It's Time for Trump the Deal-Maker to Hit the 'Pause' Button

On October 2, 2018, Jamal Khasoggi, a former Saudi Arabian senior journalist who was critical of the Saudi regime, entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey to obtain paperwork for his planned marriage to his Turkish fiancée. There is video evidence of his entry into the facility, but no evidence showing that he ever came out again. Khasoggi, fearing arrest for his criticism of the Saudi government, had gone into self-imposed exile, had become a legal permanent resident of the United States, and wrote opinion pieces for the Washington Post and other media outlets.

Turkish officials claim that they have audio and video evidence that shows Khasoggi was beaten, tortured, killed, and then dismembered by a team of Saudi intelligence officials who had entered Istanbul and departed by private plane the same day. The Turks say that one of the 15 agents was a forensics expert. The Saudis, not surprisingly, deny this happened, and call the Turkish claim a lie. Outside the locked rooms of the various intelligence agencies little is actually known, other than the fact that Khasoggi has not been heard from since October 2.

While I, like most outside the intelligence community, don’t know what actually happened inside the Saudi consulate on October 2, what I do know has left me shocked, appalled, and disgusted. Shocked, but hardly surprised, that a government would even contemplate such a barbarous act. Appalled that so little concrete has been done beyond the usual public statements of ‘shock, dismay, and disapproval.’ And, disgusted at my own government’s reactions to his incident.

President, and deal-maker-in-chief, Donald Trump, when this first hit the airwaves, was noncommittal, and ended his statement by saying that while this, if true, was terrible, he did not want to cancel a $110 billion arms sale to the Saudis. Subsequently, Trump expressed his ‘anger’ at the whole incident, promised that he would have ‘strong words’ for the Saudi leadership, but still expressed his reluctance to kill the arms sale – because of its benefits to the US economy and US jobs. Furthermore, he expressed his desire that this windfall not go to other countries, such as Russia or China. His statements, or at least, the part about the arms sale, are dismaying and, from what I know, incorrect.

Let’s look first at the ‘facts.’ He claims a $110 billion sale; in fact, the White House previously announced this $100 billion potential sale, but without going into any details. Based on current reporting and the history of US-Saudi arms deals, I find the $110 billion figure hard to swallow. In 2017, Saudi Arabia bought $10 billion in arms, $6 billion of that from the U.S., the rest from mostly European countries. A tenfold increase in purchases seems, on the surface, to be incredible, and, frankly, unbelievable. News reports indicate that State Department records show a planned purchase of $4 billion, which is more realistic. As to Trump’s claims that the Saudis will, if the U.S. sale doesn’t go through, purchase from Russia or China, also don’t pass the smell test. The Saudi military uses mostly U.S. equipment. It’s doubtful that either the Chinese or the Russians could provide material or equipment that would be compatible with the current Saudi force structure, and it would take several years for Saudi Arabia to reconfigure their force to integrate Chinese or Russian arms. My conclusion is, what we have here is another case of the ‘alternative facts’ that seem to come out of this White House with alarming frequency.

One other thing that dismays me is the reporting that the U.S. intelligence community had information that the Saudis were planning to lure Khasoggi back to Saudi Arabia so they could arrest him. Why, one might ask, was he not warned of this danger?

According to Trump, he’s not an American, the incident didn’t happen on American soil, so, it’s not our ‘problem.’

Horse feathers! Intelligence Community Directive 191, I understand, is an executive branch directive that requires the IC to warn any individual, specifically non-US individuals, when there is a threat to them in a foreign country. Even if such a directive did not exist, I would think a sense of ‘right’ would compel the government to find a way, without compromising sources and methods, to alert someone that a foreign agency has him or her in its sights.

One can only wonder at this point; if Khasoggi had been a legal permanent resident working for Fox, Breitbart, or one of the other right-wing media concerns, if we would be hearing the same tired old song.

The world will be watching us and judging what we do in this terrible situation. Will we continue to put money over morals? If we do, all I can say is – SHAME!!