I find it deeply disturbing that this was known by the US intelligence community the entire time yet they were suppressed from sharing publicly because of certain people being compromised. Ugh.
The US and the world must decarbonize to remove the power from these feudal, vicious "drug dealers." The US wouldn't need to protect SA if most of NATO countries' energy could be had elsewhere. It would be essential to remove nukes and military arms from SA and Iran to ensure peace in the region.
I think there are other interests beyond oil also:
- MIC: weapon sales and US military budget justification
- Focal-point for US proxy conflict with global adversaries
- Monetize Iran - Saudi Arabia tensions; simultaneously stoking it and tempering it
Getting away from oil, normalizing relations with Iran, and bringing SA and Iran closer together would work against the above interests but would deescalate tensions and obviate a major pretext for regional imperial occupation.
I'd argue it is up to US intelligence and the current Administration to make these decisions, or at least that's how the system is designed - and I would agree that any systems needs to be selective in what information is public - radical political honesty works about as well as radical social honesty, just with even more terrible consequences.
That's not to say 'there aren't problems with this, the most pressing being how to trust the authorities involved, especially when they are essentially given the means to bury their crimes, and control the very information by which their actions may be (democratically) measured - but I guess these are the paradox of the modern, democratic mega-nation.
I seriously don't know why it makes the news now.
* US military action anywhere
* CIA kidnapping and torture of US and non-US nationals
* US sponsored regimes and regime changes around the world
That's a decent start.