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Comment by resters | Hacker News Reader

Public opinion about MBS was quite favorable a few short months ago, and it is this story alone that threatens it.

So those who claim MBS was responsible may be right or wrong. Without a clear definition of how his potential responsibility relates to US national interest, the matter isn’t even necessarily something the CIA should worry about at all.

By skipping that step and jumping right to PR to help fuel moral indignation in Americans, the CIA is way way way out of bounds.

The agency is not supposed to be a bunch of wise elders providing moral guidance, it’s supposed to protect national security.

Quite likely most senior CIA officials have far more blood on their hands than MBS.

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> Public opinion about MBS was quite favorable a few short months ago, and it is this story alone that threatens it.

No, also his prosecution of the war in Yemen.

> By skipping that step and jumping right to PR to help fuel moral indignation in Americans, the CIA is way way way out of bounds.

The US at its best stands up for a free press, and against, for example, authoritarian states being free to murder their critics worldwide.

> Quite likely most senior CIA officials have far more blood on their hands than MBS.

In the light of Saudi Arabia's actions in Yemen, this statement is clearly false.

This is absurd. Who is selling SA the weapons it will use in Yemen.

> This is absurd. Who is selling SA the weapons it will use in Yemen.

Everyone who gets a chance? (-a few European countries who stopped recently.)

The fact that other governments are involved does not make SA's actions less bad.

This is whataboutism. Both are horrid: Corporations in the United States that build and sell weapons with the permission of the US government, other western governments and corporations that do the same as well. Yeah, horrid.

It doesn't excuse the fact that SA and MBS are also horrible.

Not at all. To qualify I would need to be defending MBS.

On balance the US causes substantially more human suffering in the world than all other terror groups and despots combined.

It’s strange that character attacks on MBS work so well to make Americans assume that the US must be the good guy.

In the US there is a tremendous appeal to the narrative that the US is the (relative) good guy. American exceptionalism is a religion and it easily leverages the widespread white suoremecist views of Americans who already mistrust the brown folks.

So beware of reinforcing the American exceptionalism dogma when you cite “whataboutism”. It is often budled into that critique.

The CIA does not manufacture or sell weapons, and it doesn't set weapons sales policies. War profiteering American military industrial complex companies manufacture, sell, and lobby to make this possible. The allowance for the arms sales is made possible by the legislative and executive branches, so you can blame primarily POTUS and the Senate for not just the arms sales, the very definition of blood money, but also funding the military logistics the American military has been providing to Saudi Arabia for the deaths of Yemeni civilians. But the people pulling the trigger are the Saudis.

The war in Yemen has been going on for years, and started during the Obama administration. I'm glad it's finally getting the bad press it deserves, but that's as likely a consequence of the press beating up on the Saudi government as a cause of it.

>In the light of Saudi Arabia's actions in Yemen, this statement is clearly false.

First, the CIA actions in Iraq make this almost certainly true. Yemen is a minor conflict in comparison. Even still, Saudi actions could not happen without the US. The blockade could not take place without US assistance, the bombs being dropped are from US manufacturing, and the raids dropping the bombs could not happen without US intelligence and air support.

>The US at its best stands up for a free press, and against, for example, authoritarian states being free to murder their critics worldwide.

The US murders journalists.

Not when it can contract that out to the Saudi government then help them cover it up. But yes, your point is well taken. It was just more convenient to have MBS murder that particular Washington Post reporter, this time. But the other "enemies of the people" are on notice that they'd better watch their mouths and asses.

There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that the US contracted out this murder to SA, or even approved it before the fact. Your post is warrantless speculation masquerading as obvious truth. This helps damage trust in your already fragile democracy. Please don't do that.

> Without a clear definition of how his potential responsibility relates to US national interest, the matter isn’t even necessarily something the CIA should worry about at all.

The free press is one of the cornerstones of US national interest; allowing our journalists to be murdered because they said something about a foreign power is a threat to that.

Uh, the US has prosecuted its own journalists recently, demanding life in prison.

This has nothing to do with press freedom whatsoever.

And yet, Julian Assange is facing extradition for being a journalist (And earlier, the Trump administration was looking to extradite an American journalist to Turkey.)

The free press isn't a cornerstone of national interest - it is a sometimes useful, but often inconvenient tool.

China currently has dozens of journalists "in jail" meaning they are most likely dead and the US media hasn't said a peep. Shouldn't they be calling for sanctions against them, rather than attack Trump for doing just that with his tariffs?

From "Manufacturing Consent" -

"A propaganda system will consistently portray people abused in enemy states as worthy victims, whereas those treated with equal or greater severity by its own government or clients will be unworthy"

>>By skipping that step and jumping right to PR to help fuel moral indignation in Americans, the CIA is way way way out of bounds.

What if CIA was told to do so? Apparently the SA has not paid /signed by it's deadline for a major weapons purchase. 15B I think... and oil is lower now. So CIA is to serve our interests and has the prince by the b*lls. CIA might even get their entire budget paid by this episode. Oil is under $50 a barrel now or $30+ lower

I am pretty sure Erdogan would not that outraged if the Saudis cut him a deal too.

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