It's an unspoken truth but the world knows Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) ordered the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, but that truth won't remain unspoken any longer.
The Biden administration is declassifying a report from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that says MBS is responsible for Khashoggi's grizzly torture and murder at the Saudi embassy in Turkey.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A declassified version of a U.S. intelligence report expected to be released on Thursday finds that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, four U.S. officials familiar with the matter said.
The officials said the report, for which the CIA was the main contributor, assessed that the crown prince approved and likely ordered the murder of Khashoggi, whose Washington Post column had criticized the crown prince’s policies. [...]
White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters on Wednesday Biden would only communicate with the Saudi king and said the declassified Khashoggi report was being readied for release soon.
As far as foreign policy is concerned, I believe this is the most promising action the Biden administration has taken so far in their first month.
Our close relationship with the Saudis has always made me feel ethically and morally uncomfortable and that was true even before the crown prince and the Trump family were joined at the hip. The Trump family transformed our relationship with the Saudis from something uncomfortable to something nakedly corrupt and transactional.
Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner arranged for MBS to get away with murder and in exchange they bought weapons from us they could use to commit genocide in Yemen.
Biden is shutting down our support for their war in Yemen and now he's pointing the finger at MBS.
This is part of a larger topic for another day, but under Trump we strategically aligned with the Saudis against the Iranians; first by abandoning the nuclear peace deal and reimposing economic sanctions and then by supplying the Saudi war machine -- but you tell me: which one of them had a Washington Post columnist dismembered and incinerated in someone's backyard fire pit?