C.I.A. Concludes That Saudi Crown Prince Ordered Khashoggi Killed
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
After all the photo-ops among executives at Apples, Google and FB it looks embarrassing to have a photo with a possible murderer out there. Or from the PR perspective, it's best to keep quiet and not remind the public at all and hope no one would bring it up?
Silicon Valley should have made a public statement a long time ago about what MBS is doing to Yemen. It's quite ridiculous that being directly responsible for the deaths of thousands is A-OK, but ohhh kill one journalist and the western world loses their shit.
You also seem to be implying that African and Latin American people are just naturally more corrupt than the inhabitants of other nations which is a kinda bizarre theory.
As an example look at Botswana. They are moderately well-off only because of low corruption and strong internal organization even though their neighbors are incredibly corrupt and have frequent political/military turmoil.
Yemen is the poorest country in that part of the world and poses no threat to SA.
The only reason the US aides SA in bombing and starving Yemen is they asked.
I would argue that the Western world largely didn't care, but the journalistic class which controls a large chunk of what people think is happening had a tantrum. This was not a "look at what Trump did this week" tantrum, but rather a "these guys just killed one of us, YOU HAVE TO CARE" tantrum.
You can tell it's this because the journalists themselves don't really care that he died trying to expose what is happening in Yemen - they only care that a fellow journalist died a fairly gruesome death.
Expecting the press to be objective or reasonable where their own prerogatives and interests are concerned is foolish.
You so funny.
Did you see WeWork just raising money from Softbank a week or two ago?
When SV's virtue signaling meets demands in rent, SV virtue becomes dropping on its knees in front of anyone who would give it money.
Privately ($ with a B in the front of it), let's be real, would you ?
Still, always interesting to see how much more important one US resident is versus thousands of Yemeni civilians.
The only thing that made this different is that this time there were some people in power who decided to make it a big deal.
As for people in power making the Khashoggi case a big deal, that would be the Turkish government. They have many reasons for disliking the Saudi leadership, so many I won’t even try.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-sponsored_terrorism#Sa...
The problem with the Saudis is they are very sloppy with their money, pretty incompetent and see certain forms if jihadism as legitimate. The incompetence means they often act counterproductively. Those are all problems and the western world needs to try to manage and limit the damage they cause. However hallucinating conspiracy crap on top of that just obscures the picture and makes tackling the real problems a lot more difficult.
[1] https://nypost.com/2017/09/09/saudi-government-allegedly-fun...
Saudis have long memories about this.
What would the purpose of such a show be? Before the whole thing, US relations with Arabia were much more positive than US public opinion toward Arabia. If the US wanted to distance itself from Arabia, it wouldn't need to swing public opinion by staging a show trial; public opinion was already there.
Also the investigation was not a show. It highlighted extreme abuse of power.
The Saudis repeated changing of the story was the real show.
It's almost never big news. This is far from the first journalist Saudi Arabia has killed for opposing the Royal Family, plus who knows how many Yemeni journalists have been killed over the past few years.
>Also the investigation was not a show. It highlighted extreme abuse of power.
The event itself highlights this, the investigation was barely necessary. The Saudis changing their story was a naked delay tactic that was likely coordinated with the "investigators."
I'd love to be proven wrong, but years of watching the media only care when there's some strong US connection has left me too cynical.
Just like the supreme court can't cover every case that exists, the media can't cover every story that exists.
I guess they both have to pick the most powerful stories/case to cover that sets precedent and can be applied to other similar stories/cases going forward.
Which is what happened with Kashoggi.
This isn’t to say that the US should care less about a non-US person, but that the issues with violation of state sovereignty (aka Westphalian sovereignty) are too grave to advocate action.
If this is the issue, the US should not start/participate/assist in wars that violate international law, should not run a drone strike program that allows an arbitrary death sentence without any trial, should stop their policy of regime change and interference in foreign governments, and the countless other ways we usurp sovereignty.
In theory I completely agree with you, but this bridge has long since been crossed, and I doubt that it is the reason the media only cares if there is a tie to the US.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/michael-morell-apologizes-colin...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_involvement_in_Contra_co...
https://www.cnn.com/2013/08/19/politics/cia-iran-1953-coup/
Why do people still take their statements, and even their leaks, as truth?
(If the CIA's behavior with Saddam and Osama are precedent, we might want to mentally prepare to hear the stupidest war rally speach of all time.)
The CIA in this case is merely reflecting the sentiments of countless govts, news agencies, and individuals.
The evidence included an intercept showing a member of the kill team calling an aide to Prince Mohammed and saying “tell your boss” that the mission was accomplished.
It's a big change. The Saudi's have been instrumental for decades in the foreign policy of the US in the middle east. And that's despite al queeda, IS, etc being founded by Saudi's and openly funded by them. For decades it was very convenient for the US to provide active military support to the Saudi's in various ugly wars by proxy in the region and look the other way when it came to such things like genocide, occasional bombing of schools, hospitals, etc., Muslim extremists, and public beheadings.
However, recent focus on energy independence and a string of embarrassing incidents around e.g. Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, etc. seems to be souring the relationship. Times are changing.
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/if-trump-sacrifices-fe...
Erdoğan wants him, but in return for what? Maybe preventing the audio of the killing ending up on YouTube (or otherwise made public). If the CIA is saying MBS ordered the killing, the effect is maybe the same.
Also: why does the CIA care what happens to Gulen?
Talk about win-win-win!
If all fails, he has the right to ask for political asylum. A judge would grant him one in light of what's going on in Turkey with tens of thousands rounded up overnight and jailed. Will he get a fair trial in Turkey? We pretty much know the answer
> The Central Intelligence Agency has concluded that the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, ordered the killing of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, according to American officials
2. Leaked to a liberal-leaning news source as opposed to one more friendly to conservatives. Don't know what to make of that decision either but it was a conscious one.
3. What were they hoping to accomplish by making it public?
Most obvious explanation: they leaked this because they didn't trust the White House to tell the public about this; they feared the White House would simply bury this finding in order to maintain their relationship with Saudi Arabia.
Alternate explanation: The White House leaked it themselves. Gives them an "excuse" to punish Saudi Arabia while claiming they had no choice in the matter since the "CIA leak" tied their hands. In other words, they are attempting to eat their cake and have it too... punishing the Saudis and trying to maintain a good relationship with them.
(folks, why the downvotes? If you don't want politics on HN, fine, but I didn't post the story. I just replied to it... and I hardly feel my post here is partisan or negative in any way...)
Prediction: The White House is going to maintain its relationship with Saudi Arabia anyways. All this might do is force the administration to make some sort of symbolic gesture of finger wagging at them.
As for why, this story attracted a lot of attention from journalists, many of whom knew him. This story is being released when the professionals are the only ones paying attention, Friday evening, and is meant to reassure them that the CIA is taking care of this.
As for why the NYT, them and the Post regularly do this for the CIA, and the Post would be a poor choice.