghanistan, a poor country which has been assaulted by the US for seventeen years and felt the impact of over five thousand US bombs this year, the Commander-in-Chief said that the world is a very, very vicious place.
Trump’s “the world is a vicious place” probably derives from the National Defense Strategy published earlier this year. Actually the NDS is a bunch of baloney, with its fake military threats against US national security. It’s only. . .
>China is a strategic competitor
>Russia has violated the borders of nearby nations
>Inter-state strategic competition, not terrorism, is now the primary concern in U.S. national security.
China is an economic competitor. It doesn’t have hundreds of military bases and ongoing wars in other Asian countries as the US does. Russia’s “violation of borders” is nothing compared to widespread US military attacks, invasions and occupations throughout the world.
The US is unable to accept economic competition and far-away border skirmishes, and needs a massive military buildup? No.
The situation the US is most unhappy with is the “weakening, post-WWII international order” which includes a change from a uni-polar world with the US as the big dog, to a multi-polar world where competition is a factor and peaceful foreign policies prevail, features that the US has not had to deal with but needs to. War is not the answer, getting along with others is essential.
So much for “the world is a vicious place.”
What Saudi Arabia did Khashooggi Is the same as what the USA wants to do Assange only we won’t call prison for life murder . Government leaders don’t like to be critisized
Money TRUMPS all.