US senator allied to Trump berates Saudi military
“Saudi military can’t fight its way out of a paper bag.” Senator Graham
…from Press TV, Tehran
[ Editor’s Note: One has to be mystified in a way to see an arch NeoCon like Graham biting down hard on Saudi Arabia, a long time donkey for the US defense industry, uber Iran hater, and loyal funder of US proxy terrorist operations in the Mideast.
But what is even more shocking is bringing in what we now know to be a tight relationship that Israel has had with the Saudis, one we have learned goes back many years, much deeper than we thought, and before their 9-11 intersection with Mohammed Atta, who worked for Saudi and Israeli Intel at the same time.
With the Israelis deeply in control of Congress, how could Graham have ponied up to the table to take on Netanyahu’s most important tool, after the US, for using the Saudis as a piggy bank and cannon fodder for getting a war going with Iran?
There have been rumblings of Congressional disgust over the Khashoggi killing, bi-partisan even, and we are past the rhetoric time of the midterm elections. But the difference now seems to have been triggered from the CIA briefing that Gina Haspel gave Congressional leaders last week, after which they quickly went public in a bi-partisan manner.
How could the all-powerful Israeli Lobby have allowed such a thing to happen? Why is not AIPAC denouncing all those involved in speaking out and releasing some of its blackmail material to make examples of a few Congressmen to reign in the herd?
How did Gina Haspel avoid getting the boot as so many have been getting from a president that worships “yes men” (and women) being around him more than his MacDonalds hamburgers? My condolences to the White House chef who must be humiliated by that.
This bashing not only of Mohammed bin Salman, but the entire Saudi military, did not slip out over an open mic or in a moment of anger, but in a center-stage manner, with Graham on Fox news and others catching the Sunday news specials.
Add to this fiasco we have Saudi Arabia crowing about its key role in forming a US-led Arab NATO to defend the Mideast from “outside aggression”, where the members list looks like a rogues’ gallery of proxy terror sponsors and enablers.
Then we see a flanking move to push for a Yemen War settlement, which we have to assume was coordinated in the timing. Color me mystified, and waiting to see how this all is going to play out … Jim W. Dean ]
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– First published … December 10, 2018 –
A Republican US senator, often an ally of President Donald Trump, has echoed the president’s derogatory remarks about Saudi Arabia’s military capabilities, saying the Saudi military “can’t fight [its way] out of a paper bag.”
In pointed remarks made to Fox News on Sunday, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who is a hawk on Iran, said Saudi Arabia would be defeated by Iran militarily “in about a week” if it did not have the support of the United States.
“Let me put it this way — I want to be very blunt with you: If it weren’t for the United States, they’d be speaking Farsi in about a week in Saudi Arabia,” Graham said.
Saudi Arabia is not involved in a war with Iran, and Tehran has made it clear that it will never initiate military aggression against any country. But Riyadh has launched a war on impoverished Yemen, where it has been bogged down for almost four years now despite disproportionately superior military power.
Earlier, President Trump had belittled Riyadh by saying Saudi rulers might not last “for two weeks” without the support of the US. But Trump has also taken a stubborn stance in defense of the Saudi leadership in an international scandal over the state-ordered murder of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi. In attempting to justify that defense, Trump has partially pointed to the massive purchases of American weapons by Riyadh.
Khashoggi was brutally killed by a 15-member hit squad inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, on October 2.
Unlike President Trump, however, Senator Graham has turned against the Saudi leadership following that murder.
Citing informed sources, The Washington Post reported in mid-November that the CIA “has concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered Khashoggi’s assassination.” Trump said at the time that the CIA conclusion was “very premature.”
Ankara, which says it has evidence from inside the consulate, has said the order for the hit “came from the highest levels of the Saudi government.” But it has said Saudi King Salman himself was not involved, giving the impression that Saudi Arabia’s number-two person, Mohammed, was responsible.
Saudi Arabia has attempted to shift the blame for Khashoggi’s murder to Mohammed’s underlings, including at least one of his advisers. But it has claimed that the criminality somehow stops short of reaching the crown prince himself.
The CIA has not published its findings on Khashoggi’s murder. But the agency’s director, Gina Haspel, recently briefed a group of senators on the matter. Graham was among them.
In his Fox News interview, Graham confirmed the report that the CIA believed Mohammed was responsible.
“It’s the most brilliant briefing I’ve ever received in my time in Congress… There is no doubt by any senator who received this briefing that MbS was complicit in the murder of Mr. Khashoggi,” Graham told Fox News, using Mohammed’s initials.
“A murderous regime’ & ‘a thug like MbS’
The US senator also dismissed the notion that the US is reliant on Saudi Arabia — something President Trump sought to highlight in defending the Saudi leadership.
“They give us 9 percent of our oil imports. We need them a lot less than they need us,” Graham said. “I don’t buy this idea you’ve got to hook up to a murderous regime, a thug like MbS, to protect America from Iran. Quite the opposite. I think by hooking up with him we hurt our ability to govern the region.”
Graham has formerly called Mohammed “a wrecking ball” who “has got to go.”
In November, Republican and Democrat senators at US Congress introduced legislation to suspend weapons sales to Saudi Arabia in the wake of Kashoggi’s murder.
Graham said the Congress would press ahead with that legislation and would officially hold Mohammed responsible in the murder of Khashoggi.
“Well, we’re going to label him (Mohammed) complicit. We’re going to have a vote in the Senate saying that MbS was complicit in the murder of Mr. Khashoggi,” Graham said. “I’m never gonna support any more arms sales to Saudi Arabia.”
Jim W. Dean is VT Editor Emeritus. He was an active editor on VT from 2010-2022. He was involved in operations, development, and writing, plus an active schedule of TV and radio interviews. He now writes and posts periodically for VT.
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Well said & your tracking right on the ‘spoor’. Janus/Mammon RA/Hypokrites/ Thespis all actors on the stage wearing they’re masks. We are watching western civilization imploding & exposing itself (if your perceptive enough to see it) as it grinds down. Notice the same cast of characters on the stage ?
Maybe Israel is outliving its usefulness, as Heinz Kissinger hinted at a few years ago?
This would be news to rejoice in, except if true something even worse is likely planned as its replacement.
Speak Truth to Empire & watching the scripted Zionist/Jesuit Theatre on the World’s Stage
“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” Karl Rove Neo-Con/Zionist
Seige Heil: The Bush-Rove-Schwarzenegger Nazi Nexus
George W. Bush’s grandfather helped finance the Nazi Party. Karl Rove’s grandfather allegedly helped run the Nazi Party, and helped build the Birkenau Death Camp. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Austrian father volunteered for the infamous Nazi SA and became a ranking officer.
https://freepress.org/article/seige-heil-bush-rove-schwarzenegger-nazi-nexus-0
Saudis are certainly not more silly than Graham, nor do they depend on the freewill of “evil Shia” and US defense industry, for what I am able to read it is US and UK defense who are highly dependant on Saudi purchases. Shiites are not looking to attack Saudi Arabia nor Israel. In fact, if it wasn’t for angloamericans bloating Saudi-Iran feud out of proportions for decades now, making them act or seem like madmen Stalin or Mao, the Riyadh-Tehran connection would make something quite reasonable and strategic, as expected among those two giants of the Muslim world, together with Egypt and Pakistan. The reason the US-UK are so powerful and their mindless bullies like Graham get the scene, is cause they are able to predate on Islamic and Christian interpretations of faith among Islamic and Christian highest and most influential fractions. There are no favors from US, regardless of whom they choose to support. Even the most uneducated average IQ kid knows that there are no absolute evils coming from Shia or Orthodoxy or such pristine angelic goodness coming from Sunni or Catholics/Protestants. Saudis and Iranians have no reason whatsoever to hate each other or suffer in diplomacy.
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