This story first appeared at ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
MBS wanted the world to know what he did. He made no real effort at denial and the venue was chosen specifically for its exterior surveillance.
The horrific nature of the crime was also a plus.
This was not only a message to KSA’s detractors.
It was a message to the West that KSA was above the law.
Money…
““All of these PGA players and PGA executives who were talking tough about Saudi Arabia have done a complete 180,” one spokesperson for the families, Brett Eagleson, said in an interview. “All of a sudden they’re business partners? It’s unconscionable.””
So what does Jared Kushner have to say about all this? Or does he still say nothing in deference to his beloved MBS and the scent of his fortune?
(And thanks geographyjones for posting an actual substantive comment rather than another inane “I’m first” declaration.)
A simple gesture that will have no actual cost other than a little bit of embarrassment (and which can be offset instantly by insisting ‘this is the right thing to do’) that would send a ‘you should be wary of pissing us off too much’ message to the Saudis:
Apologize to Iran for the 1953 coup against the democratically-elected government and corrupting the Shah.
Most nations act as though they’re above “law”
We might be the best at that…
he was confident that the Saudi officials with whom he negotiated were not involved in the 9/11 plot.
That some nano-scale lines of distinction there sparky.
Agreed. While it may not have been an “apology” President Obama did acknowledger that we were involved in the 1953 Iranian coup and installation of the Shah (which is widely know and has been for decades) and that both the U.S. and Iran need to move past what occurred in 1953, in a speech President Obama gave in Egypt in 2009.
President Obama took a shit ton of grief from “conservatives” for that speech as well, and was part of building the lame “apology tour” talking point the GOP and Fox constructed in their jihad against President Obama.
I don’t like the Saudis or MBS or anything they’re about. However, why am I or anyone else required to be deferential to a 9/11 lobbying group that wants right of refusal over anything they feel like piping up about. Look, I understand grief. I understand anger. But that’s a far cry from a group of people who want to dictate what plaque goes on a wall, what building gets built, who the US deals with and whatever business people up to because, lets face it, money is king.
Is mine a cynical take? I call it realistic.
Yup. Meanwhile, an actual ‘The United States strives to be a moral actor on the world stage, and we failed in that with this episode in our history’ apology signals to Iran that there’s room for reapproachment (which, after all, began under Obama), and tells both Iran and Saudi Arabia that we’re not as joined at the hip to the Saudis as the latter would obviously like.
I agree. I have said that for decades.
That the Trump Crime Family sold us out to foreign actors is pretty damn obvious on the face of it.
How many distinct foreign entities they sold us out to is still an open question.
(Noting that “obvious on the face of it” is not always the same as “provable in court.” I mean, everyone in Chicago knew what Capone was up to, but it still took a tax fraud case to finally put him away.)
One place I know you weren’t on a certain Tuesday at the beginning of the millennium: Standing next to me on 5th Avenue.
I believe it is beyond time for the PGA to lose its tax exempt status. MLB and the NFL gave theirs up years ago. But the PFA, LPGA and I believe the NHL are still rax exempt.
More recently, and I’d say more blatantly, Saudis murdered American citizen Khashoggi in cold blood. Talk about sweeping shit under the rug.
Pro-Publica needs another “breaking” story but this is not it. The use of the families by the Tour was inexcusable but things could not stay as they were. The Saudis were spending a billion a year to fund LIV and the PGA was bleeding money. If they wanted to stay in business a deal had to be made.
There is no reason on Allah’s brown earth why mostly white men shouldn’t be allowed to hit a little ball with a metal rod on chemical-soaked grass into a little hole.
Nothing, no consideration, should stand in the way of that.
Maybe all them A-rab types that trump saw celebrating after September 11th somehow knew that trump would open his arms to the Saudis 23 years later and were really happy about the new peace and freedom that golf would bring to the world.
Along with churches…