[Plantagenet]

Nigeria (engaged in internal war against Islamist extremists

So we should stop buying their oil?

Of course not.

Next question please.

[Keith_McClary]

Nigeria (engaged in internal war against Islamist extremists

So we should stop buying their oil?

Of course not.

Next question please.

You say it is an "unethical country". Can you explain your "ethics".

[Plantagenet]

Can you explain your "ethics".

????

Well, sure. OK. Since you asked.

My ethics are sort of a mixture between Unitarianism and Ethical Humanism.

How about you?

Can you explain your ethics?

[Cid_Yama]

If I Die

[Keith_McClary]

Can you explain your "ethics".

????

Well, sure. OK. Since you asked.

My ethics are sort of a mixture between Unitarianism and Ethical Humanism.

I meant your views on the ethics of oil purchase. Getting off topic, you might want to start a thread on that.

[Plantagenet]

Can you explain your "ethics".

????

Well, sure. OK. Since you asked.

My ethics are sort of a mixture between Unitarianism and Ethical Humanism.

I meant your views on the ethics of oil purchase.

This whole discussion started with Sweden saying they wouldn't sell arms to KSA at the same time they are buying oil from various unpleasant dictatorships and war mongers. I thought it was a little hypocritical of the Swedes to make a big deal out of how ethical they were to not sell arms to KSA, while they continue to sell arms to various dictators in unpleasant countries and also buy oil from various dictators and war mongers.

Sweden's dirty little secret---they arm dictators

[Cid_Yama]

Actually no, it started with your trollish attack claiming Sweden was being hypocritical because they were still buying oil from Saudi Arabia, even though they quit selling them arms, when Sweden doesn't buy oil from Saudi Arabia. Which you didn't even bother to check and see.

Rockman mentioned Swedish arms sales, not you.

Again they can look back a page and see exactly how it transpired. You can try rewriting it all you want, but we will keep calling you on it until you stop.

This thread is about Saudi Arabia and the GCC being the top funders of terrorism, with all the major terror groups they are funding and arming being the same ones our armed forces have been fighting, namely Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and IS, as well as several other SUNNI terror groups around the world. Dispersing money through their embassies. And that includes embassies in the United States.

If we are supposedly fighting a 'War on Terror', their names should be on the top of our most wanted list, but they are notably absent.

Sweden is on topic only so far as they have quit selling arms to Saudi Arabia, based on ethical considerations. The only Western nation to stand against them so far.

[careinke]

Cid +1

[Keith_McClary]

Saudi Arabia is funding and arming Al Qaeda, IS and the Taliban. We are selling arms to Saudi Arabia. Thus, our nation is selling arms that are being used to kill our own service men and women.

I have a problem with that.

If we substituted Iran in that first sentence for Saudi Arabia, there would be shouts of moral outrage on the floor of Congress. But it's not Iran it's Saudi Arabia, and not a peep out of Congress. And the Western Media, shouldn't they be all over this?

RAY McGOVERN's theory:

... we called attention to an uncommonly candid report about Israeli/neocon motivation, written by none other than the Israel-friendly New York Times Bureau Chief in Jerusalem Jodi Rudoren on Sept. 2, 2013, just two days after Obama took advantage of Putin’s success in persuading the Syrians to allow their chemical weapons to be destroyed and called off the planned attack on Syria, causing consternation among neocons in Washington.

Rudoren can perhaps be excused for her naïve lack of “political correctness.” She had been barely a year on the job, had very little prior experience with reporting on the Middle East, and – in the excitement about the almost-attack on Syria – she apparently forgot the strictures normally imposed on the Times’ reporting from Jerusalem. In any case, Israel’s priorities became crystal clear in what Rudoren wrote.

In her article, entitled “Israel Backs Limited Strike Against Syria,” Rudoren noted that the Israelis were arguing, quietly, that the best outcome for Syria’s (then) 2 ½-year-old civil war, at least for the moment, was no outcome:

“For Jerusalem, the status quo, horrific as it may be from a humanitarian perspective, seems preferable to either a victory by Mr. Assad’s government and his Iranian backers or a strengthening of rebel groups, increasingly dominated by Sunni jihadis.

“‘This is a playoff situation in which you need both teams to lose, but at least you don’t want one to win — we’ll settle for a tie,’ said Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli consul general in New York. ‘Let them both bleed, hemorrhage to death: that’s the strategic thinking here. As long as this lingers, there’s no real threat from Syria.’”

Clear enough? If this is the way Israel’s leaders continue to regard the situation in Syria, then they look on deeper U.S. involvement – overt or covert – as likely to ensure that there is no early resolution of the conflict there. The longer Sunni and Shia are killing each other, not only in Syria but also across the region as a whole, the safer Tel Aviv’s leaders calculate Israel is.

Favoring Jihadis

But Israeli leaders have also made clear that if one side must win, they would prefer the Sunni side, despite its bloody extremists from Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. In September 2013, shortly after Rudoren’s article, Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren, then a close adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told the Jerusalem Post that Israel favored the Sunni extremists over Assad.

“The greatest danger to Israel is by the strategic arc that extends from Tehran, to Damascus to Beirut. And we saw the Assad regime as the keystone in that arc,” Oren said in an interview. “We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren’t backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran.” He said this was the case even if the “bad guys” were affiliated with Al-Qaeda.

In June 2014, Oren – then speaking as a former ambassador – said Israel would even prefer a victory by the Islamic State, which was massacring captured Iraqi soldiers and beheading Westerners, than the continuation of the Iranian-backed Assad in Syria. “From Israel’s perspective, if there’s got to be an evil that’s got to prevail, let the Sunni evil prevail,” Oren said.

Netanyahu sounded a similar theme in his March 3, 2015 speech to the U.S. Congress in which he trivialized the threat from the Islamic State with its “butcher knives, captured weapons and YouTube” when compared to Iran, which he accused of “gobbling up the nations” of the Middle East.

That Syria’s main ally is Iran with which it has a mutual defense treaty plays a role in Israeli calculations. Accordingly, while some Western leaders would like to achieve a realistic if imperfect settlement of the Syrian civil war, others who enjoy considerable influence in Washington would just as soon see the Assad government and the entire region bleed out.

As cynical and cruel as this strategy is, it isn’t all that hard to understand. Yet, it seems to be one of those complicated, politically charged situations well above the pay-grade of the sophomores advising President Obama – who, sad to say, are no match for the neocons in the Washington Establishment. Not to mention the Netanyahu-mesmerized Congress.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/04/15/ ... e-neocons/

[Keith_McClary]

RELIGIOUS FANATICISM IS A HUGE FACTOR IN AMERICANS’ SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL
BY GLENN GREENWALD

...
The answer should make everyone quite uncomfortable: it’s religious fanaticism. The U.S. media loves to mock adversary nations, especially Muslim ones, for being driven by religious extremism, but that is undeniably a major factor, arguably the most significant one, in explaining fervent support for Israel among the American populace. In reporting its poll findings, Bloomberg observed:

Religion appears to play an important role in shaping the numbers. Born-again Christians are more likely than overall poll respondents, 58 percent to 35 percent, to back Israel regardless of U.S. interests. Americans with no religious affiliation were the least likely to feel this way, at 26 percent.

The primary reason evangelical Christians in the U.S. are so devoted to Israel is simple: their radical religious dogma teaches them that God demands this. In 2004, Pat Robertson delivered a speech entitled “Why Evangelical Christians Support Israel” and said: “evangelical Christians support Israel because we believe that the words of Moses and the ancient prophets of Israel were inspired by God,” and “we believe that the emergence of a Jewish state in the land promised by God to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was ordained by God.” He added that “God’s chosen people” — Jews — have an obligation to God to fight against “Muslim vandals” so that Israel remains united in their hands:

If God’s chosen people turn over to Allah control of their most sacred sites-if they surrender to Muslim vandals the tombs of Rachel, of Joseph, of the Patriarchs, of the ancient prophets-if they believe their claim to the Holy Land comes only from Lord Balfour of England and the ever fickle United Nations rather than the promises of Almighty God-then in that event, Islam will have won the battle. Throughout the Muslim world the message will go forth-“Allah is greater than Jehovah.” The promises of Jehovah to the Jews are meaningless.

That is the ugly religious extremism about Israel heard over and over in America’s largest evangelical churches. The wildly popular “dispensationalist” sect is driven by the dogmatic belief that a unified Israel in the hands of the Jews is a prerequisite for Armageddon or the Rapture and the return of Jesus: a belief shared not by thousands but millions of Americans. As the evangelical Robert Nicholson put it in a nuanced and thoughtful 2013 essay examining doctrinal differences among this group: “Evangelicals believe that God chose the biblical people of Israel as His vehicle for world redemption, an earthly agent through whom He would accomplish his grand plan for history.” The popular and influential pastor John Hagee put it simply: “We support Israel because all other nations were created by an act of men, but Israel was created by an act of God!”

It goes without saying that religious belief also plays a role in the support for Israel among American Jews. Indeed, neocons frequently link American Jewishness to support for Israel by arguing that no good American Jew should be a Democrat on the ground of the party’s supposed insufficient support for Israel (even as they accuse Israel critics of “anti-Semitism” for suggesting the exact same linkage as the one they themselves exploit). As a 2013 Pew poll found:

Most American Jews feel at least some emotional attachment to Israel, and many have visited the Jewish state. Four-in-ten believe Israel was given to the Jewish people by God, a belief that is held by roughly eight-in-ten Orthodox Jews.

Jewish religious extremism is directly linked to support for Israel, as The Forward noted: “Among Jews, AIPAC’s support also seems to be strongest among Orthodox Jews.” The New York Times recently reported the link between Jewish activism and Israel support: “Republicans … are more fervently pro-Israel than ever” partially due to “a surge in donations” from what J Street calls “a small group of very wealthy Jewish-Americans” such as Sheldon Adelson.

[Cid_Yama]

Some history:

When the US placed forces in Saudi Arabia during the 1st Gulf War, it was explicitly agreed that US forces would leave after Iraq was driven from Kuwait.

The US had for years wanted a foothold for ground forces in the Middle East and were reluctance to leave. First there were excuses, then mission expansion, and all the while Saudi Arabian requests for US forces to leave were deflected and ignored. Throughout that time Saudi resentment and anger brewed.

in 1992, 107 Wahhabi Religious Leaders sent a 'Memorandum of Advice' to King Fahd criticizing the continued presence of US forces in the nation.

In 1994, several thousand protestors led by Wahhabi clerics in Buraida demanded removal of US forces from the Saudi Peninsula.

In Nov 1995, King Fahd had a stroke and Crown Prince Abdullah took over running the nation. He reiterated the demand for the withdrawal of US troops from Saudi soil. Shortly after, the first attack on US service personnel in Saudi Arabia occurred. 5 servicemen died.

In June 1996, a truck bomb killed 19 servicemen in the Khobar Towers bombing. Saudi officials resisted the investigation, and then refused extradition of individuals the US investigation indicted.

In 1997 Saudi Arabia formally recognized the Taliban government in Afghanistan.

On August 29, 2001, Crown Prince Abdullah sent an angry letter to George W Bush. He wrote that Saudi Arabia had been placed in an untenable position by the continued presence of US forces in Saudi Arabia. "A time comes when peoples and nations part. We are at a crossroads. It is time for the United States and Saudi Arabia to look at their separate interests. Those governments that don't feel the pulse of their people and respond to it will suffer the fate of the Shah of Iran."

Less than 2 weeks later, on September 11, 2001, 15 Saudi nationals flew hijacked airliners into the Twin Towers.

(Go on, tell me that's a coincidence.)

Discussion of the invasion of Iraq began immediately following the attack.

In 2003, The US withdrew the last of it's forces from Saudi Arabia. After establishing a new foothold for it's ground forces in Iraq and an airbase in Qatar.

Lacey, Robert (2009). Inside the Kingdom : Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists, and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia. Viking. pp. 288–9. ""In July that year [2002] Laurent Murawiec, a French analyst with the RAND Corporation, had given a 24-slide presentation to the prestigious Defense Policy Board, an arm of the Pentagon, suggesting that the United States should consider 'taking [the ]Saudi out of Arabia' by forcibly seizing control of the oil fields, giving the Hijaz back to the Hashemites, and delegating control of the holy cities to a multinational committee of moderate, non-Wahhabi Muslims: the House of Saud should be sent home to Riyadh. 'Saudi Arabia supports our enemies and attacks our allies,' argued Murawiec, a protege of Richard Perle's, the neocon advocate of war with Iraq who chaired the Policy Board. 'The Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot soldier, from ideologist to cheerleaders.' They were 'the kernel of evil, the prime mover, the most dangerous opponent' in the Middle East."

link

Saudi Arabia would have been a lot easier than Iraq. We already had forces in place. We just needed to make the occupation official. And we had justification.

But then, Saudi Arabia had not just made an example of switching away from the Petrodollar to the Euro.

[vox_mundi]

If IS does it - BAD; if Saudis do it - no problemo ...

Saudi Arabia advertises for eight new executioners

Saudi Arabia is advertising for eight new executioners, recruiting extra staff to carry out an increasing number of death sentences.


Abdullah Al-Bishi, one of Saudi Arabia's chief executioners

No special qualifications are needed for the jobs whose main role is "executing a judgement of death" but also involve performing amputations on those convicted of lesser offences, the advert, posted on the civil service jobs portal, said.

The Islamic kingdom is in the top five countries in the world for putting people to death, rights groups say. It ranked number 3 in 2014, after China and Iran, and ahead of Iraq and the United States, according to Amnesty International figures.

A man beheaded on Sunday was the 85th person this year whose execution was recorded by the official Saudi Press Agency, compared to 88 in the whole of 2014, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW). Amnesty said there were at least 90 executions last year.

Most were executed for murder, but 38 had committed drugs offences, HRW said. About half were Saudi and the others were from Pakistan, Yemen, Syria, Jordan, India, Indonesia, Burma, Chad, Eritrea the Philippines and Sudan.

Saudi authorities have not said why the number of executions has increased so rapidly, but diplomats have speculated it may be because more judges have been appointed, allowing a backlog of appeal cases to be heard.

Saudi man sentenced to death for tearing up Koran

Political analysts say it might also reflect a tough response by the judiciary to regional turbulence.

A downloadable PDF application form for the executioner jobs, available on the website carrying Monday's date, said the jobs were classified as "religious functionaries" and that they would be at the lower end of the civil service pay scale.

Kinda like finding a want-ad for "witch burner" in the Boston Globe.

Oh, wait ... link

[Cid_Yama]

Saudi Arabia, Iran tensions over Shiite execution boost oil futures

Escalating tensions between major oil producer Saudi Arabia and Iran sent oil prices sharply higher in the first trading day of 2016 on to the prospect of supply disruption.

Benchmark U.S. WTI light sweet crude was up 1.7 percent at $37.69 a barrel mid-morning in Asia, after jumping as much as 3.4 percent, while Brent crude was up 1.9 percent at $37.99 a barrel after spiking 2.3 percent in the last session.

The kneejerk reaction came after Saudi Arabia cut ties with Iran, after its embassy in Tehran was attacked by Iranians protesting the Saudis' execution of a prominent Shiite cleric.

Heightened tensions between the two OPEC producers troubles investors because most oil Saudi oil production comes from its Eastern Province, which is dominated by Shiites, Bernstein's senior oil and gas analyst Neil Beveridge explained.

Saudi Arabia produces about 10 million barrels of oil a day, while Iran's output is about three million barrels a day, so any potential supply or shipping disruption would have significant impact on the market, Beveridge added.

But IG market strategist Evans Lucas warned that further complication and volatility could come from Saudi Arabia, which could possibly increase production to counter any fallout from the conflict with Iran, which means that $20 a barrel oil remains "a real possibility," particularly as other non-OPEC nations power ahead with production.

Meanwhile, Kamran Bokhari, author of "Political Islam in the Age of Democratization," told CNBC that at the same time, the row between Saudi Arabia and Iran would likely become more heated.

"Both sides are gearing up for escalation; we are going to see more and more escalation as we move forward," said Bokhari, who is also a lecturer at the University of Ottawa's Security and Policy Institute.

This is a political conundrum of epic proportions and one that will push governments ethically and economically," IG's Evans wrote in a Monday note.

link

Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini urged on Sunday to avoid escalation of sectarian tensions over the execution of Shiite cleric Sheikh al-Nimr in Saudi Arabia.

Sunni-Shiite tensions flared in the region in the wake of al-Nimr’s execution, with Shiites in Iran, Lebanon, and Iraq warning of repercussions. An outraged Shiite mob stormed the Saudi diplomatic mission in Tehran late Saturday.

"The security and stability of the whole Region, that is already facing great threats, is at stake," Mogherini said in phone talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, as quoted by the European External Action Service (EEAS).

link

Here’s an excerpt from a statement posted to the Ayatollah’s webpage:

"Strongly criticizing the silence of the self-proclaimed advocates of freedom, democracy and human rights, and their support for the Saudi regime, who spills the blood of the innocent only for criticism and protest, Ayatollah Khamenei said: “The Muslim world and the entire world must feel responsible towards this issue. Those who honestly care for the future of humanity and the fate of human rights and justice must pursue these issues and should not remain indifferent vis-à-vis this situation.”

This has become a familiar refrain of late. In short, it’s becoming difficult for the Western world to obscure the fact that the poisonous ideology espoused by the Saudis is virtually identical to that promoted and promulgated by ISIS, al-Qaeda, and many other Sunni extremist groups that the world at large generally identifies with terrorism.

As Kamel Daoud, a columnist for Quotidien d’Oran, and the author of “The Meursault Investigation” put it in an op-ed for The New York Times, Saudi Arabia is simply “an ISIS that made it.” On that note, we present a passage from Daoud’s article.

Black Daesh, white Daesh. The former slits throats, kills, stones, cuts off hands, destroys humanity’s common heritage and despises archaeology, women and non-Muslims. The latter is better dressed and neater but does the same things. The Islamic State; Saudi Arabia. In its struggle against terrorism, the West wages war on one, but shakes hands with the other. This is a mechanism of denial, and denial has a price: preserving the famous strategic alliance with Saudi Arabia at the risk of forgetting that the kingdom also relies on an alliance with a religious clergy that produces, legitimizes, spreads, preaches and defends Wahhabism, the ultra-puritanical form of Islam that Daesh feeds on.

link

[Cid_Yama]

Putting an end to Wahhabi Jihadism, the radical ideology which lies at the heart of terrorism in the Middle East, requires Washington stop selling weapons to Saudi Arabia, former businessman and US politician David Stockman asserted.

Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan maintains that "the real jihadi terrorism in the contemporary world arose almost exclusively from the barbaric fundamentalism of the Sunni-Wahhabi branch of Islam, which is home-based in Saudi Arabia."

Apparently, this radical ideology is only capable of surviving because the Saudi monarchy is supporting it.

"The Saudi regime enforces it by the sword of its legal system; showers its domestic clergy with the bounty of its oil earnings; and exports hundreds of millions to jihadists in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Turkey, Iran, Egypt and numerous other hot spots in the greater Middle East," Stockman explained in an opinion piece titled "Enough Already! It's Time To Send The Despicable House Of Saud To The Dustbin Of History."

"Had [the House of Saud] not provided billions in weapons and aid to the Syrian rebels over the last five years, there would be no civil war in Syria today, nor would [Daesh] have been able to occupy the dusty, impoverished towns and villages of the Upper Euphrates Valley where it has established its blood-thirsty caliphate," he noted.

In the last decades, Washington, according to the analyst, has sold weapons to Saudi Arabia worth more than $100 billion.

It follows then that to put an end to Wahhabi Jihadism and Daesh the US should "cut off arms sales entirely to the Saudi military, which would be grounded within months due to lack of spare parts and support services."

link

[Shaved Monkey]

The roots of Middle East extremism doesn't just live in the ME

In 2003 while lobbying leaders to put together the Coalition of the Willing, President Bush spoke to France’s President Jacques Chirac.
Bush wove a story about how the Biblical creatures Gog and Magog were at work in the Middle East and how they must be defeated.

In Genesis and Ezekiel Gog and Magog are forces of the Apocalypse who are prophesied to come out of the north and destroy Israel unless stopped.

Bush believed the time had now come for that battle, telling Chirac:


“This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins”.

The story of the conversation emerged only because the Elysée Palace, baffled by Bush’s words, sought advice from Thomas Römer, a professor of theology at the University of Lausanne.
Four years later, Römer gave an account in the September 2007 issue of the university’s review, Allez savoir. The article apparently went unnoticed, although it was referred to in a French newspaper.

The story has now been confirmed by Chirac himself in a new book

http://www.counterpunch.org/2009/05/22/ ... q-and-gog/

Reagan talked of Gog and Maggog too for him it was Russia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gog_and_Magog

[careinke]

It follows then that to put an end to Wahhabi Jihadism and Daesh the US should "cut off arms sales entirely to the Saudi military, which would be grounded within months due to lack of spare parts and support services."

link

Having worked with the Saudi military, I think this author is extremely optimistic. I would give them days, at the very most two weeks.

[Shaved Monkey]

Interesting observations on the Middle East by a former Prime Minister of Australia

The former Australian prime minister Bob Hawke has criticised Barack Obama’s presidency as “inadequate” for not using his influence to bring together Israel and the Palestinians and has called for China to engage on the issue and “change the chemistry” of the Middle East.
Asked about the current situation in the Middle East and the terrorist threat posed by Islamic State and others, Hawke said the key to any progress was resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“I believe that until the basic issue between Israel and the Palestinians is resolved, there’s never going to have any hope of any decent situation there,” Hawke said.

“If China and the US were to sit down together and agree on a process of trying to secure a resolution, the whole chemistry of the situation would change because the simple fact is the Palestinians and the Arab states simply do not trust America.

“They see them as a shield and protector of Israel.
If you had the Chinese and Americans working together I think the chemistry would change.”

He said while the first Gulf war was completely justified, the second was a massive blunder.

“There is no doubt as to the correctness of the first decision,” said Hawke.
“The second [Gulf war] was arguably the most massive diplomatic and strategic blunder ever made by any American administration, that is the invasion of Iraq by [George] Bush Jr.”

The former prime minister said he had predicted the second Gulf war would lead to increased support for Islamic terrorists three weeks before it began and he said subsequent analysis by every US intelligence agency had condemned the war as “counterproductive”.

Hawke said George HW Bush, US president from 1989 to 1993, rang him regularly to discuss the first Gulf action and even raised the possibility of the coalition forces, including Australian troops, going on to Baghdad.

“[Bush Snr] said ‘my people are urging me to go on to Baghdad’. He said ‘what do you think?’ I said ‘no way’.

He described a recent discussion with Jewish friends who were “laying down the law” about Muslim fanatics.

“I said, ‘Remember this’,” Hawke said.
“‘It wasn’t an [Islamic] fanatic that killed [Yitzhak] Rabin, the prime minister of Israel.
It was a Jewish fanatic.
The problem is the fanatics of Islam, of Judaism and Christian fanatics.’”

Hawke said the invasion of Iraq would not have happened without the influence of the fanatic Christian right in the United States on George W Bush.

http://www.theguardian.com/australia-ne ... n-conflict

[Cid_Yama]

It follows then that to put an end to Wahhabi Jihadism and Daesh the US should "cut off arms sales entirely to the Saudi military, which would be grounded within months due to lack of spare parts and support services."

link

Having worked with the Saudi military, I think this author is extremely optimistic. I would give them days, at the very most two weeks.

So, doesn't it sound like a good idea? Or are we just lying to the American people and the world about what we are doing in the Middle East?

Is this all just cover for past mistakes? That we would have to admit that Saudi Arabia attacked us on 9/11 because we wouldn't move our military out of their country for 10 years following the 1st Gulf War despite their demands?

That we KNEW it was Saudi Arabia right from the moment it happened, and swept it under the rug?

That we continue to support the murderers who are the true source of terrorism in the world?

And that we toppled Saddam Hussein as part of the cover up, and to allow us to continue basing our ground forces in the Middle East?

Does that not make us accomplices after the fact?

Are we then responsible for all the terrorism that has happened since then, and the deaths of our service men and women, because we didn't do the right thing in the first place?

I can see why we might want to cover that up.

[careinke]

It follows then that to put an end to Wahhabi Jihadism and Daesh the US should "cut off arms sales entirely to the Saudi military, which would be grounded within months due to lack of spare parts and support services."

link

Having worked with the Saudi military, I think this author is extremely optimistic. I would give them days, at the very most two weeks.

So, doesn't it sound like a good idea? Or are we just lying to the American people and the world about what we are doing in the Middle East?

Is this all just cover for past mistakes? That we would have to admit that Saudi Arabia attacked us on 9/11 because we wouldn't move our military out of their country for 10 years following the 1st Gulf War despite their demands?

That we KNEW it was Saudi Arabia right from the moment it happened, and swept it under the rug?

That we continue to support the murderers who are the true source of terrorism in the world?

And that we toppled Saddam Hussein as part of the cover up, and to allow us to continue basing our ground forces in the Middle East?

Does that not make us accomplices after the fact?

Are we then responsible for all the terrorism that has happened since then, and the deaths of our service men and women, because we didn't do the right thing in the first place?

I can see why we might want to cover that up.

CID,
I'm not arguing with you, I agree with you on this, and unlike most on this board, I was working in Saudi through most of this. My main customers were Wahhabi/Sunni Air Force Officers. They don't think the same way westerners think, different cultures. The fact that most westerners don't understand this, is probably our biggest weakness.

[Cid_Yama]

Didn't think you were arguing with me. Was pleased you agreed with the author's assessment and pointed out that he was overly optimistic in how long it would take.

Made a diplomatic faux pas at an informal dinner with some princes from Arab states of the Saudi peninsula. I'm left handed. A gap in my knowledge was that you eat with your right and wipe with your left in Arab culture. This is taught to them from birth. We were eating communally, as in from the same pile of rice and meat, with your hands, no utensils, sitting on the floor. I don't remember what they called it.

I seriously grossed them out. When they pointed it out, I made the mistake of mentioning that in the West, there was no designation between hands.

That really grossed them out. And put and end to the dinner. I actually felt embarrassed at the time, though it was just a cultural difference.

So I understand how they don't think like us.