[Peace-discuss] U.S. mainstream media ignores key elements of Saudi Arabia’s likely murder of Jamal Khashoggi

[David Green]

https://mondoweiss.net/2018/10/mainstream-elements-khashoggi/

The disappearance and probable murder of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal
Khashoggi is the biggest Mideast development in a long time, and once again
the U.S. mainstream media is ignoring or downplaying key elements of the
story:

* The mainstream is rightly starting to focus on the repressive history of
the Saudi de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, but is not
emphasizing that he is also responsible for the armed onslaught against
neighboring Yemen, which has killed tens of thousands of civilians, maybe
more, and triggered the largest cholera epidemic in human history.

*  The mainstream is pointing to Donald Trump’s close ties to the
33-year-old Crown Prince, without noting that support for the Saudi regime
is longstanding and bipartisan; in 2011 Barack Obama approved $60 billion
in arms sales to the kingdom, up to that point the largest weapons
transaction in history.

*  The mainstream is not noting that Israel is in a de facto alliance with
the Saudis, (thus once again discrediting the tattered Clash of
Civilizations theory).

*  The mainstream — so far — is not reporting sufficiently on the huge,
well-funded Saudi lobbying and Congressional bribing apparatus in the U.S.;
you have to turn to this excellent exposé
<https://www.thenation.com/article/how-much-it-costs-to-buy-us-foreign-policy/>
 in *The* *Nation*, which reported that “More than a third of the members
of Congress contacted by such a [public relations] firm [registered to
promote Saudi interests] also received a campaign contribution from a
foreign agent at that firm.”

Instead of pursuing these angles, the mainstream U.S. media is focussing on
the minute details of Khashoggi’s disappearance inside a Saudi consulate in
Turkey, and giving too much space to unbelievable Saudi denials.

(A shining exception to mainstream failure is the *Washington Post*’s Karen
Attiah, who was Khashoggi’s editor at the paper’s GlobalPosts section and
who is appearing tirelessly on television asking for answers.)

The worst overall mainstream offender, unsurprisingly, is *New York
Times* opinion
writer Thomas Friedman, who had been the Crown Prince’s biggest
cheerleader. In a rambling, whining column
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/08/opinion/jamal-khashoggi-missing-saudi-journalist.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage>,
Friedman tried to exonerate himself after his latest blunder. He opened his
plea by violating journalistic ethics — he revealed that Khashoggi had been
the source of an anonymous quote in one of his previous columns. The quote
itself may have seemed mild. But if by some miracle Khashoggi is still
alive in a Saudi prison somewhere, revealing that he spoke anonymously to a
foreign reporter could have enraged his captors and jeopardized his life.

Friedman nowhere admitted he had been terribly wrong to gush over bin
Salman as a “reformer” — just as he has never apologized for his
disgusting, full-throated endorsement of the disastrous U.S. invasion of
Iraq in 2003. We repeat our standing call: “Fire Thomas Friedman
<https://mondoweiss.net/2014/06/fire-thomas-friedman/>.”

(Friedman, and others, continue to call the Crown Prince by his initials,
“M.B.S.”, dishonestly claiming he is “commonly known” in that fashion. It’s
doubtful he’s known that way in the Arab world, and the usage tends to
humanize someone who turns out to be a repressive murderer.)

On a positive note, the awful crime in Turkey should at least put Saudi
Arabia under closer scrutiny. One place to start is the excellent 2016
<https://www.amazon.com/Kingdom-Unjust-Behind-U-S-Saudi-Connection/dp/1944869026/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1539106446&sr=1-1&keywords=Kingdom+of+the+Unjust>book
by Medea Benjamin, of Code Pink, called *Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the
U.S.-Saudi Connection*.
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