Islam Times - West complicit in Saudi crimes, outrage just for show

Islam Times - The West is complicit in Saudi crimes and its outrage is just for show, says Daniel Patrick Welch, an American writer and political analyst.

Maybe a minor reshuffling of some heads will take place in Saudi Arabia over the killing of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, but no heads would roll, Welch said.

British Foreign Minister Jeremy Hunt on Friday warned there would be “consequences” if Saudi authorities were found to have been involved in the assassination of Khashoggi.

On Thursday, US President Donald Trump said he believes dissident Khashoggi is dead, and that the consequences should be severe for those who carried out the assassination.

“Well, this is really turning out to be the story that wouldn’t die, right? The idea that the Brits are going to have consequences for the Saudis if it turned out to be true which everyone now knows that it’s true that they killed Khashoggi,” Welch said.

“You know, on the one hand, of course, it’s true that you can’t imagine if a New York Times journalist was killed in Venezuela in the Russian consulate or something that there would be instant drone bombing everywhere,” he added.

“But the outrage is completely fake because of the refusal to look at this completely cynical engagement with these head-chopping lunatics—both those in the kingdom and those in Washington and London—these cabals have been in cahoots for a very long time and that’s not going to change,” the analyst said,” he noted.

“I mean the US will throw anybody under the bus if it’s gets too costly or if they need to change like Henry Kissinger said: ‘no permanent alliances, only permanent interests.’ But I don’t see this as being counter to US needs. It’s a minor flap in the scheme of things,” the commentator said.

“The fake opposition domestically wants to make a case of this ridiculous outrage having said nothing for years about the US helping to destroy Yemen, you know, about the famine. This is one journalist. It is sad. There are millions of people under famine now because of the regime links between the US and the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. And this goes back decades. It’s completely bipartisan,” he observed.

“And there is no reason to expect that there would be any serious consequences because of it…maybe a minor reshuffling of some heads but no heads would roll literally,” Welch concluded.

Khashoggi, who was also a US green card holder, entered the Saudi mission on October 2 in order to obtain the necessary paperwork for marrying his fiancée. That was the last time he was seen.

According to The Washington Post, to which Khashoggi was a contributor, US intelligence intercepts already prove that he was killed and dismembered by Saudi agents in a hit job directly ordered by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

The Saudi rulers are weighing blaming a top intelligence official close to the crown prince for the assassination, three people with knowledge of the Saudi plan said Thursday, according to The New York Times.

The blame will be assigned to General Ahmed al-Assiri, a high-ranking adviser to the crown prince, but American intelligence agencies are increasingly convinced that bin Salman was behind Khashoggi’s murder.

Turkish officials say they are in possession of audio and video recordings that prove the murder and incriminate Saudi diplomats.

First leaked details of the audio recordings picture a gruesome scene where Khashoggi is tortured, killed and dismembered by a Saudi assassination squad in cold blood.