Khashoggi

[Tassman]

Anyone else find it interesting how the MSM didn't seem to care very much when Iran was killing journalists and bloggers like Omid Reza Mir Sayafi and Sattar Beheshti

No. Iran is considered a enemy of the USA whereas Saudi Arabia is regarded as an ally. More to the point, Trump is denying the high probability reports of his own Intelligence Agencies concerning Khashoggi's murder in much the same way he has denied Russian interference in the election process.

and Obama was playing kissy face with the mullahs in Iran sending them pallets of cash?

https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-...ogus-1.6032057

It makes one wonder what changed.

What has changed is having a president who owes the Saudis big time.

[rogue06]

What has changed is having a president who owes the Saudis big time.

Really? Seems that Obama was doing the same sort of stuff for similar reasons when he quashed the lawsuit against Saudi Arabia by the families of 9/11 families.

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[oxmixmudd]

Why not in this particular case? America has done the like many, many times before, under all sorts of Presidents. Why - apart from your dislike for Trump - is this case objectively worse than all the others?

The first thing I would challenge is your assertion America has done the like "many, many times before". IOW, When has a sitting US president, chosen to publically disregard the direct assessment of our intelligence community and publically announce that he will look the other way in the brutal torture and murder of a US resident at the direct order of the leader of another country because that country pledged billions of dollars of investment in our country.

My point has gone over your head, it seems. Until you have secured agreement on the facts of a matter, you can't reasonably conclude that someone's view of the morality of the case is wrong, much less evil. If they have a different set of data from you, their conclusion will be different. They may be wrong (because they accept different data points that they should or shouldn't) but that doesn't therefore make them morally evil.

No. For the simple reason that a person motivated to diregard an immoral act can simply refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of any facts or data they find inconvenient - as is the case here.

Imagine two scientists analysing a set of data to draw a conclusion about the number of people who X.

Here's the data set: A: 20 B: 12 C: 15 D: 20 E: 10

Scientist Oxmix includes A-E in his analysis, and comes up with a total of 77
Scientist OBP rejects B as a valid data point, so his total is 65

That is not how science works. A scientist cannot arbitrarily chose the data they wish to use and the data they wish to reject. For the simple reason that science if properly practiced is an unbiased endeavor. It's goal is to get a true understanding of the physical world, and as such all available data must be explicitly accounted for. If data is excluded from a set of results, then objective criteria for the exclusion must be used, and the data must still be reported so that future researches have a complete picture of the experiment and its results. It is not at all unusual for data which was deems compromised for ostensibly legitimate reasons has in the hands of a future researcher led to an alternative hypothesis and a new discovery.

What can be concluded? Is Scientist OBP bad at maths? (No) Is he a bad scientist? (No, unless he objectively should include B in the data set)

No. The legitimate conclusions are

(1) objective criteria for rejection should lead to each scientist using the same sets of data. Therefore one or both 'scientists' are not doing science or
(2) that there is a lot of noise on the data and that there are not objective selection criteria or they are using different selection criteria, which would make either result dubious.
(3) resolution of the different results would focus on the legitimacy of the data gathering and/or selection criteria.

If Scientist oxmix accuses OBP of 'bad science' or 'being a bad mathematician' is he correct? (No). Is doing that addressing the actual root of the difference in their conclusions? (No)


I submit that you tend to focus on your conclusion, which derives from the data points that you accept, and accuse others of being immoral when the difference is not their moral values or judgments, but the data points they and you accept to derive those judgments from.

So you are mainly off in the weeds here using what is essentially a strawman to support Trumps position in this case.

Here are some of the facts, the data: (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/16/u...khashoggi.html)

1) this was a 15 man kill squad sent out from someone or some organization in Saudi Arabia. A country where such groups do not operate autonomously without some sort of direct or indirect approval by the Crown Prince.
2) they ambushed Khashoggi and tortured him, eventually killing him.
3) There is an audio tape of at least part of that event
4) There is an intelligence intercept between a member of the kill squad and a person close to the Crown Prince telling that person to let their boss know their mission was complete (that Khashoggi had been killed).

Item 4 was critical in raising the confidence level of the CIA to the point they were able to say they are now convinced the Crown Prince was directly involved.

So to say there is doubt about the Crown Prince's involvement is to question the veracity of the evidence. And to be objective one needs a reason to do so. It is not a matter of there being some other possible conclusion based on the existing evidence.


Jim

[oxmixmudd]

Really? Seems that Obama was doing the same sort of stuff for similar reasons when he quashed the lawsuit against Saudi Arabia by the families of 9/11 families.

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While I agree BOTH are bad, I don't think there is any real comparison between the two. Not to deny there is a similarity, nevertheless, as is so often the case with 'the extreme', Trump takes it to a whole new level, an order of magnitude further.

If what Obama did was unconscionable (and I agree it was), what Trump is now doing is despicable and depraved.


Jim

[oxmixmudd]

I thought Trump's advisors recommended he not listen to it. In essence, it was full of noise and horror, not information.

They may have. I don't know. Nevertheless, it is part of him turning a blind eye to that same horror. Perhaps if he heard the tape, he might actually understand why you can't ignore something like that.

I think most conservatives are too quick to trust law enforcement and intel orgs, and most liberals are too quick to trust media.

This is case of convenient mistrust, Not evidence based questioning.

I sort of trust the CIA. I don't trust Turkey.

I'm sure that is why they were not convinced until they had their own intelligence intercept of the kill squad member reporting the job finished to a higher up with close direct ties to the Crown Prince.

I think MBS probably was involved. I did not like a lot of Trump's rambling statement. I also did not like the way critical pundits caricatured it.

This really is not as simple as "The prince did very bad things, so we should dump SA." Saddam Hussein was probably much worse than MBS, but we supported Iraq ca. 40 years ago because we considered Iran even worse. Then we turned around and deposed him ca. 15 years ago, and the results have been less than stellar.

We don't have to dump SA. We have to respond to what was done and not ignore it. We can't be sending the autocrats of the world the message that enough money buys impunity from the US.


Jim

[rogue06]

While I agree BOTH are bad, I don't think there is any real comparison between the two. Not to deny there is a similarity, nevertheless, as is so often the case with 'the extreme', Trump takes it to a whole new level, an order of magnitude further.

If what Obama did was unconscionable (and I agree it was), what Trump is now doing is despicable and depraved.


Jim

I don't think protecting the Saudi government from the consequences of 3000 people killed and another 6000 injured is less despicable and depraved than protecting them from the consequences of the murder of 1 person.

Both are the result of political considerations. Currently Saudi Arabia is our chief Muslim ally in the region in combating ISIS and other terrorist organizations and containing Iran. Further, they have been seriously cracking down on Wahabi extremism in their country, increasing civil liberties for women (lot of room for growth still to go there) and are even ceased anti-Israeli activities. Should we flush that all down the drain over Khashoggi (who it seems started turning against the government largely because of these measures)?

[JimL]

I don't think protecting the Saudi government from the consequences of 3000 people killed and another 6000 injured is less despicable and depraved than protecting them from the consequences of the murder of 1 person.

Both are the result of political considerations. Currently Saudi Arabia is our chief Muslim ally in the region in combating ISIS and other terrorist organizations and containing Iran. Further, they have been seriously cracking down on Wahabi extremism in their country, increasing civil liberties for women (lot of room for growth still to go there) and are even ceased anti-Israeli activities. Should we flush that all down the drain over Khashoggi (who it seems started turning against the government largely because of these measures)?

So sending a message to dictators around the world that jounalists are enemies of the state, enemies of the people, and it's okay to murder and imprison them like Putin, Erdogon and MBS do, as well as like Trump himself would obviously like to do, is okay by you. Gotcha.

[oxmixmudd]

I don't think protecting the Saudi government from the consequences of 3000 people killed and another 6000 injured is less despicable and depraved than protecting them from the consequences of the murder of 1 person.

Both are the result of political considerations. Currently Saudi Arabia is our chief Muslim ally in the region in combating ISIS and other terrorist organizations and containing Iran. Further, they have been seriously cracking down on Wahabi extremism in their country, increasing civil liberties for women (lot of room for growth still to go there) and are even ceased anti-Israeli activities. Should we flush that all down the drain over Khashoggi (who it seems started turning against the government largely because of these measures)?

No, there is no conparison. There were valid reasons to be concerned about that specific legislation.

Source: nytimes

The White House has argued that the bill would prompt other nations to retaliate, stripping the immunity the United States enjoys in other parts of the world. "And no country has more to lose, in the context of those exceptions, than the United States of America, given the preeminent role that we play in global affairs," Earnest said.

© Copyright Original Source

Now I'm not going to enter an extended debate on the pros and cons of that legislation. Nevertheless, there is no comparison. Obama could veto that with the belief there were basic principles backing the decision. This act by Trump has no legitimacy and does in fact strike a serious blow to human rights and the basic principles that undergird our democracy.


Jim

[rogue06]

So sending a message to dictators around the world that jounalists are enemies of the state, enemies of the people, and it's okay to murder and imprison them like Putin, Erdogon and MBS do, as well as like Trump himself would obviously like to do, is okay by you. Gotcha.

That is the so-called "message" that every previous Administration has sent but it all of a sudden became a hair on fire crisis when Trump is president. And again while Trump may or may not want to use the full force of the law to go after reporters and news agencies he doesn't like he hasn't done so, although that was exactly what the previous Administration did to the very few who had the temerity not to worship at the altar of the Obamessiah.

[oxmixmudd]

That is the so-called "message" that every previous Administration has sent but it all of a sudden became a hair on fire crisis when Trump is president. And again while Trump may or may not want to use the full force of the law to go after reporters and news agencies he doesn't like he hasn't done so, although that was exactly what the previous Administration did to the very few who had the temerity not to worship at the altar of the Obamessiah.

I think your disdain for Obama is blinding you to the severity of what Trump has done in the khoshoggi case. Can you think of another president who has so explicitly and publically looked the other way over this sort of gruesome torture and assassination so as to secure the assasinating regime's cash?

Jim

[rogue06]

I think your disdain for Obama is blinding you to the severity of what Trump has done in the khoshoggi case.

I think if you change the names around here it would more accurately reflect reality. Obama has actually done the things that Trump's detractors proclaim he wants to do.

Can you think of another president who has so explicitly and publically looked the other way over this sort of gruesome torture and assassination so as to secure the assasinating regime's cash?

Jim

He's not after their cash. He realizes, like president's before him, that Saudi Arabia can be a valuable ally -- especially now since they have begun taking a decided turn toward modernization and against Wahhabism (something that has fueled groups like al Qaeda and ISIS) -- and it would be folly to ditch them. And, like it or not, their oil reserves are an important consideration as well. Mind you that doesn't mean he should let them off scot-free.

[JimL]

I think if you change the names around here it would more accurately reflect reality. Obama has actually done the things that Trump's detractors proclaim he wants to do.

He's not after their cash. He realizes, like president's before him, that Saudi Arabia can be a valuable ally -- especially now since they have begun taking a decided turn toward modernization and against Wahhabism (something that has fueled groups like al Qaeda and ISIS) -- and it would be folly to ditch them. And, like it or not, their oil reserves are an important consideration as well. Mind you that doesn't mean he should let them off scot-free.

But that is what Trump is doing. He is making excuses for them, refuting, once again, as he did concerning Russia, his own intelligence agencies. He is also lying about how important Saudi Arabia is to the U.S. The U.S. is far more important to Saudi Arabia than Saudi Arabia is to the U.S. And MBS, who ordered the murder, is even less important than is Saudi Arabia, but not to Trump. Trump has already admitted "I love the Saudis, they buy all of my toys, they spend hundreds of millions on my properties, what am I supposed to not like them. I love them." Of course after the Kashoggi incident he changed his tune saying "I don't do any business with the Saudis, have no financial interests with them."


And btw, who was the journalist that Obama had tracked down across the world and had tortured and murdered?

[Tassman]

Really? Seems that Obama was doing the same sort of stuff for similar reasons when he quashed the lawsuit against Saudi Arabia by the families of 9/11 families.

does owe the Saudi princes big time for helping him out of massive debt in the 1990's. This is what it's all about. It's about Trump and his interests as usual.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/saudi...-EcRDAwBRpbIjg

[MaxVel]

The first thing I would challenge is your assertion America has done the like "many, many times before". IOW, When has a sitting US president, chosen to publically disregard the direct assessment of our intelligence community and publically announce that he will look the other way in the brutal torture and murder of a US resident at the direct order of the leader of another country because that country pledged billions of dollars of investment in our country.

So American Presidents in the past have never done business with countries that oppress, torture or murder people? Obama was quite happy to cosy up to the Saudis (and the Bushes before him), and so on. FDR worked with Stalin, Nixon tried to draw closer to the Communists leading China. America has plenty of times turned a blind eye to all sorts of nasty things done around the world in the interests of getting on and prospering. Not that America is alone in that kind of realpolitik. The world is a nasty, dirty, place, full of immoral people doing immoral things. You haven't given me a reason why I should regard this particular case as an exceptionally bad one, except that you have a bee in your bonnet about Trump.

No. For the simple reason that a person motivated to diregard an immoral act can simply refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of any facts or data they find inconvenient - as is the case here.




That is not how science works. A scientist cannot arbitrarily chose the data they wish to use and the data they wish to reject. For the simple reason that science if properly practiced is an unbiased endeavor. It's goal is to get a true understanding of the physical world, and as such all available data must be explicitly accounted for. If data is excluded from a set of results, then objective criteria for the exclusion must be used, and the data must still be reported so that future researches have a complete picture of the experiment and its results. It is not at all unusual for data which was deems compromised for ostensibly legitimate reasons has in the hands of a future researcher led to an alternative hypothesis and a new discovery.



No. The legitimate conclusions are

(1) objective criteria for rejection should lead to each scientist using the same sets of data. Therefore one or both 'scientists' are not doing science or
(2) that there is a lot of noise on the data and that there are not objective selection criteria or they are using different selection criteria, which would make either result dubious.
(3) resolution of the different results would focus on the legitimacy of the data gathering and/or selection criteria.



So you are mainly off in the weeds here using what is essentially a strawman to support Trumps position in this case.

Here are some of the facts, the data: (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/16/u...khashoggi.html)

1) this was a 15 man kill squad sent out from someone or some organization in Saudi Arabia. A country where such groups do not operate autonomously without some sort of direct or indirect approval by the Crown Prince.
2) they ambushed Khashoggi and tortured him, eventually killing him.
3) There is an audio tape of at least part of that event
4) There is an intelligence intercept between a member of the kill squad and a person close to the Crown Prince telling that person to let their boss know their mission was complete (that Khashoggi had been killed).

Item 4 was critical in raising the confidence level of the CIA to the point they were able to say they are now convinced the Crown Prince was directly involved.

So to say there is doubt about the Crown Prince's involvement is to question the veracity of the evidence. And to be objective one needs a reason to do so. It is not a matter of there being some other possible conclusion based on the existing evidence.


Jim

Way to abuse an analogy, bro. Pick holes in the details and miss the whole point of the thing.

Since you can't or won't grasp my point, I'll be more direct:

Your moral posturing rings hollow with people because you jump ahead of the agreed facts, and assume that people who don't agree with you are immoral because they don't agree on the facts of the matter. That's pretty bad form for a Christian, doubly so when dealing with your Christian brothers and sisters. Shame on you.

[JimL]

So American Presidents in the past have never done business with countries that oppress, torture or murder people? Obama was quite happy to cosy up to the Saudis (and the Bushes before him), and so on. FDR worked with Stalin, Nixon tried to draw closer to the Communists leading China. America has plenty of times turned a blind eye to all sorts of nasty things done around the world in the interests of getting on and prospering. Not that America is alone in that kind of realpolitik. The world is a nasty, dirty, place, full of immoral people doing immoral things. You haven't given me a reason why I should regard this particular case as an exceptionally bad one, except that you have a bee in your bonnet about Trump.








Way to abuse an analogy, bro. Pick holes in the details and miss the whole point of the thing.

Since you can't or won't grasp my point, I'll be more direct:

Your moral posturing rings hollow with people because you jump ahead of the agreed facts, and assume that people who don't agree with you are immoral because they don't agree on the facts of the matter. That's pretty bad form for a Christian, doubly so when dealing with your Christian brothers and sisters. Shame on you.

So, do you, or do you not, think it right that Trump excuse the assasination of a journalist by a tyrant who just doesn't like being scrutinized by the media? How about if Trump himself, who defines the press as "enemies of the people", had them murdered or imprisoned? Would you excuse that as well? How about if Trump shot someone dead in the middle of 5th ave in broad daylight? The unprincipled amoral character of you Trumpsters, (seems to be a trait of many conservatives,) is so obvious!