WHO IS FINANCING ALL THE TRUMP AND SON-IN-LAW’S REFINANCING SCAMS???
FOLLOW THE MONEY!
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/10/swamp-keeper-trump-claims-fake-news-is.html
"I doubt that Trump understands -- or cares about --
what message he's sending. Wealthy Saudis, including members of the extended
royal family, have been his patrons for years, buying his distressed properties
when he needed money. In the early 1990s, a Saudi prince purchased Trump's
flashy yacht so that the then-struggling businessman could come up with cash to
stave off personal bankruptcy, and later, the prince bought a share of the
Plaza Hotel, one of Trump's many business deals gone bad. Trump also sold an
entire floor of his landmark Trump Tower condominium to the Saudi government in
2001."
“The Wahhabis finance thousands of
madrassahs throughout the world where young boys are brainwashed into becoming
fanatical foot-soldiers for the petrodollar-flush Saudis and other emirs of the
Persian Gulf.” AMIL
IMANI
I recommend that Ignatius read Raymond
Ibrahim's outstanding book Sword and Scimitar, which contains accounts of dynastic
succession in the Muslim monarchies of the Middle East, where standard
operating procedure for a new monarch on the death of his father was to
strangle all his brothers. Yes, it's awful. But it has
been happening for a very long time. And it's not going to change
quickly, no matter how outraged we pretend to be. MONICA SHOWALTER
TRUMP AND THE MURDERING 9-11 MUSLIM SAUDIS…
Why is the Swamp Keeper and his family of
parasites up their ar$es??
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2019/03/trump-and-9-11-murdering-saudis-will-he.html
WHAT WILL TRUMP AND
HIS PARASITIC FAMILY DO FOR MONEY???
JUST ASK THE
SAUDIS!
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2019/03/trump-flees-to-mar-swamp-amidst-mueller.html
JOHN DEAN: Not so far. This has been right by the letter of the special counsel’s
charter. He’s released the document. What I’m looking for is relief and
understanding that there’s no witting or unwitting likelihood that the
President is an agent of Russia. That’s when I’ll feel comfortable, and no
evidence even hints at that. We don’t have that yet. We’re still in the process
of unfolding the report to look at it. And its, as I say, if [Attornery General
William Barr] honors his word, we’ll know more soon.
WHAT WILL TRUMP AND
HIS PARASITIC FAMILY DO FOR MONEY???
JUST ASK THE
SAUDIS!
*
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2019/03/trump-flees-to-mar-swamp-amidst-mueller.html
*
JOHN DEAN: Not
so far. This has been right by the letter of the special counsel’s charter.
He’s released the document. What I’m looking for is relief and
understanding that there’s no witting or unwitting likelihood that the
President is an agent of Russia. That’s when I’ll feel comfortable, and no
evidence even hints at that. We don’t have that yet. We’re still in the process
of unfolding the report to look at it. And its, as I say, if [Attornery General
William Barr] honors his word, we’ll know more soon.
“Our
entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and
Republican
alike, has become a kleptocracy
approaching
par with third-world hell-holes. This
is the
way a great country is raided by its elite.” ---
-
Karen McQuillan AMERICAN THINKER
PRESIDENT of the UNITED STATES DONALD TRUMP: Pathological
liar, swindler, con man, huckster, golfing cheat, charity foundation fraudster,
tax evader, adulterer, porn whore chaser and servant of the Saudis dictators
Opinion: Trump And
Pompeo Have Enabled A Saudi Cover-Up Of The Khashoggi Killing
In the weeks
following the death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, President Trump spent
more time praising Saudi Arabia as a very important ally than he did
reacting to the killing.
Hasan Jamali/AP
Aaron David Miller
(@aarondmiller2) is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace and a former State Department Middle East analyst, adviser and negotiator
in Republican and Democratic administrations. He is the author most recently of
the End of Greatness: Why America Can't Have (and Doesn't Want)
Another Great President.
Richard Sokolsky, a nonresident
senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, worked in the
State Department for six different administrations and was a member of the
secretary of state's Office of Policy Planning from 2005 to 2015.
It has been
a year since Saudi journalist and Washington
Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi entered Saudi Arabia's
Consulate in Istanbul where he was slain and dismembered. There is still no
objective or comprehensive Saudi or American accounting of what occurred, let
alone any real accountability.
The Saudi
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's admission in a recent CBS interview that
he takes "full responsibility," while denying foreknowledge of the
killing or that he ordered it, sweeps under the rug the lengths to which the
Saudis have gone to obscure the truth about their involvement in the killing
and cover-up.
The Saudi campaign of obfuscation, denial and cover-up would never
have gotten off the ground had it not been for the Trump administration's
support over the past year. The president and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
not only refused to distance themselves from the crown prince, known by his
initials MBS, but also actively worked to relegitimize him. The Saudis killed
Khashoggi but Trump acquiesced in the cover-up and worked hard to protect the
U.S.-Saudi relationship and soften the crown prince's pariah status. In short,
without Trump, the attempted makeover — such as it is — would not have been
possible.
The
Saudis killed Khashoggi but Trump acquiesced in the cover-up and worked hard to
protect the U.S.-Saudi relationship and soften the crown prince's pariah
status.
Weak administration response
The administration's weak and feckless
response to Khashoggi's killing was foreshadowed a year before it occurred. In
May 2017, in an unusual break with precedent, Trump visited Saudi Arabia on his
inaugural presidential trip; gave his son-in-law the authority to manage the
MBS file, which he did with the utmost secrecy; and made it unmistakably clear
that Saudi money, oil, arm purchases and support for the administration's
anti-Iranian and pro-Israeli policies would elevate the U.S.-Saudi
"special relationship" to a new level.
Predictably,
therefore, the administration's reaction to Khashoggi's killing was shaped by a
desire to manage the damage and preserve the relationship. In the weeks
following Khashoggi's death, Trump spent more time praising Saudi Arabia as a
very important ally, especially as a purchaser of U.S. weapons and goods, than he did reacting to the killing. Trump
vowed to get to the bottom of the Khashoggi killing but focused more on
defending the crown prince, saying this was another example of
being "guilty before being proven innocent."
Those
pledges to investigate and impose accountability would continue to remain
hollow. Over the past year, Trump and Pompeo have neither criticized nor
repudiated Saudi actions that have harmed American interests in the Middle
East. Two months after Khashoggi's death, the administration, in what Pompeo
described as an "initial step," imposed sanctions on 17
Saudi individuals implicated in the killing. But no others have been
forthcoming, and the visa restrictions that were imposed are meaningless
because none of the sanctioned Saudis would
be foolish enough to seek entry into the United States.
What's more,
the administration virtually ignored a congressional
resolution imposing sanctions on the Saudis for human rights abuses
and vetoed another bipartisan resolution that would have ended U.S. military
assistance to Saudi Arabia's inhumane military campaign in Yemen.
The Saudis
opened a trial in January of 11 men implicated in the killing, but the
proceedings have been slow and secretive, leading the United Nations' top human
rights expert to declare that "the trial underway in Saudi Arabia will not
deliver credible accountability." Despite accusations that the crown
prince's key adviser Saud al-Qahtani was involved in the killing, he's still
advising MBS, has not stood trial and
will likely escape punishment. A year later, there are still no reports of
convictions or serious punishment.
Legitimizing Mohammed bin
Salman
The Trump
administration has not only given the crown prince a pass on the Khashoggi
killing, but it has also worked assiduously to remove his pariah status and
rehabilitate his global image. Barely two months after the 2018 slaying, Trump
was exchanging pleasantries with the crown prince at the
Group of 20 summit in Buenos Aires and holding out prospects
of spending more time with him. Then this past June, at the G-20 in Osaka,
Japan, Trump sang his praises while dodging questions about the killing.
"It's an honor to be with the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, a friend of
mine, a man who has really done things in the last five years in terms of
opening up Saudi Arabia," Trump said.
And you can
bet that when Saudi Arabia hosts the G-20, scheduled to be held in its capital
of Riyadh in November 2020, the Trump administration will be smiling as its
rehab project takes another step in its desired direction.
What the U.S. should have done
Trump has
failed to impose any serious costs or constraints on Saudi Arabia for the
killing of a U.S. newspaper columnist who resided in Virginia or for the
kingdom's aggressive policies, from Yemen to Qatar. In the wake of the
Khashoggi killing, the administration should have made it unmistakably clear,
both publicly and privately, that it expected a comprehensive and credible
accounting and investigation. It
should have suspended high-level contacts and arms sales with the kingdom for a
period of time. And to make the point, the administration should have supported
at least one congressional resolution taking the Saudis to task, in addition to
triggering the Magnitsky Act, which would have required a U.S. investigation; a
report to Congress; and sanctions if warranted.
Back to business as usual
The dark
stain of the crown prince's apparent involvement in Khashoggi's death will not
fade easily. But for Trump and Pompeo, it pales before the great expectations
they still maintain for the kingdom to confront and contain their common enemy,
Iran, as well as support the White House's plan for Middle East peace, defeat
jihadists in the region and keep the oil spigot open.
Most of
these goals are illusory. Saudi Arabia is a weak, fearful and unreliable ally.
The kingdom has introduced significant social and cultural reforms but has
imposed new levels of repression and authoritarianism. Its reckless policies
toward Yemen and Qatar have expanded, not contracted, opportunities for Iran,
while the Saudi military has demonstrated that, even after spending billions to
buy America's most sophisticated weapons, it still can't defend itself without
American help.
Meanwhile,
recent attacks on critical Saudi oil facilities that the U.S. blames on Iran
have helped rally more American and international support for the kingdom.
When it
comes to the U.S.-Saudi relationship and the kingdom's callous reaction to
Khashoggi's killing, the president and his secretary of state have been
derelict in their duty: They have not only failed to advance American strategic
interests but also undermined America's values in the process.
New 'threat' against former Saudi spy in Canada: media
A former senior Saudi intelligence official who has accused
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of trying to have him assassinated in 2018 has
been placed under heightened security after a new threat on his life, a
Canadian newspaper reported.
The Globe and Mail said Canadian security services had been
informed of a new attempted attack on Saad Aljabri, who lives at an undisclosed
location in the Toronto region.
Aljabri served as a counterespionage chief under a rival prince,
Mohammed bin Nayef, who was ousted in 2017 by Prince Mohammed.
The newspaper said its source -- someone "with knowledge of
the situation" -- would provide no further details on the more recent
threat by Saudi agents.
Aljabri is now under protection by "heavily armed"
officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, as well as private guards, the
news report said.
In a lawsuit filed Thursday with a court in Washington, Aljabri
accused Prince Mohammed of having sent a hit squad to Canada to kill and
dismember him in 2018, the same fate that two weeks earlier befell dissident
Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey.
Aljabri's suit said he was wanted dead because he had intimate
knowledge of Prince Mohammed's activities that could sour the close
relationship being fostered with the Trump administration in Washington.
Asked to comment on the Globe report, Mary-Liz Power,
spokeswoman for Minister of Public Safety Bill Blair, directed a reporter to an
earlier comment by Blair about the 2018 attempt.
"While we cannot comment on specific allegations currently
before the courts," he said then, "we are aware of incidents in which
foreign actors have attempted to monitor, intimidate or threaten Canadians and
those living in Canada.
"It is completely unacceptable and we will never tolerate
foreign actors threatening Canada's national security or the safety of our
citizens and residents."
Aljabri was already abroad in June 2017 when Prince Mohammed
seized power, removing Prince Nayef as crown prince and placing him under house
arrest.
After his children in Riyadh were hit with travel restrictions,
Aljabri refused entreaties to return, fearing for his life, and moved to
Canada, where a son lives.
In March his children in Saudi Arabia were taken away and
haven't been heard from.
The suit against Prince Mohammed and several others was filed as
a claim of attempted extrajudicial killing under the Torture Victim Protection
Act. Aljabri asked the court for unspecified damages.
TRUMP AND HIS SAUDIS
https://townhall.com/columnists/lindachavez/2018/10/19/the-saudi-challenge-n2529694
The Saudi Challenge
Jamal Khashoggi's murder
-- and no one now questions whether the Washington Post contributor was killed
by Saudi agents in the kingdom's consulate in Turkey -- has far-reaching
implications for the Trump administration. President Donald Trump appears to
want to help sweep the incident under the rug, providing cover for the Saudis'
ludicrous suggestion that the killing was a rogue operation or an interrogation
gone awry. And he's enmeshed the highest officials of his administration in the
mess by sending Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Riyadh, where the secretary
was photographed, all smiles, sitting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman,
who most likely ordered Khashoggi's murder. The administration is giving itself
little leeway to take serious measures to protest the killing, signaling to the
world that the U.S. cannot be counted on to stand up against bloodthirsty
autocrats, even when a U.S. resident and member of the American press is the
victim.
I doubt
that Trump understands -- or cares about -- what message he's sending. Wealthy
Saudis, including members of the extended royal family, have been his patrons
for years, buying his distressed properties when he needed money. In the early
1990s, a Saudi prince purchased Trump's flashy yacht so that the
then-struggling businessman could come up with cash to stave off personal
bankruptcy, and later, the prince bought a share of the Plaza Hotel, one of Trump's
many business deals gone bad. Trump also sold an entire floor of his landmark
Trump Tower condominium to the Saudi government in 2001. During
the campaign, the Trump Organization registered more than a half-dozen limited
liability companies in the kingdom, in anticipation of cashing in on Trump's
enhanced renown. When Trump actually won (which apparently he didn't think he
would at the time), someone must have explained he couldn't move ahead with new
business there as president, because he withdrew the registrations. Of course,
a little thing like benefiting from the office of the presidency hasn't stopped
the Trump Organization, run by the president's two eldest sons, from accepting
Saudi largesse since the election. With many Trump properties and brands losing
customers in today's highly polarized political atmosphere, Saudis are spending
lavishly on Trump properties in Washington, New York and even Chicago as many
others avoid them.
But if Trump doesn't get
why looking the other way when an American journalist is tortured, beheaded and
hacked to pieces by a team of Saudi government operatives is bad, surely
national security adviser John Bolton and Secretary Pompeo do. Autocrats are
stepping up their game around the world. Russian President Vladimir Putin
didn't hesitate to order a hit on British soil of an ex-KGB agent and his
daughter earlier this year. But the United Kingdom responded quickly, kicking
out Russian diplomats and imposing sanctions. The United States followed suit,
but only because Congress, not Trump, knew that to do otherwise would have let
down an ally and encouraged a despot. When asked in a "60 Minutes"
interview Sunday whether he believes that Putin was involved in the poisoning
and other assassinations, Trump's response was: "Probably he is, yeah. ...
But I rely on them. It's not in our country."
The Trump administration
relies on Saudi Arabia, too. It is the enemy of our enemy Iran, which, in
political calculus, makes Saudis our "friends." But even friends
require reining in at times. And these friends need us more than we need them.
We are no longer dependent on oil imports; our oil reserves surpass those of
Saudi Arabia. Although Trump worries about losing that promised $110 billion
Saudi arms purchase he keeps touting (but which has yet to materialize), the
Saudis don't have anywhere else to go if they want to keep their airplanes in
the air. They are locked in by past purchases; no one else can deliver the
spare parts for U.S.-built weapons. As for the help in challenging Iran, they
have no choice there, either. Iran is far more a direct threat to the kingdom
than it is to the U.S. And as for their most crucial role -- the war on Islamic
terrorism -- the Saudis claim to fight terrorism but are also a major source of
funding for radical Islamic schools and mosques that recruit terrorists around
the world.
The administration has
only a short time to come up with a proper and proportionate response to the
murder of Jamal Khashoggi. The president thinks Americans will move on -- but
his inaction makes the world a more dangerous place. And next time, the attack
just might be on American soil.
Trump scrambles
to cover for Saudi regime as crisis over Khashoggi murder mounts
By Barry
Grey
19 October 2018
Following US
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s emergency talks in Riyadh and Ankara, and amid
mounting reports implicating Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the
murder of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the Trump administration
is scrambling to shield Washington’s closest ally in the Arab World.
On Thursday,
Trump continued to suggest that Prince Mohammed and his father, King Salman,
may have had nothing to do with the disappearance and evident torture and
murder of Khashoggi on October 2 in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. However,
after being debriefed by Pompeo following the latter’s talks with Prince
Mohammed and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Trump told reporters it
appeared that Khashoggi was dead.
The official
line is that Pompeo secured a pledge from the Saudi leadership to hold
accountable anyone found in the course of the regime’s own investigation to
have played a role in Khashoggi’s disappearance. On that fraudulent basis,
Pompeo advised Trump to give Riyadh several more days to provide an accounting,
after which the White House will decide its response.
Meanwhile,
unnamed Turkish officials and the pro-Erdogan newspaper Yeni Safak reported
Wednesday on the contents of what they claim is an audio recording of the
events that transpired in the Istanbul consulate following Khashoggi’s entering
the building on the afternoon of October 2. The 60-year-old self-exiled Saudi
national and resident of Virginia in the US, who went from being a regime
insider to a Washington
Post columnist and critic of the new crown prince, ostensibly
went to the consulate to obtain documents in advance of his impending wedding
to a Turkish national. He never emerged from the consulate.
According to the
Turkish accounts, he was almost immediately attacked by a team of 15 men who
had flown that day to Istanbul from Saudi Arabia, brutally tortured, drugged,
murdered, beheaded and dismembered. These sources say his fingers were cut off,
but do not stipulate whether that occurred before or after he had expired. One
of those reported to have been in the group is a forensic doctor who carried a
bone saw.
The Washington Post on
Wednesday published a detailed profile of the 15 men, complete with photos and
scans of travel documents. It reported that at least nine of the men have ties
to Saudi security. The New
York Times reported Wednesday that at least four are directly
linked to the crown prince, having traveled with him as part of his personal
security detail.
The claim of
Crown Prince Mohammed that he had no foreknowledge of a plan to kill the former
regime loyalist-turned critic is absurd on its face. He is an absolute ruler in
a brutal totalitarian dictatorship, and is known to closely oversee the
activities of his security apparatus and to be personally extremely cruel.
Pompeo’s
meetings on Tuesday with King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed were aimed at
signaling continued US support while making a pretense of seeking a full
accounting of Khashoggi’s disappearance. The same is true of his meeting the
following day with Erdogan, at which he evidently did not ask for a copy of the
audio recording of the events inside the consulate.
For his part,
the Turkish president has yet to publicly make any accusation against the Saudi
leadership or endorse the reports being leaked by Turkish officials and the
media. At odds with Riyadh over the Saudi regime’s support for US-allied
Kurdish forces in Syria, its backing for the el-Sisi dictatorship in Egypt, and
its lineup with Washington over Iran, Erdogan appears nevertheless to be
reluctant to sever relations with the oil-rich Saudis and may be seeking to use
Riyadh’s crisis as leverage in obtaining concessions.
On Wednesday
after meeting with Erdogan, Pompeo told reporters on his plane back to the US:
“I do think it’s important that everyone keep in their mind that we have lots
of important relations, financial relationships between US and Saudi companies,
government relationships, things that we work on all across the world. The
efforts to reduce the risk to the United States of America from the world’s
largest state sponsor of terror, Iran.
“We just need to
make sure that we are mindful of that as we approach decisions that the United
States government will take when we learn all of the facts.”
This amounts to
an unwitting admission of the outright criminality of both governments.
As the former
CIA director and current secretary of state, Pompeo’s reference to the “things
we work on all across the world” includes conspiring to strangle, destabilize
and potentially wage war against Iran, in alliance with Israel and most of the
other Gulf oil sheikdoms.
These “things”
also include the near-genocidal Saudi-led war in Yemen, which has already
killed some 50,000 men, women and children and threatens another 14 million
with starvation and deadly epidemics of cholera and diphtheria. The Saudis
could not carry out their relentless bombing and de facto blockade of the Arab
world’s poorest country without US arms, its mid-air refueling of Saudi
bombers, its provision of intelligence and help in selecting targets and the
assistance to its naval forces.
It is notable
that in all of the US press commentary critical of Trump and the Saudi crown
prince, there is virtually no mention of the US role in the slaughter in Yemen.
There is as well
the collaboration between Washington and Riyadh in suppressing the Palestinians
and propping up Israel, and their joint support for Al-Qaeda-linked Islamist
terrorists in the war for regime-change in Syria.
The US is
particularly reliant on the Saudi monarchy at the present moment, in advance of
its November 5 deadline for imposing sanctions against all Iranian exports. It
is counting on Riyadh to open its oil spigot to prevent a spike in oil prices
as a result of a sharp reduction in Iranian oil exports.
At the same
time, the administration is coming under increasing pressure, both
internationally and at home, to distance itself from the crown prince. It made
a reluctant concession to this pressure on Thursday with the announcement that
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin would join the swelling ranks of Western
officials, bankers and media organizations that have announced they will not
attend next week’s international investors’ conference in Riyadh, to be hosted
by Crown Prince Mohammed.
Dubbed “Davos in
the Desert,” the event is on the brink of collapse. On Wednesday, International
Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde pulled out. Businesses that
have made similar announcements include Uber, JPMorgan Chase, Viacom, BlackRock
and Blackstone Group. CNN, the Financial
Times, CNBC, Nikkei and the New
York Times are among the media organizations that have
withdrawn as media sponsors.
The likely
debacle of the investors’ conference will intensify an already acute crisis
facing the Saudi monarchy. The Wall
Street Journal reported Thursday that global investors are
growing increasingly alarmed at what the newspaper called Saudi Arabia’s “debt
binge” in recent months. In the two-and-a-half years since May 2016, the
country has floated $68 billion in dollar-denominated bonds and syndicated
loans—up from zero.
In addition,
Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund took out its first-ever bank loan last
month, raising $11 billion. And the national oil company Saudi Aramco plans to
raise up to $50 billion.
Reflecting
declining confidence in the regime, the cost of insuring against Saudi default
has risen by 30 percent since the disappearance of Khashoggi, and even before
the Khashoggi allegations, foreign direct investment had fallen to historically
low levels.
Also on
Thursday, the Washington
Post published Khashoggi’s final column for the newspaper.
Introducing the piece, Global Opinions Editor Karen Attiah explained that
the Post had
received the column one day after Khashoggi’s disappearance, but had decided to
hold it in the hope that he would reemerge. In publishing the piece, the
newspaper acknowledged that the author had died.
The content of
the column points to Khashoggi’s likely links to sections of the US state and
intelligence apparatus. A former aide to the Saudi chief of intelligence and
one-time ambassador to the US, Khashoggi had long been known as an interlocutor
between the Saudi regime and Western media and government officials. He also
had close ties to Osama bin Laden.
In his final
column he compares the suppression of speech and expression in the Arab world
to the Soviet “Iron Curtain,” and calls for the development of an “independent”
news source in the Middle East modeled after the cold war-era propaganda organ
Radio Free Europe.
This
would in part explain the furious reaction of Trump critics in both political
parties, the media and the intelligence establishment to the administration’s
efforts to alibi for the Saudi leadership. Obama’s CIA chief John Brennan, for
example, has repeatedly denounced Trump’s attempts to cover for the regime and
insisted that the crown prince personally ordered the murder of Khashoggi
TRUMP AND HIS SAUDIS
https://townhall.com/columnists/lindachavez/2018/10/19/the-saudi-challenge-n2529694
The Saudi Challenge
Jamal Khashoggi's murder
-- and no one now questions whether the Washington Post contributor was killed
by Saudi agents in the kingdom's consulate in Turkey -- has far-reaching
implications for the Trump administration. President Donald Trump appears to
want to help sweep the incident under the rug, providing cover for the Saudis'
ludicrous suggestion that the killing was a rogue operation or an interrogation
gone awry. And he's enmeshed the highest officials of his administration in the
mess by sending Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Riyadh, where the secretary
was photographed, all smiles, sitting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman,
who most likely ordered Khashoggi's murder. The administration is giving itself
little leeway to take serious measures to protest the killing, signaling to the
world that the U.S. cannot be counted on to stand up against bloodthirsty
autocrats, even when a U.S. resident and member of the American press is the
victim.
I doubt
that Trump understands -- or cares about -- what message he's sending. Wealthy
Saudis, including members of the extended royal family, have been his patrons
for years, buying his distressed properties when he needed money. In the early
1990s, a Saudi prince purchased Trump's flashy yacht so that the
then-struggling businessman could come up with cash to stave off personal
bankruptcy, and later, the prince bought a share of the Plaza Hotel, one of Trump's
many business deals gone bad. Trump also sold an entire floor of his landmark
Trump Tower condominium to the Saudi government in 2001. During
the campaign, the Trump Organization registered more than a half-dozen limited
liability companies in the kingdom, in anticipation of cashing in on Trump's
enhanced renown. When Trump actually won (which apparently he didn't think he
would at the time), someone must have explained he couldn't move ahead with new
business there as president, because he withdrew the registrations. Of course,
a little thing like benefiting from the office of the presidency hasn't stopped
the Trump Organization, run by the president's two eldest sons, from accepting
Saudi largesse since the election. With many Trump properties and brands losing
customers in today's highly polarized political atmosphere, Saudis are spending
lavishly on Trump properties in Washington, New York and even Chicago as many
others avoid them.
But if Trump doesn't get
why looking the other way when an American journalist is tortured, beheaded and
hacked to pieces by a team of Saudi government operatives is bad, surely
national security adviser John Bolton and Secretary Pompeo do. Autocrats are
stepping up their game around the world. Russian President Vladimir Putin
didn't hesitate to order a hit on British soil of an ex-KGB agent and his
daughter earlier this year. But the United Kingdom responded quickly, kicking
out Russian diplomats and imposing sanctions. The United States followed suit,
but only because Congress, not Trump, knew that to do otherwise would have let
down an ally and encouraged a despot. When asked in a "60 Minutes"
interview Sunday whether he believes that Putin was involved in the poisoning
and other assassinations, Trump's response was: "Probably he is, yeah. ...
But I rely on them. It's not in our country."
The Trump administration
relies on Saudi Arabia, too. It is the enemy of our enemy Iran, which, in
political calculus, makes Saudis our "friends." But even friends
require reining in at times. And these friends need us more than we need them.
We are no longer dependent on oil imports; our oil reserves surpass those of
Saudi Arabia. Although Trump worries about losing that promised $110 billion
Saudi arms purchase he keeps touting (but which has yet to materialize), the
Saudis don't have anywhere else to go if they want to keep their airplanes in
the air. They are locked in by past purchases; no one else can deliver the
spare parts for U.S.-built weapons. As for the help in challenging Iran, they
have no choice there, either. Iran is far more a direct threat to the kingdom
than it is to the U.S. And as for their most crucial role -- the war on Islamic
terrorism -- the Saudis claim to fight terrorism but are also a major source of
funding for radical Islamic schools and mosques that recruit terrorists around
the world.
The administration has
only a short time to come up with a proper and proportionate response to the
murder of Jamal Khashoggi. The president thinks Americans will move on -- but
his inaction makes the world a more dangerous place. And next time, the attack
just might be on American soil.
Trump scrambles
to cover for Saudi regime as crisis over Khashoggi murder mounts
By Barry
Grey
19 October 2018
Following US
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s emergency talks in Riyadh and Ankara, and amid
mounting reports implicating Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the
murder of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the Trump administration
is scrambling to shield Washington’s closest ally in the Arab World.
On Thursday,
Trump continued to suggest that Prince Mohammed and his father, King Salman,
may have had nothing to do with the disappearance and evident torture and
murder of Khashoggi on October 2 in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. However,
after being debriefed by Pompeo following the latter’s talks with Prince
Mohammed and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Trump told reporters it
appeared that Khashoggi was dead.
The official
line is that Pompeo secured a pledge from the Saudi leadership to hold
accountable anyone found in the course of the regime’s own investigation to
have played a role in Khashoggi’s disappearance. On that fraudulent basis,
Pompeo advised Trump to give Riyadh several more days to provide an accounting,
after which the White House will decide its response.
Meanwhile,
unnamed Turkish officials and the pro-Erdogan newspaper Yeni Safak reported
Wednesday on the contents of what they claim is an audio recording of the
events that transpired in the Istanbul consulate following Khashoggi’s entering
the building on the afternoon of October 2. The 60-year-old self-exiled Saudi
national and resident of Virginia in the US, who went from being a regime
insider to a Washington
Post columnist and critic of the new crown prince, ostensibly
went to the consulate to obtain documents in advance of his impending wedding
to a Turkish national. He never emerged from the consulate.
According to the
Turkish accounts, he was almost immediately attacked by a team of 15 men who
had flown that day to Istanbul from Saudi Arabia, brutally tortured, drugged,
murdered, beheaded and dismembered. These sources say his fingers were cut off,
but do not stipulate whether that occurred before or after he had expired. One
of those reported to have been in the group is a forensic doctor who carried a
bone saw.
The Washington Post on
Wednesday published a detailed profile of the 15 men, complete with photos and
scans of travel documents. It reported that at least nine of the men have ties
to Saudi security. The New
York Times reported Wednesday that at least four are directly
linked to the crown prince, having traveled with him as part of his personal
security detail.
The claim of
Crown Prince Mohammed that he had no foreknowledge of a plan to kill the former
regime loyalist-turned critic is absurd on its face. He is an absolute ruler in
a brutal totalitarian dictatorship, and is known to closely oversee the
activities of his security apparatus and to be personally extremely cruel.
Pompeo’s
meetings on Tuesday with King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed were aimed at
signaling continued US support while making a pretense of seeking a full
accounting of Khashoggi’s disappearance. The same is true of his meeting the
following day with Erdogan, at which he evidently did not ask for a copy of the
audio recording of the events inside the consulate.
For his part,
the Turkish president has yet to publicly make any accusation against the Saudi
leadership or endorse the reports being leaked by Turkish officials and the
media. At odds with Riyadh over the Saudi regime’s support for US-allied
Kurdish forces in Syria, its backing for the el-Sisi dictatorship in Egypt, and
its lineup with Washington over Iran, Erdogan appears nevertheless to be
reluctant to sever relations with the oil-rich Saudis and may be seeking to use
Riyadh’s crisis as leverage in obtaining concessions.
On Wednesday
after meeting with Erdogan, Pompeo told reporters on his plane back to the US:
“I do think it’s important that everyone keep in their mind that we have lots
of important relations, financial relationships between US and Saudi companies,
government relationships, things that we work on all across the world. The
efforts to reduce the risk to the United States of America from the world’s
largest state sponsor of terror, Iran.
“We just need to
make sure that we are mindful of that as we approach decisions that the United
States government will take when we learn all of the facts.”
This amounts to
an unwitting admission of the outright criminality of both governments.
As the former
CIA director and current secretary of state, Pompeo’s reference to the “things
we work on all across the world” includes conspiring to strangle, destabilize
and potentially wage war against Iran, in alliance with Israel and most of the
other Gulf oil sheikdoms.
These “things”
also include the near-genocidal Saudi-led war in Yemen, which has already
killed some 50,000 men, women and children and threatens another 14 million
with starvation and deadly epidemics of cholera and diphtheria. The Saudis
could not carry out their relentless bombing and de facto blockade of the Arab
world’s poorest country without US arms, its mid-air refueling of Saudi
bombers, its provision of intelligence and help in selecting targets and the
assistance to its naval forces.
It is notable
that in all of the US press commentary critical of Trump and the Saudi crown
prince, there is virtually no mention of the US role in the slaughter in Yemen.
There is as well
the collaboration between Washington and Riyadh in suppressing the Palestinians
and propping up Israel, and their joint support for Al-Qaeda-linked Islamist
terrorists in the war for regime-change in Syria.
The US is
particularly reliant on the Saudi monarchy at the present moment, in advance of
its November 5 deadline for imposing sanctions against all Iranian exports. It
is counting on Riyadh to open its oil spigot to prevent a spike in oil prices
as a result of a sharp reduction in Iranian oil exports.
At the same
time, the administration is coming under increasing pressure, both
internationally and at home, to distance itself from the crown prince. It made
a reluctant concession to this pressure on Thursday with the announcement that
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin would join the swelling ranks of Western
officials, bankers and media organizations that have announced they will not
attend next week’s international investors’ conference in Riyadh, to be hosted
by Crown Prince Mohammed.
Dubbed “Davos in
the Desert,” the event is on the brink of collapse. On Wednesday, International
Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde pulled out. Businesses that
have made similar announcements include Uber, JPMorgan Chase, Viacom, BlackRock
and Blackstone Group. CNN, the Financial
Times, CNBC, Nikkei and the New
York Times are among the media organizations that have
withdrawn as media sponsors.
The likely
debacle of the investors’ conference will intensify an already acute crisis
facing the Saudi monarchy. The Wall
Street Journal reported Thursday that global investors are
growing increasingly alarmed at what the newspaper called Saudi Arabia’s “debt
binge” in recent months. In the two-and-a-half years since May 2016, the
country has floated $68 billion in dollar-denominated bonds and syndicated
loans—up from zero.
In addition,
Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund took out its first-ever bank loan last
month, raising $11 billion. And the national oil company Saudi Aramco plans to
raise up to $50 billion.
Reflecting
declining confidence in the regime, the cost of insuring against Saudi default
has risen by 30 percent since the disappearance of Khashoggi, and even before
the Khashoggi allegations, foreign direct investment had fallen to historically
low levels.
Also on
Thursday, the Washington
Post published Khashoggi’s final column for the newspaper.
Introducing the piece, Global Opinions Editor Karen Attiah explained that
the Post had
received the column one day after Khashoggi’s disappearance, but had decided to
hold it in the hope that he would reemerge. In publishing the piece, the
newspaper acknowledged that the author had died.
The content of
the column points to Khashoggi’s likely links to sections of the US state and
intelligence apparatus. A former aide to the Saudi chief of intelligence and
one-time ambassador to the US, Khashoggi had long been known as an interlocutor
between the Saudi regime and Western media and government officials. He also
had close ties to Osama bin Laden.
In his final
column he compares the suppression of speech and expression in the Arab world
to the Soviet “Iron Curtain,” and calls for the development of an “independent”
news source in the Middle East modeled after the cold war-era propaganda organ
Radio Free Europe.
This
would in part explain the furious reaction of Trump critics in both political
parties, the media and the intelligence establishment to the administration’s
efforts to alibi for the Saudi leadership. Obama’s CIA chief John Brennan, for
example, has repeatedly denounced Trump’s attempts to cover for the regime and
insisted that the crown prince personally ordered the murder of Khashoggi
TRUMP AND HIS SAUDIS
https://townhall.com/columnists/lindachavez/2018/10/19/the-saudi-challenge-n2529694
The Saudi Challenge
Jamal Khashoggi's murder
-- and no one now questions whether the Washington Post contributor was killed
by Saudi agents in the kingdom's consulate in Turkey -- has far-reaching
implications for the Trump administration. President Donald Trump appears to
want to help sweep the incident under the rug, providing cover for the Saudis'
ludicrous suggestion that the killing was a rogue operation or an interrogation
gone awry. And he's enmeshed the highest officials of his administration in the
mess by sending Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Riyadh, where the secretary
was photographed, all smiles, sitting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman,
who most likely ordered Khashoggi's murder. The administration is giving itself
little leeway to take serious measures to protest the killing, signaling to the
world that the U.S. cannot be counted on to stand up against bloodthirsty
autocrats, even when a U.S. resident and member of the American press is the
victim.
I doubt
that Trump understands -- or cares about -- what message he's sending. Wealthy
Saudis, including members of the extended royal family, have been his patrons
for years, buying his distressed properties when he needed money. In the early
1990s, a Saudi prince purchased Trump's flashy yacht so that the
then-struggling businessman could come up with cash to stave off personal
bankruptcy, and later, the prince bought a share of the Plaza Hotel, one of Trump's
many business deals gone bad. Trump also sold an entire floor of his landmark
Trump Tower condominium to the Saudi government in 2001. During
the campaign, the Trump Organization registered more than a half-dozen limited
liability companies in the kingdom, in anticipation of cashing in on Trump's
enhanced renown. When Trump actually won (which apparently he didn't think he
would at the time), someone must have explained he couldn't move ahead with new
business there as president, because he withdrew the registrations. Of course,
a little thing like benefiting from the office of the presidency hasn't stopped
the Trump Organization, run by the president's two eldest sons, from accepting
Saudi largesse since the election. With many Trump properties and brands losing
customers in today's highly polarized political atmosphere, Saudis are spending
lavishly on Trump properties in Washington, New York and even Chicago as many
others avoid them.
But if Trump doesn't get
why looking the other way when an American journalist is tortured, beheaded and
hacked to pieces by a team of Saudi government operatives is bad, surely
national security adviser John Bolton and Secretary Pompeo do. Autocrats are
stepping up their game around the world. Russian President Vladimir Putin
didn't hesitate to order a hit on British soil of an ex-KGB agent and his
daughter earlier this year. But the United Kingdom responded quickly, kicking
out Russian diplomats and imposing sanctions. The United States followed suit,
but only because Congress, not Trump, knew that to do otherwise would have let
down an ally and encouraged a despot. When asked in a "60 Minutes"
interview Sunday whether he believes that Putin was involved in the poisoning
and other assassinations, Trump's response was: "Probably he is, yeah. ...
But I rely on them. It's not in our country."
The Trump administration
relies on Saudi Arabia, too. It is the enemy of our enemy Iran, which, in
political calculus, makes Saudis our "friends." But even friends
require reining in at times. And these friends need us more than we need them.
We are no longer dependent on oil imports; our oil reserves surpass those of
Saudi Arabia. Although Trump worries about losing that promised $110 billion
Saudi arms purchase he keeps touting (but which has yet to materialize), the
Saudis don't have anywhere else to go if they want to keep their airplanes in
the air. They are locked in by past purchases; no one else can deliver the
spare parts for U.S.-built weapons. As for the help in challenging Iran, they
have no choice there, either. Iran is far more a direct threat to the kingdom
than it is to the U.S. And as for their most crucial role -- the war on Islamic
terrorism -- the Saudis claim to fight terrorism but are also a major source of
funding for radical Islamic schools and mosques that recruit terrorists around
the world.
The administration has
only a short time to come up with a proper and proportionate response to the
murder of Jamal Khashoggi. The president thinks Americans will move on -- but
his inaction makes the world a more dangerous place. And next time, the attack
just might be on American soil.
Trump scrambles
to cover for Saudi regime as crisis over Khashoggi murder mounts
By Barry
Grey
19 October 2018
Following US
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s emergency talks in Riyadh and Ankara, and amid
mounting reports implicating Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the
murder of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the Trump administration
is scrambling to shield Washington’s closest ally in the Arab World.
On Thursday,
Trump continued to suggest that Prince Mohammed and his father, King Salman,
may have had nothing to do with the disappearance and evident torture and
murder of Khashoggi on October 2 in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. However,
after being debriefed by Pompeo following the latter’s talks with Prince
Mohammed and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Trump told reporters it
appeared that Khashoggi was dead.
The official
line is that Pompeo secured a pledge from the Saudi leadership to hold
accountable anyone found in the course of the regime’s own investigation to
have played a role in Khashoggi’s disappearance. On that fraudulent basis,
Pompeo advised Trump to give Riyadh several more days to provide an accounting,
after which the White House will decide its response.
Meanwhile,
unnamed Turkish officials and the pro-Erdogan newspaper Yeni Safak reported
Wednesday on the contents of what they claim is an audio recording of the
events that transpired in the Istanbul consulate following Khashoggi’s entering
the building on the afternoon of October 2. The 60-year-old self-exiled Saudi
national and resident of Virginia in the US, who went from being a regime
insider to a Washington
Post columnist and critic of the new crown prince, ostensibly
went to the consulate to obtain documents in advance of his impending wedding
to a Turkish national. He never emerged from the consulate.
According to the
Turkish accounts, he was almost immediately attacked by a team of 15 men who
had flown that day to Istanbul from Saudi Arabia, brutally tortured, drugged,
murdered, beheaded and dismembered. These sources say his fingers were cut off,
but do not stipulate whether that occurred before or after he had expired. One
of those reported to have been in the group is a forensic doctor who carried a
bone saw.
The Washington Post on
Wednesday published a detailed profile of the 15 men, complete with photos and
scans of travel documents. It reported that at least nine of the men have ties
to Saudi security. The New
York Times reported Wednesday that at least four are directly
linked to the crown prince, having traveled with him as part of his personal
security detail.
The claim of
Crown Prince Mohammed that he had no foreknowledge of a plan to kill the former
regime loyalist-turned critic is absurd on its face. He is an absolute ruler in
a brutal totalitarian dictatorship, and is known to closely oversee the
activities of his security apparatus and to be personally extremely cruel.
Pompeo’s
meetings on Tuesday with King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed were aimed at
signaling continued US support while making a pretense of seeking a full
accounting of Khashoggi’s disappearance. The same is true of his meeting the
following day with Erdogan, at which he evidently did not ask for a copy of the
audio recording of the events inside the consulate.
For his part,
the Turkish president has yet to publicly make any accusation against the Saudi
leadership or endorse the reports being leaked by Turkish officials and the
media. At odds with Riyadh over the Saudi regime’s support for US-allied
Kurdish forces in Syria, its backing for the el-Sisi dictatorship in Egypt, and
its lineup with Washington over Iran, Erdogan appears nevertheless to be
reluctant to sever relations with the oil-rich Saudis and may be seeking to use
Riyadh’s crisis as leverage in obtaining concessions.
On Wednesday
after meeting with Erdogan, Pompeo told reporters on his plane back to the US:
“I do think it’s important that everyone keep in their mind that we have lots
of important relations, financial relationships between US and Saudi companies,
government relationships, things that we work on all across the world. The
efforts to reduce the risk to the United States of America from the world’s
largest state sponsor of terror, Iran.
“We just need to
make sure that we are mindful of that as we approach decisions that the United
States government will take when we learn all of the facts.”
This amounts to
an unwitting admission of the outright criminality of both governments.
As the former
CIA director and current secretary of state, Pompeo’s reference to the “things
we work on all across the world” includes conspiring to strangle, destabilize
and potentially wage war against Iran, in alliance with Israel and most of the
other Gulf oil sheikdoms.
These “things”
also include the near-genocidal Saudi-led war in Yemen, which has already
killed some 50,000 men, women and children and threatens another 14 million
with starvation and deadly epidemics of cholera and diphtheria. The Saudis
could not carry out their relentless bombing and de facto blockade of the Arab
world’s poorest country without US arms, its mid-air refueling of Saudi
bombers, its provision of intelligence and help in selecting targets and the
assistance to its naval forces.
It is notable
that in all of the US press commentary critical of Trump and the Saudi crown
prince, there is virtually no mention of the US role in the slaughter in Yemen.
There is as well
the collaboration between Washington and Riyadh in suppressing the Palestinians
and propping up Israel, and their joint support for Al-Qaeda-linked Islamist
terrorists in the war for regime-change in Syria.
The US is
particularly reliant on the Saudi monarchy at the present moment, in advance of
its November 5 deadline for imposing sanctions against all Iranian exports. It
is counting on Riyadh to open its oil spigot to prevent a spike in oil prices
as a result of a sharp reduction in Iranian oil exports.
At the same
time, the administration is coming under increasing pressure, both
internationally and at home, to distance itself from the crown prince. It made
a reluctant concession to this pressure on Thursday with the announcement that
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin would join the swelling ranks of Western
officials, bankers and media organizations that have announced they will not
attend next week’s international investors’ conference in Riyadh, to be hosted
by Crown Prince Mohammed.
Dubbed “Davos in
the Desert,” the event is on the brink of collapse. On Wednesday, International
Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde pulled out. Businesses that
have made similar announcements include Uber, JPMorgan Chase, Viacom, BlackRock
and Blackstone Group. CNN, the Financial
Times, CNBC, Nikkei and the New
York Times are among the media organizations that have
withdrawn as media sponsors.
The likely
debacle of the investors’ conference will intensify an already acute crisis
facing the Saudi monarchy. The Wall
Street Journal reported Thursday that global investors are
growing increasingly alarmed at what the newspaper called Saudi Arabia’s “debt
binge” in recent months. In the two-and-a-half years since May 2016, the
country has floated $68 billion in dollar-denominated bonds and syndicated
loans—up from zero.
In addition,
Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund took out its first-ever bank loan last
month, raising $11 billion. And the national oil company Saudi Aramco plans to
raise up to $50 billion.
Reflecting
declining confidence in the regime, the cost of insuring against Saudi default
has risen by 30 percent since the disappearance of Khashoggi, and even before
the Khashoggi allegations, foreign direct investment had fallen to historically
low levels.
Also on
Thursday, the Washington
Post published Khashoggi’s final column for the newspaper.
Introducing the piece, Global Opinions Editor Karen Attiah explained that
the Post had
received the column one day after Khashoggi’s disappearance, but had decided to
hold it in the hope that he would reemerge. In publishing the piece, the
newspaper acknowledged that the author had died.
The content of
the column points to Khashoggi’s likely links to sections of the US state and
intelligence apparatus. A former aide to the Saudi chief of intelligence and
one-time ambassador to the US, Khashoggi had long been known as an interlocutor
between the Saudi regime and Western media and government officials. He also
had close ties to Osama bin Laden.
In his final
column he compares the suppression of speech and expression in the Arab world
to the Soviet “Iron Curtain,” and calls for the development of an “independent”
news source in the Middle East modeled after the cold war-era propaganda organ
Radio Free Europe.
This
would in part explain the furious reaction of Trump critics in both political
parties, the media and the intelligence establishment to the administration’s
efforts to alibi for the Saudi leadership. Obama’s CIA chief John Brennan, for
example, has repeatedly denounced Trump’s attempts to cover for the regime and
insisted that the crown prince personally ordered the murder of Khashoggi
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