Biden accused of betrayal of Khashoggi over push to deepen Saudi ties ( www.theguardian.com )

Overzeetop , 8 months ago

So Khashoggi gets murdered on Trump’s watch and Trump’s response about MBS is - and I quote from Woodward’s book - “I saved his a**,” “I was able to get Congress to leave him alone. I was able to get them to stop.” And then, after Trump leaves office MBS gives his son, who has no hedge fund management experience, a $2B investment for his new hedge fund. But Biden is blamed for betrayal based in his desire to engage the country and not “walk away and leave a vacuum to be filled by China, Russia, or Iran.”

Did Putin ghost write this story for the Guardian himself, or is it run of the mill, mid-level Russian propaganda?

0x815 OP , 8 months ago

I don’t agree with all what the Guardian writes. It’s not Trump alone, though.

Biden administration says bin Salman should be granted immunity in Khashoggi lawsuit

The Biden administration declared on Thursday, November 17, that Saudi Arabia’s crown prince should be considered immune from a lawsuit over his role in the killing of a US-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a turnaround from Joe Biden’s passionate campaign-trail denunciations of Prince Mohammed bin Salman over the brutal slaying.

Overzeetop , 8 months ago

Biden is a laws-and-procedures man; one for the status quo. It’s why he’s getting a lot done in the US. It’s also why, short of agreeing that heads of state should be prosecuted in abstentia for crimes in foreign nations, he has no choice to admit that a foreign head of state is due immunity from prosecution. He’s told MBS that he holds him personally accountable, according to the article. But Khashoggi is a (very) unfortunate pawn in this game, and the only other three options are to kidnap, try, and jail/execute a foreign leader, place sanctions on or cut off all ties with one of the richest and most economically powerful [and nominally one of our few middle eastern allied] countries, or go to war and nuke the entire palace from orbit just to be sure. None of those three are viable - practically or politically - and so he’s fucking stuck with what he has.

There are, of course, inadequate solutions like not allowing him personally to arrive or transit the US, but that’s a bullshit limitation for someone worth half a trillion dollars and does nothing to stop him from killing again or bring peace to the Khashoggi family.