Of Course He Has

Donald Trump is using the shooting incident at the White House Correspondents Dinner to justify building his lame-ass ugly White House ballroom.

This is despite the fact that:

• Security worked as intended, the gunman never made it through the entry point.
• The WHC Dinner is a private event, which could not be held in the Trump's monument to kitsch.

I'm not surprised, nor am I disappointed by this, (my expectations are low) but it pisses me off. 

If This Joke Were Any Darker, Kristi Noem Would Rendition it to a Salvadoran Gulag

I'm sure that I should that I am sorry for this, but I am not sorry one little bit. 

Here is the joke: 

Someone should tell Sirhan Sirhan that RFK, Jr. is cheating on his wife with Jodi Foster.

I came up with this gem on my own in the car this evening.  

If you are wondering what the F%$# is wrong with me, it's a pretty long list. 

Snark of the Day

'Heavily Armed' Vance Boelter Taken Alive, Sounds About White

—Conover Kennard at Crooks and Liars, commenting on the capture of alleged Minnesota assassin Vance Boelter

The headline is a commentary on how when the shooter is white, they are taken alive, and in some cases taken to Burger King, (Dylann Roof), while the more darkly complected suspects end up shot.

If that headline were any darker, a member of the Minneapolis Police Department would be choking it out under their knee. 

So Classy

Donald Trump won't call Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to offer condolences over the assassination of a Minnesota state lawmakerby one of his MAGAt supporters, because Trump is a miserable excuse for a human being.

OK, the actual reason he gave was that he thought it was, "A waste of time."

President Trump said early Tuesday that he would not call Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) after two Democratic lawmakers in his state were shot at their homes in a “politically motivated” shooting spree over the weekend.

“I think the governor of Minnesota is so whacked out. I’m not calling,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on his way back from the Group of Seven (G7) summit. “Why would I call him?”

“The guy doesn’t have a clue. He’s a mess. So, you know, I could be nice and call, but why waste time?” the president added.

Not only is this narcissistic and cruel, it is narcissistic and cruel and STUPID.

It makes Trump look like a psychopath, which, oddly enough, might be the most genuine and honest thing that Trump has said in about a decade. 

Mike Lee (R-UT) Should Have Been Drowned At Birth

 He's already making public jokes and baseless accusations about the assassination in Minnesota.

Not a good look for a human being, much less for a US Senator. 

To Quote Joseph Welch, "You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency??: 

My First Thought was, "Who the F%$# Still Uses Pagers?

Warning, graphic violence

It appears that Israel planted explosives in thousands of pagers used by Hezbollah and set them off today, killing at least 9 11 people, at least 8 of whom were senior Hezbollah operatives.

I do understand that Hezbollah chose to use pagers to maintain communications security, but this was largely undermined when, "Earlier in the year, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah warned the organization to stop using smartphones as these could be compromised and advised switching to pagers." 

Publicly announcing a change in communication protocols simply confirms a new attack surface for your adversaries:

Israel carried out its operation against Hezbollah on Tuesday by hiding explosive material within a new batch of Taiwanese-made pagers imported into Lebanon, according to American and other officials briefed on the operation.

The pagers, which Hezbollah had ordered from Gold Apollo in Taiwan, had been tampered with before they reached Lebanon, according to some of the officials. Most were the company’s AR924 model, though three other Gold Apollo models were also included in the shipment.

The explosive material, as little as one to two ounces, was implanted next to the battery in each pager, two of the officials said. A switch was also embedded that could be triggered remotely to detonate the explosives.

At 3:30 p.m. in Lebanon, the pagers received a message that appeared as though it was coming from Hezbollah’s leadership, two of the officials said. Instead, the message activated the explosives. Lebanon’s health minister told state media at least 11 people were killed and more than 2,700 injured.

I will note that this is an impressive bit of spy craft, and compared to the normal death toll from rockets or precision guided munitions, remarkably precise.

It also has the effect of completely disrupting Hezbollah communications for weeks, if not months.

………

The devices were programmed to beep for several seconds before exploding, according to three of the officials.

So the idea was that someone would have it in their hand when it went off.

I am impressed. 

A lot of moving parts all had to come together for this to happen.

This was a Foreseeable Response

Following the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas has selected Yahya Sinwar, as its new political leader.

This is the Hamas leader in Gaza, the primary planner of the October 7 attacks, and the guy that makds other Hamas militants look moderate by comparison.

As I noted, the selection of the most radical possible person as leader is a fairly normal response to an assassination:

Hamas has named Yahya Sinwar as the new head of its political bureau, elevating the hardline militant to the group’s top post after the assassination in Tehran of its previous political leader.

Sinwar’s appointment was announced in a brief statement by Hamas on Tuesday that was aired on pro-Hamas Iranian state media channels.

Sinwar, the Hamas military leader who is seen as the mastermind behind the 7 October attack against Israel, is believed to be hiding in the series of tunnels underneath Gaza. He is the group’s chief decision-maker in Gaza, and is believed to hold control over the estimated 120 Israeli hostages who are still in Hamas’s custody.

Sinwar succeeds Ismail Haniyeh, the former Hamas political chief who was killed in a bombing attack last week that Hamas and Iranian officials blamed on Israel. The assassination came during the inauguration of Iran’s new president and has further stirred fears of a larger regional war involving Iran, which backs Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. Iran has promised to retaliate against Israel for the attack on its soil.

Of course, Netanyahu won't care about this.

An end to the war means an end to his role as Israel's Prime Minister, and the end of his role as Prime Minister means a trial and an almost certain conviction on corruption charges.

Netanyahu would burn down all of Israel if he could preside over its ashes.

Busy Past Few Days in the Middle East

So in the past few days, Israel has assassinated the Chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau Ismail Haniyeh while he was in Tehran for a meeting.

They also assassinated Hezbollah #2 Fuad Shukr in Beruit in response to the rocket attack on Majdal Shams that killed 12 children playing football. (Soccer)

While I believe that the exit of these two individuals in fact makes the world a better place, I do not think that the fact of they were assassinated will have the same effect.

The strike on Shukr is perhaps more justifiable, given that it is believed that he was directly involved in the strike.

I think that the assassination of Haniyeh is less justifiable, if just because he was deeply involved in negotiations to end the conflict and get the hostages still held in Gaza back.

I'm wondering if part of the motivation, in Netanyahu's part at least, was to extend the war.

Bibi has to know that once the war has ended, he will be turfed out of office, and then he will go to jail for corruption.

Unfortunately, I see nothing good coming from this.

This Business Will Get Out of Control. It Will Get Out of Control and We'll Be Lucky to Live Through It

An Israeli airstrike has killed Wissam al-Tawil, a senior figure in Hezbollah, and commander of their paramilitary Radwan force.

This is getting out of control fast.

The Israeli polity needs to get their shit together, because Netanyahu's only interest is in holding onto power so that he can stay out of jail. 

Well, that, and fomenting a shooting war between Iran and the United States.

They need to get Bibi's ass out of Beit Aghion (בית אגיון) and into a jail cell as soon as possible.

I am not sure that a new government can do any better, Netanyahu has foreclosed many policy paths at this point, but they cannot do worse:

The commander of Hezbollah's Radwan Force was killed on Monday morning in a strike in southern Lebanon attributed to Israel.

Hezbollah confirmed that the deceased was Wissam al-Tawil, known as Jawad. His car was attacked in the village of Khirbet Selm, about 15 kilometers from the border, killing Tawil and another person. Tawil played an important role in the management of Hezbollah operations.

Speaking on Israeli Channel 14 about the assassination on Monday evening, Foreign Minister Israel Katz said that "we took responsibility for the operation, it is part of our war."

Tawil was responsible for the kidnapping and killing of Israeli soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev on July 12, 2006. That cross-border raid led to the Second Lebanon War. Tawil was also responsible for planning an invasion of Israeli communities along the border with Lebanon, plans which are reminiscent of Hamas' October 7 attack.

In addition, Tawil was responsible for the explosive device which detonated in northern Israel, near Megiddo, in 2023.

Just so you know, Tel Megiddo (תל מגידו) is better known by its Greek name, Armageddon.

Yeah, that reference is auspicious.

This is Not Good

Ecuadorian Presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was just assassinated in Qito.

He was in the middle of the pack, but it is still a shocking development, and a part of the political turmoil in the country recently, but this is exponentially worse:

Ecuadorian presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio has been shot dead as he left a campaign event in Quito, just days before an election where the central issue is the country’s slide into violence and crime.

Videos on social media show Villavicencio, a former journalist who has worked for the Guardian and was outspoken about alleged links between organised crime and politics, surrounded by supporters and being escorted by security guards to a waiting vehicle when gunshots ring out as people start to scream and take cover.

The country’s president, Guillermo Lasso, said he was “outraged and shocked by the assassination” and would convene a meeting of his security cabinet. “For his memory and his fight, I assure you that this crime will not remain unpunished,” he said.

It should be noted that Guillermo Lasso is responsible for much of the recent political instability, having dissolved the national assembly and subsequently ruling by decree in response to an upcoming impeachment vote for corruption.

………

The assassination comes amid a shocking surge in violent crime in the small South American country, as rival drug trafficking gangs perpetrate prison massacres and murder rates have more than doubled between 2020 and 2022. Lasso said in the wake of Wednesday’s killing: “Organized crime has gone too far, but they will feel the full weight of the law.”

Color me dubious of their being an organized conspiracy to kill Villavicencio.  It's much easier just to cultivate some unstable people, and one of them does the job on his own.  (Stochastic Terrorism)

Also, color me dubious Lasso's ability or inclination to pursue any conspiracy if one does exist.  He has proven ineffective in office and, according to US Representative Raul Grijalva, he is profoundly corrupt.

Given ongoing US efforts to destabilize governments in the region, Venezuela, Peru and Columbia have been seen support for destabilizing governments that Washington found insufficiently deferential, that region is a powder keg.

Good News! There is an Arrest Warrant for Donald Trump!

The bad news is that the warrant was issued in Iraq, and almost certainly never be enforced.

The charge is 1st degree murder for the assassination of Iran’s Quds Force commander, Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Iranian Quds force and Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis, the head of the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) militia.

Of course, this warrant will never be enforced.  If it were, we would see similar warrants issued for every living US President, because assassination has become standard policy here:

The Iraqi supreme court has issued an arrest warrant for former U.S. President Donald Trump for the assassination on Iraqi soil of Iran’s Quds Force commander, Qasem Soleimani, IraqiNews reports, citing a Baghdad news agency.

The warrant was issued on Thursday in connection both with the killing of Soleimani and of another Iraqi militia leader, chief of staff of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) in Iraq–both of whom were killed in a drone strike in January 2020 near the Baghdad airport.

That assassination operation led to Iranian strikes on the Aia Al-Assad U.S. base in Iraq. The arrest warrant charges Trump with premeditated murder. While the warrant is clearly symbolic, a conviction of this nature carries the death penalty.

There is a reason that this behavior has largely been eschewed by civilized nations, and it is not that it appears to be illegal under international law.  It is because assassination is inherently an asymmetrical act, and should a foreign government decide to retaliate, they would not have a particularly difficult time engaging in retribution.

The question here is when this will happen, not if this will happen.

Too Expensive

I mean seriously.  Who would pay ¼ million dollars just to shoot John Bolton?

OK, who apart from about ⅔ of his former cow-orkers would even consider paying ¼ million dollars just to shoot John Bolton?

What's more, paying the money to the  Islamic Republic of Iran, or the their Republican Guard is EXTREMELY difficult due to sanctions.

How could they possibly expect to get any takers for this offer. 

………

Wait

………

They are paying the would be contract killer, not the other way around?

Damn, the line of applicants will be longer than that for the opening to be Katy Perry's boob adjuster:

The Justice Department charged a member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps on Wednesday with planning to assassinate John R. Bolton, who served as the national security adviser to President Donald J. Trump, as payback for the killing of a senior Iranian official.

The charging document, filed in federal court, read like the synopsis of an international espionage novel — but the scheme, had it been carried out, would have resulted in the murder of a prominent American critic of the government in Tehran, and the plot’s disclosure has further jolted an already shaky relationship between the United States and Iran at a critical moment in negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear program.

………

The accused plotter, Shahram Poursafi, 45, is not in custody and remains at large, presumably in Iran. Pictures purporting to be Mr. Poursafi show a man with fashionable glasses, wearing Revolutionary Guards fatigues or clad in stylish Western-style clothes.

………

It was a ruse, prosecutors said. Mr. Poursafi was working on behalf of his government to recruit a network to murder Mr. Bolton, likely in retaliation for the United States military’s killing in January 2020 of Qassim Suleimani, the top commander of the Revolutionary Guards, a branch of Iran’s military that is a power base for the country’s ruling military and political elites, officials said in the court filing.

………

By November, Mr. Poursafi had been introduced to several other Americans on an encrypted messaging platform, and made a stunning offer to one of them, the person who turned out to be the informant: He would pay $250,000 to “eliminate” Mr. Bolton, who had left the White House in late 2019 after a tumultuous year-and-a-half tenure.

One of the things that officials in the United States seem to forget is that in the United States, where guns are plentiful and easy to get, and our society has relatively free travel, is that they are even more exposed than the political leaders they so glibly try to whack.

This has never been good policy.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

Former Japanese PM Shinzo Abe has been assassinated in Nara, where he was giving a campaign speech for the upcoming elections for the upper house of the Diet.

At this point, this appears to be a lone nut job, and not right wing nationalists, who have been responsible for the overwhelming majority of political violence in Japan, so Abe's ties to right wing nationalists, he served as the parliamentary advisor for Nippon Kaigi (日本会議), do not appear to be related to this.

According to multiple reports, the shooter claimed that he shot Abe because of his alleged support for the Unification Church.

It should be noted that there are to my knowledge no evidence of any such ties.  The story originated from a fringe party whose primary focus is the abolition of television license fees.*

That's all we know at this point.

^*As Anna Russell would say, "I'm not making this up, you know."

Unfortunately, It's Still Hoover's FBI

Just to remind you, that it was only in the past few days that convictions of two of the people convicted of the assassination of Malcolm X were overturned when it was revealed that the FBI manufactured evidence to convict two innocent men, largely in an effort to conceal the role of their undercover agents and informants in that murder:

The exoneration of two men wrongfully convicted of the assassination of Malcolm X fueled questions on Thursday about the decisions made by the F.B.I. and its longtime director at the time, J. Edgar Hoover, during the investigation of the murder.

A motion to vacate the convictions, filed by the Manhattan district attorney’s office, said numerous F.B.I. reports were never disclosed to the defense, including some that discussed federal informants who were present in the ballroom where Malcolm X was killed.

The documents suggest the bureau, on Mr. Hoover’s orders, purposely kept information about its informants secret from the local authorities.

“We now have reports revealing that on orders from director J. Edgar Hoover himself, the F.B.I. ordered multiple witnesses not to tell police or prosecutors that they were in fact F.B.I. informants,” Mr. Vance said in court on Thursday.

………

Still, the inability of investigators to resolve questions about the roles the F.B.I. and New York police played added to demands for a broader investigation into Malcolm X’s assassination, as the co-founder of the Innocence Project, which participated in the review, called for on Thursday.

We also have reports that the NYPD "Red Squad" had infiltrated X's entourage, and was heavily involved in the coverup as well:

SCHECK: Well, that's a disturbing aspect of this entire matter. The essence of the reason that Cyrus Vance threw out the charges, vacated the conviction and dismissed the case is that in the files of the FBI and the New York City Police Department bosse squad (ph), sometimes known as the Red Squad, was information that there was an individual who fit the description of the man with the shotgun that was supposed to be Mr. Islam that looked nothing like Mr. Islam. And then very quickly thereafter, they learned that he could well be a lieutenant in the Newark mosque named William Bradley, who not only fit the description but the background of somebody that had expertise in the military.

So they knew this all. And they - what the bosse squad knew but not the FBI and not apparently the other NYPD individuals is that on the stage, giving Malcolm mouth-to-mouth resuscitation was an undercover named Gene Roberts. The point is none of this was known to the district attorney. And if it had been disclosed to the district attorney's office, it had been disclosed to the defense and the court and the American public, the history of the civil rights movement in this country would have been different.

Am I the only one, who thinks that this sort of sh%$ is WAY more common than we are led to believe?

About F%$#ing Time

The US Commerce department has NSO Group over it's aggressively hawking its spying software to every despot in the world.

What took them so long?

The United States on Wednesday added the Israeli spyware company NSO Group to its “entity list,” a federal blacklist prohibiting the company from receiving American technologies, after determining that its phone-hacking tools had been used by foreign governments to “maliciously target” government officials, activists, journalists, academics and embassy workers around the world.

The move is a significant sanction against a company spotlighted in July in an investigation by the global Pegasus Project consortium, which includes The Washington Post and 16 other news organizations worldwide. The consortium published dozens of articles detailing how NSO customers had misused its powerful spyware, Pegasus.

The move could also raise tensions between the United States and Israel, where NSO is a prized technological powerhouse. Exports of NSO’s software are regulated by Israel’s Ministry of Defense, which must approve them as it would any weapons sale.

………

The Commerce Department said in a statement that the action is part of the Biden administration’s “efforts to put human rights at the center of U.S. foreign policy, including by working to stem the proliferation of digital tools used for repression.”

………

The company has consistently denied the findings of the Pegasus Project, which found that some of NSO’s dozens of law enforcement, military and intelligence customers in more than 40 countries target journalists, politicians and human rights workers on a routine basis with Pegasus, which can hack into cellphones. NSO has acknowledged problems with certain customers in the past.

The entity list designation prohibits export from the United States to NSO of any type of hardware or software, severing the company from a vital source of technology. It could also hinder future business arrangements and challenge the firm’s ability to work as an international company.

“The impact is broader than just the legal prohibition,” said Kevin Wolf, an international trade lawyer at the Akin Gump law firm who previously ran the entity list process. “It’s a huge red flag.”

It should be a huge red flag.

NSO helped the House of Saud assassinate Jamal Kashoggi, and aggressively markets itself to repressive governments throughout the world.

They should have a big scarlet "S" (for sanctioned) on their chest.  (It's a Hawthorne reference, not a Siegel and Shuster reference, you Philistines.)

It's Nice to See Israeli Saudi Cooperation

Not!!

It turns out that the Israeli cyber-stalking firm NSO was hip deep in the plans to assassinate Jamal Khashoggi.

If this is what Middle East Peace means, maybe it's not such a good thing:

In the wake of the brutal murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the NSO Group emphatically denied that its government clients had used its hacking malware to target the journalist or his family.

“I can tell you very clear. We had nothing to do with this horrible murder,” Shalev Hulio, the chief executive of the Israeli surveillance firm, told the US TV news programme 60 Minutes in March 2019. It was six months after Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist, was killed in Turkey by assassins dispatched by Saudi Arabia, a client of NSO.

Now a joint investigation by the Guardian and other media, based on leaked data and forensic analysis of phones, has uncovered new evidence that the company’s spyware was used to try and monitor people close to Khashoggi both before and after his death.

In one case, a person in Khashoggi’s inner circle was hacked four days after his murder, according to peer-reviewed forensic analysis of her device.

The investigation points to an apparent attempt by Saudi Arabia and its close ally the United Arab Emirates to leverage NSO’s spy technology after Khashoggi’s death to monitor his associates and the Turkish murder investigation, even going so far as to select the phone of Istanbul’s chief prosecutor for potential surveillance.

4 days after the murder?  There was a pre existing relationship.

Khashoggi was killed and dismembered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018. While the investigation mostly points to Khashoggi’s close associates being targeted in the months after the murder, it also identified evidence suggesting that an NSO client targeted the phone of his wife, Hanan Elatr, several months before his death, between November 2017 and April 2018.

Yeah.  Pre existing relationship.

………

US intelligence agencies have already concluded that the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, was responsible for ordering the murder of Khashoggi, a former Saudi government insider whose criticism of the kingdom’s regime in the pages of the Washington Post was seen as a threat to the Saudi heir.

………

The phone analysis discoveries and leaked phone records suggest that Saudi Arabia and its allies used NSO’s spyware in the aftermath of the murder to monitor the campaign for justice led by friends and associates of Khashoggi, while also showing an intent to spy on the official Turkish inquiry into his murder.

I understand the motivation of NSO, they wanted the money.

What I don't understand is the motivation of the US for continued support of the House of Saud.

 

Of Course We Trained Them

It appears that some of the Colombian mercenaries alleged to have participated in the assassination of Jovenel Moïse were trained by the US.

I would be unsurprised to discover that at least some of them were trained at the, "Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation," which used to be known as the "School of the Americas."

It was a petri dish for coups and right wing death squads in Latin America for decades:

Some of the former Colombian servicemen arrested after last week’s assassination of Haiti’s president previously received U.S. military training, according to the Pentagon, raising fresh questions about the United States’ ties to Jovenel Moïse’s death.

“A review of our training databases indicates that a small number of the Colombian individuals detained as part of this investigation had participated in past U.S. military training and education programs, while serving as active members of the Colombian Military Forces,” Lt. Col. Ken Hoffman, a Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement to The Washington Post.

………

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), whose legislation provides oversight of foreign defense aid used in human rights abuses, said the episode was a grim reminder that U.S. assistance to other countries can take unexpected turns.

“This illustrates that while we want our training of foreign armies to build professionalism and respect for human rights, the training is only as good as the institution itself,” Leahy said.

“The Colombian army, which we have supported for 20 years, has a long history of targeting civilians, violating the laws of war and not being accountable. There has been a cultural problem within that institution.”

As Zathras would say, "At least there is symmetry." 

Colombian officials initially said that 13 of 15 Colombian suspects in the July 7 assassination plot once served in that country’s military, including the two killed by Haitian authorities after Moïse was fatally shot inside his home.

It is common for Colombian troops and other security personnel across Latin America to receive U.S. training and education. Colombia, in particular, has been a significant U.S. military partner for decades, receiving billions of U.S. dollars since 2000 in its effort to battle drug trafficking organizations, leftist guerrillas and far-right paramilitary groups.

That's an interesting way of saying that the Columbian military has been training, arming, supporting, and in some cases staffing murderous far-right paramilitaries for decades.

………

“The recruitment of Colombian soldiers to go to other parts of the world as mercenaries is an issue that has existed for a long time, because there is no law that prohibits it,” the commander of Colombia’s armed forces, Gen. Luis Fernando Navarro, told reporters last week.

This is a feature, not a bug.  If you hire people inclined to murder peasants, labor activists, etc. they are the sort who will want to cash in as mercs at the end of their time in the service.

Foreign military training provided by the United States is intended to promote “respect for human rights, compliance with the rule of law, and militaries subordinate to democratically elected civilian leadership,” Hoffman, the Pentagon spokesman, said in his statement. He did not immediately respond to questions seeking additional information.

We can add, "Foreign military training provided by the United States is intended to promote “respect for human rights, compliance with the rule of law, and militaries subordinate to democratically elected civilian leadership," to the list of the big lies in our discourse.  I'd put it ahead of, "I'll respect you in the morning."

In the western hemisphere, at least, training by the US military is pretty much a prerequisite for any officers overthrowing a democratically elected government in Latin America in the past 100 years.

Least Surprising CIA Intelligence Dump Ever

In which it is revealed that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was behind the assassination of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi.

Seriously, this had to be the worst kept secret in the Middle East: 

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia approved the assassination of the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, according to an intelligence report that the Biden administration released on Friday that offered the world a reminder of the brutal killing.

An elite team of operatives helped carry out the killing, the report said. The team reported directly to Prince Mohammed, who cultivated a climate of fear that made it unlikely for aides to act without his consent, according to the report. It omitted the brutal details of Mr. Khashoggi’s death, including the dismemberment of his body with a bone saw after Saudi officials lured him to their consulate in Istanbul.

But the Biden administration took no direct action against Prince Mohammed, the de facto ruler of the kingdom, instead announcing travel and financial sanctions on other Saudis involved in the killing and on members of the elite unit of the Royal Guard who protect the crown prince. The administration concluded it could not risk a full rupture of its relationship with the kingdom, relied on by the United States to help contain Iran, to counter terrorist groups and to broker peaceful relations with Israel. Cutting off Saudi Arabia could also push its leaders toward China.

It does not matter how much oil that they have, the House of Saud is a complete sh%$ show, and their moving closer to China, and further from the US would be a bane to the Chinese, and a boon to the USA.

Much of the evidence the C.I.A. used to conclude that Prince Mohammed was culpable in Mr. Khashoggi’s killing remains classified. But the report’s disclosure was the first time that the American intelligence community had made its conclusions public, and the declassified document was a powerful rebuke of the crown prince, a close ally of the Trump administration, whose continued support of him prompted international outrage.

The release of the report signaled that President Biden, unlike his predecessor, would not set aside the killing of Mr. Khashoggi and that his administration intended to try to isolate the crown prince.

“We assess that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey, to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi,” said the report, issued by Mr. Biden’s director of national intelligence, Avril D. Haines.

The decision to rebuke the Saudis without punishing Prince Mohammed directly was the result of a weekslong debate among aides to Mr. Biden, who during the 2020 campaign called Saudi Arabia a “pariah” state with “no redeeming social value.”

Biden's characterization is not really accurate, in that Saudi Arabia is not a nation-state in the modern sense, people are not citizens but instead subjects.  It is the absolute possession of the House of Saud.

It may not appear so outwardly, but the position of the House of Saud atop the power structure of Riyadh is more precarious than it appears, and it is further jeopardized by Mohammed bin Salman's headstrong incompetence.

The US disentangling itself to the maximum degree possible before it all comes crashing down is a good thing.

Let them be Beijing's problem.

Get, Ya Think?

Why yes, I am inclined to believe that, "Release of intelligence on Khashoggi killing could push U.S.-Saudi relations to new lows," as well it should.

They murdered a US resident in their consulate, and the Clown Crown Prince ordered it. 

It makes for awkward conversations during the cocktails:

Facing court cases and its own promises of transparency, the Biden administration is about to release a long-sought U.S. intelligence report concluding that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The report, an unclassified summary of findings across the intelligence community produced by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), will be made public as early as next week, according to people familiar with the matter.

Plans for the release come as U.S.-Saudi relations have tumbled to a new low in recent weeks, with the administration canceling arms sales, criticizing human rights abuses and the harassment of dissidents, and pledging to “recalibrate” ties with the kingdom.

The administration has said it will continue to supply Saudi Arabia — the world’s biggest customer for U.S. weaponry — with the means to defend itself against regional adversaries, including Iran and the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in neighboring Yemen, and has indicated it wants to continue a robust counterterrorism partnership.

But it has also made clear that it will, in contrast to its predecessor, press the Saudis toward a diplomatic end to their war in Yemen and to moderate their own extremism, and it will not allow Riyadh to interfere with its plans to rejoin the Obama-era nuclear deal with Iran.

………

President Donald Trump made Saudi Arabia a linchpin of his administration’s Middle East policy. Choosing Riyadh as the destination for his first presidential trip abroad in 2017, he hailed the kingdom as the leader of the Muslim world and a major profit-maker for the U.S. defense industry.

Khashoggi, a self-exiled Saudi journalist who wrote critically of the kingdom’s leadership from his home in Virginia, including in columns for The Washington Post, was brutally murdered in October 2018. Lured to the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul to pick up paperwork required for his planned marriage to a Turkish citizen, he was drugged and his body dismembered by Saudi agents, according to investigations by the Turkish government and the United Nations.

Suspicion immediately fell on the ambitious heir to the throne, who was consolidating his power within the often fractious royal family. Despite Saudi government claims that he was not involved, the CIA concluded, in an assessment leaked later that year, that Mohammed had ordered the assassination.

………

In early 2019, Congress passed a law giving the Trump administration 30 days to submit an unclassified report by the ODNI with “a determination and evidence with respect to the advance knowledge and role of any current or former official of Saudi Arabia . . . over the directing, ordering or tampering of evidence in the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.” It specifically ordered a release of names.

Trump ignored the mandate. In February 2020, his ODNI informed congressional leaders that it was “unable to provide additional information . . . at the unclassified level,” and sent them a copy of the classified CIA assessment.

………

At Avril Haines’s confirmation hearing to become Biden’s national intelligence director, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked if she would release the ODNI report.

“Yes, Senator. Actually, we’ll follow the law,” Haines replied.

………

Even without Haines’s determination and pressure from Congress, efforts to force release have been moving rapidly through federal court in the Southern District of New York.

The first of two cases filed by the Open Society Justice Initiative under the Freedom of Information Act is a broad 2019 request for “all records” related to the killing and who was responsible, including the classified CIA report. Ordered by the court to produce an index of anything that might be responsive, the Trump administration in December asked for an extension of the deadline. The Biden administration has now asked for an additional extension, until next month.

………

Some experts believe that if both sides are willing, and nuanced diplomacy is pursued, they can still find a way to work productively together. “Once this report comes out, and it’s very damning to the crown prince, it’s going to be tense,” Karen Young of the American Enterprise Institute said in an interview. “But I think everybody has sort of factored that in. . . . Everybody understands that this was a decision that he had something to do with.”

………

Mohammed also serves as his country’s defense minister, and the administration is likely to focus on his role there as the proper level of contact.

“But will there be Oval Office visits?” she said. “No, definitely not.”

I'm not going to talk the moral issues here, the House of Saud is an absolute monarchy and is corrupt and it is not a reliable ally in any matter, so as a matter of basic common sense, tightly embracing Riyadh as a central pillar of our foreign policy is stupid.

Also, it's increasingly clear, particularly now that the psychopathic moron Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud is running things, is that the House is doomed, and it will be overthrown sooner rather than later.

The best outcome would be that the House of Saud is overthrown in the manner of the House of Windsor, and so a lot of the (very) extended clan would need to find real work, and a few would serve as figureheads, and open hospitals and the like.

The worst outcome would be that the House of Saud is overthrown in the manner of the House of Romanov, which would be a horror show, considering the not-inconsiderable hydrocarbon assets in the kingdom and the fact that 2 of Islam's holiest sites are located there, Medina and Mecca.

The longer that we prop up the House of Saud, and the longer that we prop up Mohammed bin Salman, the more likely that the transition to post-monarchy in that country will be violent and messy.

This Will Not End Well

Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Iran's most senior nuclear scientist, was assassinated outside of Tehran today.

The Iranians are blaming the Israelis, but the timing of this action would imply that this may be the part of a coordinated attempt between Israel (whose Mossad, unlike the CIA, doesn't routinely screw up such operations) and the US, specifically the Trump administration, to foment an actual shooting war with Iran before Biden takes office.

Or, it could be just some random group of dudes with an amazing intelligence network and operational experience:

Iran has vowed retaliation after the architect of its nuclear programme was assassinated on a highway near Tehran, in a major escalation of tensions that risks placing the Middle East on a new war footing.

Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was ambushed with explosives and machine gun fire in the town of Absard, 70km (44 miles) east of Tehran. Efforts to resuscitate him in hospital failed. His bodyguard and family members were also wounded.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but the Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said Israel was probably to blame, and an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, vowed retaliation. “We will strike as thunder at the killers of this oppressed martyr and will make them regret their action,” tweeted Hossein Dehghan. 

There will be no claim of responsibility.  Whoever did this was a pro, and pros don't make claims of responsibility.

The killing was seen inside Iran as being as grave as the assassination by US forces of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Qassem Soleimani in January.

Israel will face accusations that it is using the final weeks of the Trump administration to try to provoke Iran in the hope of closing off any chance of reconciliation between Tehran and the incoming US administration led by Joe Biden.

Which is why reports of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's secret meeting with both Netanyahu, and Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) is significant. 

You had three people who are all forceful backers of open warfare between the United States and Iran allegedly in a room together, with the knowledge that a less confrontational approach to the Islamic Republic was in the works with the new administration in a room together.

It does not strain credulity that they all agreed that an immediate escalation of tensions would be beneficial for them agendas.

Fakhrizadeh had been described by western and Israeli intelligence services for years as the leader of a covert atomic bomb programme halted in 2003. He was a central figure in a presentation by the Israeli prime minister, Benajmin Netanyahu, in 2018 accusing Iran of continuing to seek nuclear weapons. “Remember that name, Fakhrizadeh,” Netanyahu said during the presentation.

I don't think that the Iranians have any hard evidence, but I do believe that their conclusions are a reasonable conjecture by the Iranian state security apparatus.