23 December 2018

Why Did Trump Pull Out Of Syria: Another Khashoggi Gift

Something funny happened last Thursday.

To the shock and dismay of Republicans in Congress, the military-industrial complex and America's NATO allies, Donald Trump declared that he was withdrawing all the American troops in Syria.

He did it despite strong opposition from his own cabinet, his staunch supporters in the Senate and America's various allies around the globe.

He didn't even flinch when his Secretary of Defense James "Mad Dog" Mattis abruptly resigned over the issue.

US Defence Chief James Mattis Quits Over Trump's Syria, Afghanistan Move

Subsequently, when Syria envoy Brett McGurk resigned, he called it a "non-event."

America's withdrawal from Syria means several things.

One, Bashar al-Assad will remain in power completing the dreaded "Shia Crescent."

Two, without the US, Russia and Iran will be the main players in Syria and will largely determine the future of the country and the entire Middle East.

Three, Turkey will be free to enter Northern Syria and bomb Syrian Kurds, a key US ally in fighting ISIS, killing tens of thousands.

Please tell me how these three points make any sense from an American perspective.

The Shia Crescent, which assumes that Iran, Iraq and Syria are trying to encircle the Sunni Arabs, was the main reason why the Gulf countries tried to destabilize Al-Assad's regime and Saudis launched their murderous campaign in Yemen.

Why would they accept this silently?

Moreover, leaving Iran and Russia as the main power players in the region could not be desirable for Israel or the Sunni countries.

Iran will now steadily increase its influence throughout the region.

Already, Russia, Iran and Turkey are working with the Special UN Envoy Staffan de Mistura to draft the new Syrian constitution.

Why was Iran's most implacable foe Bibi Netanyahu's reaction a muted "we will study it"?

Other than Russia and Iran the country that clearly benefits from this withdrawal is Turkey. There are now reports that Trump made that decision on the spot while talking to Turkey's President on Thursday stunning his advisors.
“Why are you still there?” Erdoğan demanded, according to the account.

With the Turkish leader still on the line, Trump asked the same question of his national security adviser, John Bolton, who repeated US policy until then, that the defeat of Isis had to be “enduring”, preventing the possibility of a resurgence.

To the surprise of Bolton and Erdoğan, Trump instantly sided with the Turkish president.
I don't believe for a minute that Trump is the kind of guy who would not react belligerently to a question like "why are you still there?" let alone side with such an interlocutor.

He made it clear that the pull out was to leave Turkey in charge.



Before the Trump's withdrawal decision Erdogan had already declared his intention to attack Syrian Kurds in the coming weeks. He gave a major speech announcing the start a large scale operation in Syria. Two days later he threaten to invade Manbij if the US refuses to remove YPG fighters from the area.

Typically such a bellicose approach does not work well with Pentagon or the White House especially since Turkey is not in a position to start hostilities anywhere if the US is opposed to them.

When I heard the withdrawal decision, I immediately concluded that it had something to do with the Khashoggi murder and Trump's desire to protect Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS).

The muted Israeli reaction and the deafening silence from the Gulf countries supported my guess.

Then I saw this on Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based news network:
"They [people in Congress] are also suggesting that Trump is doing this as a favour to Turkey - the reason he wants Turkey onside, perhaps, is to ease the pressure on Saudi Arabia, particularly over the death of Jamal Khashoggi," said Fisher, referring to the October 2 murder of the Saudi journalist inside the kingdom's consulate in the Turkish city of Istanbul.
In other words, Trump threw the Syrian Kurds under the bus to protect MBS, which means Turkey, as I have been claiming, has damning evidence implicating the Crown Prince and is threatening to use it at every turn.

Unfortunately for both MBS and Trump, this will not go far. The pull out is scheduled to complete in 100 days.

During that time, Syrian Kurds will reach out to Bashar Al-Assad and offer their help and support in his campaign to reclaim his rule and the Russians will support that move.

At that point neither Turkey nor the US will be able to do much the change the power balance on the ground.

Once again Putin will be the kingmaker. Because of that there is even a chance that the withdrawal might never take place.

The timeline also coincides with the conclusion of the Mueller investigation, whose findings are expected to be made public sometime in February.

With Trump in a fight for his life, MBS will lose his principal backer. At which point a palace coup might take place and a new Crown Prince might emerge.

We'll see in due course.

But one thing is clear, the Khashoggi murder will continue to have profound consequences.

----------------

UPDATE:

In case you were wondering:
But shortly after announcing Mr Shanahan's appointment on Sunday, Mr Trump moved to calm widespread concerns over the pullout which he initially said would be "rapid". 
Mr Trump said on Twitter that he had spoken with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey about "our mutual involvement in Syria, & the slow and highly coordinated withdrawal of US troops from the area".
He was blackmailed. And now he is trying to reassure the American "deep state."

Good luck with trying to square that circle.

--------------
UPDATE 2

In case you were wondering about the corner Trump found himself in:
Turkey is massing troops near a town in northern Syria held by a Kurdish-led force backed by the US, a war monitor and Turkish media have said.
The buildup comes despite Ankara saying it would delay a promised offensive in eastern Syria in the wake of Donald Trump’s surprise announcement on Wednesday to withdraw US troops from the country, which it welcomed.
I really wish MBS was worth it.

But he is not.

----------------
UPDATE 3

Here is what former NATO commander retired General Wesley Clark said about the withdrawal:
During a CNN appearance on December 24, Clark stressed that “there doesn’t seem to be any strategic rational for the decision. And if there is no strategic rational, then you have to ask, ‘Why was the decision made? I can tell you that people around the world are asking this. And some of our friends and our allies in the Middle East are asking, ‘Well, did Erdogan blackmail the president? Was there a payoff or something? Why would a guy make a decision like this?’” [my emphasis]
You read it here first.

28 November 2018

The End Game In Khashoggi Murder: Is MBS on His Way Out?

In my previous post, I suggested that the gruesome murder of Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul could be the result of a joint Qatar-Turkey intelligence operations which aimed to provoke Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) to greenlight a risky hit and find himself in big trouble.

Prison room service
Since ordinarily the disappearance of a Saudi citizen would not have gotten much attention, I offered my guess that the surprisingly sustained media campaign and the withdrawal of CEOs from the Davos in the Desert might have been engineered by Al-Waleed bin Talal, the royal prince who was previously imprisoned, tortured and robbed by MBS.

As a wealthy investor, bin Talal is on very friendly terms with media barons like Rupert Murdoch and also Wall Street and industry titans. No other Saudi has his contacts or his influence.

To me, it was the only theory that explained all the incongruous elements of the Khashoggi case.

Since that post, a couple of interesting things happened to lend support to my thesis.

Initially, Turkey was not among the countries to be granted an Iranian oil import waiver by the Trump administration. The Bloomberg article I linked to did not have Turkey on the list, now it does. The day after my post, Turkish Trade Minister said that they hoped to be on the list but will know for sure by the following Monday.

Second, Al-Waleed bin Talal's brother who was detained for almost a year was promptly released with no explanation. Unlike Khashoggi, Khalid bin Talal was a vocal critique of MBS.

Tellingly, his release led to a lull in the Khashoggi coverage. It could be a coincidence as there were midterm elections. However, it may be worth noting that the Khashoggi murder was the top story in the weeks and days leading to the same elections.

The Khashoggi story reclaimed its front page status when Turkey's president Tayyip Erdogan announced that Turkish intelligence agency MIT shared an audio recording of the murder with French, German, Russian, Canadian and American authorities.

A major scramble ensued. The French denied it, Canadians acknowledged it and the rest remained silent.

One party that wasn't very happy about this new light shone on the murder was the Trump Administration as they have been trying very hard, along with Benyamin Netanyahu, to keep MBS as the Crown Prince.

Then something very strange happened. Unlike the Trump Administration the American deep state took a decisive position against MBS.

The CIA, whose chief reportedly blackmailed Erdogan to shut him up, went to the Capitol Hill to inform lawmakers that its analysis supported the conclusion that it was MBS who ordered the Khashoggi hit.

And to top it off, they leaked the existence of a phone call recording between Khashoggi and Khalid bin Salman, MBS' brother and Saudi ambassador to the US.
Khalid told Khashoggi he should go to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to retrieve the documents and gave him assurances that it would be safe to do so, the Post said. The newspaper, citing people familiar with the call, said it was not clear if Khalid knew Khashoggi would be killed, but he made the call at his brother’s direction.
More damningly, the CIA also shared another phone call from the consulate.
Maher Mutreb, a security official who has often been seen at the crown prince’s side, made the call to Saud al-Qahtani, a top aide to Prince Mohammed, to inform him the operation had been completed, the Post said, citing people familiar with the call.
There is more.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is in possession of a phone call recording of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in which he is heard giving an instruction to “silence Jamal Khashoggi as soon as possible,” Hürriyet columnist Abdulkadir Selvi wrote on Nov. 22.
The columnist is very close to the government and has been known to have solid ties with the intelligence community. In his column, he suggested that it was Haspel who informed her Turkish counterpart of the existence of the recording.
According to Selvi, CIA Director Gina Haspel “signalled” during her trip to Ankara last month the existence of the wiretapped phone call between Crown Prince Mohammed and his brother Khaled bin Salman, who is Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States.
Why would the CIA share this bit with Turkey who is hellbent on getting rid of MBS?

Second indication that the deep state doesn't find MBS acceptable anymore was the heavy pressure they exerted on him to dramatically change course. After months of complicit silence, as soon as the Khashoggi murder hit the front pages, the Pentagon and the State Department began pressuring Saudi Arabia to cease hostilities in Yemen and end the massive loss of human life.

They also asked MBS to end the Qatari embargo. And there are reports that he refused. At least so far.

That's why the Khashoggi case is so interesting: its extensive coverage and the carefully planned leaks by Turkey provided significant leverage to those who wanted to either force MBS to change course or to simply force him out.
Washington believes it has more influence with Riyadh as its ally tries to repair the damage to the kingdom's standing, and wants to use this opportunity to push for an end to the Yemen war and rebuild Gulf unity against Iran, four sources familiar with the matter said. (...)
Against this coalition of the willing stand Trump and Netanyahu.

As you know, Trump double downed and shrugged off the CIA information. Yesterday the White House prevented Haspel to brief Senators on the Khashoggi murder asking Mike Pompeo and James Mattis to inform them. Apparently, this is not the regular protocol.
Bruce Riedel, a veteran CIA official and an expert on the US-Saudi relationship at the Brookings Institution, said: “Gina [Haspel] has been the case officer on this. She traveled to Turkey and she is the one who listened to the tapes and is reported to have briefed the president multiple times. 
“This is further evidence that the White House is trying to outdo the Saudis in carrying out the worst cover-up in modern history,” Riedel added.
So what is the endgame? And will MBS survive this?

Erdogan's End Game

The biggest beneficiary of the Khashoggi operation has been Turkey's president.

His daily announcements about the gruesome details of the murder and persistent claims about having audio and video evidence put Western governments in a difficult position: He made it impossible for them to ignore the Saudi crime.

Europeans had to humor him. Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron and Vladimir Putin accepted his invitation for a Summit on Syria and had to give him grudgingly the role of peacemaker in Syria.

Look at Macron's expression.

Four Amigos
He also outplayed the Saudis. They had no idea what kind of evidence he had and consequently, they couldn't put together a coherent defense. Their frequently changing story confirmed their guilt and seriously damaged MBS' and royal family's international standing.

Saudis offered Erdogan money, more investment and the lifting of the Qatari embargo and he refused. In a nicely cynical move, he leaked the offer to make himself look like an honest politician interested only in getting justice for Khashoggi.

He also got offers from the Trump administration.

First they extended an embargo waiver for Iranian oil.  Then White House looked for ways to extradite the preacher Fethullah Gulen "to ease Turkish pressure on Saudis". It didn't go over well with career bureaucrats.
Justice Department officials responded to the White House's request saying the review of Turkey's case against Gulen two years ago showed no basis for his extradition and that no new evidence to justify it has emerged, the U.S. officials and others familiar with the requests said. 
Trump administration officials then asked for other options to legally remove him, the U.S. officials and others said. 
When that didn't work, Trump made another offer:
Trump and Erdogan also recently discussed another option to relieve tensions — the release of Turkish banker Mehmet Hakan Atilla, who was sentenced in May to 32 months in prison by a U.S. federal judge for his role in a scheme to evade U.S. sanctions against Iran, two people familiar with the discussion said.
Interestingly, no one is mentioning the Halkbank fine anymore even though the trial ended almost a year ago. I am sure a reasonable number is being negotiated.

As a sign of their deep desperation, they offered a bounty of $12 million for PKK's leadership. The offer was met with suspicion and derision with one official saying that "Turkey won't be duped by US in Syria."

My guess is that Erdogan has a gruesome video of the killing and an incriminating conversation about MBS.

He is waiting for two reasons.

The first is to get as much as possible from the Trump Administration. He wants them to reduce the Halkbank fine, give him more room of maneuver in Syria and give him a pass about his increasingly autocratic rule.

He is also waiting for Trump to fully commit himself to MBS' defense. Besides the rambling "maybe he did it, maybe he didn't do it" memo, Trump keeps claiming that nobody knows what happened. If Turkey (or the American deep state) released all their information, he would look like a cartoonishly cynical politician.

And while his ignorant and racist base might not notice, this may cost him the support of many old style conservatives who are increasingly unhappy to see "America the beacon of human rights and freedom" rhetoric being destroyed by Trump's crass Mafioso discourse.

Needless to say, the degree of the damage will depend on the upcoming scandals. Mueller report must be almost done. Among other issues, they now connected Paul Manafort, Trump's campaign manager to Julian Assange. He visited Assange several times at the Ecuadorian Embassy before Wikileaks dumped the DNC emails.

With Trump's tax returns subpoenaed and money laundering schemes exposed by the Democratic majority in the House, Trump will find himself on the defensive and I suspect he will no longer care about MBS.

American Deep State's End Game

When I first wrote about the Khashoggi murder, I expressed my doubt that MBS would lose his position because of this incident. Since the CIA revelations, I am no longer sure.

The Haspel move indicated that the Pentagon, the State Department and the intelligence community consider MBS a volatile and unpredictable leader who is likely to further destabilize the region. Look at his list of achievements:

- Kidnapping and forcing the Lebanese Prime Minister out.
- Attacking Yemen and creating the worst civilian disaster in recent memory with no end in sight.
- Executing the revered Shia leader Nimr al-Nimr and increasing the persecution of the Kingdom's Shia minority.
- Imposing a blockade and severing diplomatic and economic ties with Qatar (and trying to invade it).
- Continuously provoking Iran in an effort to start a war.

In other words, from a long-term American perspective, MBS is no longer a viable leader and the institutional forces which I call the deep state do not want to continue to work with him.

This is the reason why Senators who are Trump allies are pushing for his dismissal in a forceful fashion.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., long one of Saudi Arabia’s most vocal defenders in Congress, said Tuesday that the kingdom’s powerful crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, has “got to go” and vowed never to return to the country as long as the young leader remains in power.
There is also the issue that the intelligence community never forgave Trump for his initial attacks on them and his siding with Putin against them. Look at the vociferous tweets of  former CIA Director John Brennan accusing Trump of treasonous complicity with Putin.

In short, very soon, there will be no one, save perhaps Netanyahu, left to defend MBS.

But Netanyahu is as weakened as MBS himself. His botched Hamas assassination attempt, his unpopular ceasefire, his piles of corruption dossiers and the departure of Avigdor Lieberman that left his fragile coalition teetering on the brink are all threat to his political survival. He may not be around after the next elections.

Domestically, in Saudi Arabia, I am pretty sure that forces within the Royal Family are already circling MBS like sharks watching a prey. If it wasn't for the way he handled the aftermath of the Khashoggi murder he could and would have pushed back ruthlessly. Now he is too exposed to be able to go after his enemies.

The House of Wahhab wants him gone as do most of the Princes. The ruling elite that always revered stability above all else fear that MBS is incapable of achieving that. And they worry about their own survival.

The army and the intelligence agencies may no longer have any loyalty to him after he decided to prosecute the Khashoggi team with death penalty hanging over them. You do his dirty deeds and he ends up throwing you under the bus to save his skin.

Remember Caligula and the Praetorian Guard? These things never end well.

In that sense, if I were to guess, I would say MBS' days as Crown Prince are numbered. As soon as Trump finds himself in the fight of his life, he will let go of him and that will be enough for his domestic enemies to unseat him.

And if my theory is correct, this would be a monumental Qatari and Turkish achievement.
----------------------
UPDATE:

CIA is leaking like nobody's business. Wall Street Journal just published this:
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman sent at least 11 messages to his closest adviser, who oversaw the team that killed journalist Jamal Khashoggi, in the hours before and after the journalist’s death in October, according to a highly classified CIA assessment.
As an aside, let me add that until his detention by MBS, Al-Waleed bin Talal owned 5.5 percent of News Corp (the owner of Wall Street Journal) and was considered a close ally of Rupert Murdoch. He was forced to sell all his shares while in custody.

The Journal also noted this:
The electronic messages sent by Prince Mohammed were to Saud al-Qahtani, according to the CIA. Mr. Qahtani supervised the 15-man team that killed Mr. Khashoggi and, during the same period, was also in direct communication with the team’s leader in Istanbul, the assessment says. The content of the messages between Prince Mohammed and Mr. Qahtani isn’t known, the document says. It doesn’t say in what form the messages were sent.
And this
 The highly classified CIA assessment says that the Saudi team sent to kill Mr. Khashoggi was assembled from Prince Mohammed’s top security units in the Royal Guard and in an organization run by Mr. Qahtani, the Center for Studies and Media Affairs at the Royal Court, the Saudi royal court’s media department.
“We assess it is highly unlikely this team of operators…carried out the operation without Muhammed bin Salman’s authorization,” it says. 
And it wasn't just the CIA leaking.
 A U.S. official said that the U.S. government has recently developed information that under Mr. Qahtani, personnel from the Center for Studies and Media Affairs have for two years engaged in the kidnapping—sometimes overseas—and detention and harsh interrogation of Saudis whom the monarchy perceives as a threat. The interrogations have led to repeated physical harm to the detainees, the official said.

02 November 2018

Why Was Jamal Khashoggi Killed: A Contrarian Theory

As my longtime readers will remember, I have a bit of an obsession with Saudi Arabia.

I have been fascinated by how they spend hundreds of billions of dollars since 1979 to radicalize Muslims everywhere by reducing Islam to three ostracizing notions through Wahhabi imams they dispatched everywhere. With nary a peep from the West.

I also expressed my doubts about the economic viability of the Kingdom and pointed to the inherent risks hidden in their succession mechanisms.

The Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) dramatically exacerbated the structural flaws of the regime by launching a costly war in Yemen, removing subsidies that kept Saudis docile, ruthlessly eliminating rivals, increasing the oppression of the Shia minority, alienating the ulema and the House of Wahhab and extorting money from prominent Saudi businessmen and royal family members.

Add to this, his move to invade Qatar to grab their Sovereign Wealth Fund, you have the making of a Shakespearean Crown Prince whose fate may be determined by the numerous domestic and foreign enemies.

This is the context of the Jamal Khashoggi murder.

There were three very important elements of the story that made no sense as I noted at the outset.

Why Khashoggi?

Jamal Khashoggi
Why would you have a mild mannered journalist with no discernible domestic constituency killed in a such risky and gruesome manner.

And why would you do this in a country that stood with Qatar against Saudi Arabia just because the guy said free press is good and the war in Yemen is bad in Washington Post.

Since then, I found out that Khashoggi was even less of a threat than I realized. It turns out that in his writings in Arabic, Khashoggi was a conservative Islamist who sided with the Saudi regime on almost anything.

You might be surprised to learn that he was a believer in Osama bin Laden's jihad and he covered his Mujahideen efforts by joining his army.

The other Jamal Khashoggi
The guy at the center holding an RPG is him.

Even if you buy the preposterous notion that bin Laden would allow embedded reporters, does he look like one to you?

He later advocated the Islamization of Arab politics and viewed secular regimes like Al-Assad's Syria as unreformable.

And he thought Mohammed Bin Salman was a good reformist.
Khashoggi’s vision was an “Arab uprising” led by the Saudi regime. In his Arabic writings he backed MbS’s “reforms” and even his “war on corruption,” derided in the region and beyond. He thought that MbS’s arrests of the princes in the Ritz were legitimate (though he mildly criticized them in a Post column) even as his last sponsoring prince, Al-Walid bin Talal, was locked up in the luxury hotel. Khashoggi even wanted to be an advisor to MbS, who did not trust him and turned him down.
While it is true that his monthly Post columns occasionally mentioned the importance of free press, they hardly constituted a devastating attack on MBS or the royal family.

Besides, MBS banned Khashoggi's family to travel abroad. If MBS was so upset about his columns he could have used his son Salah as leverage and shut him up.

Why Turkish Media Play?

The second element that was puzzling was Turkey's daily insistence that they had audio and video proof that Khashoggi was murdered and dismembered by a squad of assassins without ever divulging that evidence.

But when you think about it, that unusual Turkish tactic served a purpose.

Those regular leeks kept the narrative alive. One day, it was the gruesome dismemberment, the next, the name of the goons and the next there was the bone saw. And then a musically-oriented autopsy specialist.

The daily leaks also put MBS in a difficult position about what explanation to push.

In fact, because Saudi officials didn't know what kind of evidence Turkish authorities had, they were forced to use trial balloons to test various theories. If it was video, then rogue elements; just audio, then interrogation went wrong, outside audio, then accidental death in a fist fight and inside audio-video, rogue elements again.

Turkey's Tayyip Erdogan promised to reveal the audio and video recordings he claimed he had on 23 October but after a brief visit from Ms. Torture Gina Haspel he changed his mind.
Haspel’s brief was very simple. She took with her intercept intelligence that purportedly shows massive senior level corruption in the Istanbul Kanal project, and suggested that Erdogan may not find it a good idea if intelligence agencies started to make public all the information they hold. 
Former ambassador Craig Murray maintains that the story had legs and put Western government on the defensive because Turkey showed the evidence they had to all the relevant intelligence agencies.
The Turkish account of the murder of Khashoggi given by President Erdogan is true, in every detail. Audio and video evidence exists and has been widely shared with world intelligence agencies, including the US, UK, Russia and Germany, and others which have a relationship with Turkey or are seen as influential. That is why, despite their desperate desire to do so, no Western country has been able to maintain support for Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman.
Why The Turkish Intelligence Presence?

The third element that is strange is the fact that the Turkish intelligence agents were ready to collect evidence that fateful day.

Embassies are legitimate intelligence targets and every country tries to spy on foreign delegations. But consulates are rarely relevant to justify expensive surveillance. And clearly, Saudis thought that was the case in Istanbul.

However, Turkish intelligence officials were there in full force ready to greet the assassins.
Unbeknown to the Saudis, Turkish intelligence officials from the national spy agency, MIT, were listening in. (...)

Scenarios range from a bug placed in the consulate itself to a directional microphone focused on the building from outside – both technically within the realms of Turkey’s capabilities.
Craig Murray, who was shown some still pictures from the murder scene, suggests that they did not look like they were taken with a fixed camera. The two possibilities are: one, Khashoggi wearing a camera as he went in, which would mean he was expecting to be accosted. In which case, why would he take that risk?

Two and the more likely explanation is a Skype exchange with Riyadh and there are many unconfirmed reports that the Turks intercepted such a communication. What is interesting is the fact that Skype conversations are encrypted end-to-end using uncrackable 256 bit AES encryption.

The only way they could do it is to compel Microsoft to hand them over the video call, as such communications flow through its servers and are routinely decrypted and encrypted before sending them forward.

The speed with which Turkish authorities gathered this evidence would indicate prior knowledge of the incident.

A Contrarian Theory of Murder

If, as I and some Middle East experts believe, Jamal Khashoggi would not have been killed for his Washington Post columns, the question then is, what would it take to get MBS overreact and order his murder in Turkey?

And who would set it up?

Remember that, unlike previous victims who were drugged or duped to be taken to Saudi Arabia for their eventual disposal, MBS wanted Khashoggi to be questioned right away. Time was of the essence. That's why they tortured him. And why they reported back via Skype.

My theory is that it was a joint Qatar Turkey intelligence operation with the sole purpose of embarrassing, weakening or perhaps pushing out Mohammed Bin Salman.

And my guess is that, the plot received substantial support from inside the royal family.

Let me explain.

A short while ago, a Jeddah daily accused Khashoggi of secretly meeting the Emir of Qatar at New York's Four Seasons Hotel. Here is a Google Translate link of the article. They author even claimed that the Washington Post gig was a gift from Qatar.

Now, that's a biggie.

Why would the Emir of Qatar even be in the same room with an insignificant Saudi journalist? What could they have discussed? It had to be something very important for the Emir to talk to Khashoggi.

MBS had to know. Hook, line, sinker.

At that point Khashoggi applies for his divorce papers in a Saudi consulate in the US (I can't find the link). On Riyadh's instructions he was told to get them in Istanbul since he was getting married there.

It's no hardship since his fiancee is in Istanbul. He travels to Turkey and applies to the consulate. They tell him to come back the following week to get his papers.

While the Saudis get ready to grab him in the consulate, Turkish intelligence agents set up shop around the consulate with all their snooping devices. They have a court order to compel Microsoft to hand over Skype communications originating from the consulate.

Hatice Cengiz was waiting at the gate. In her shoes how long would you have waited? She waited eleven hours from 1 PM to midnight.

She also immediately alerted pro-government journalists who started asking questions about Khashoggi's disappearance and the next day they penned incendiary columns branding the incident as a stain on Turkey's honor.

Turkish authorities immediately declared that Khashoggi was dead and insisted that they had incontrovertible evidence showing his murder.

They started drip-feeding daily information. The tail number of the planes, the names of the assassins, Khashoggi's call for help, bits of conversation in the consulate, anything.

In Europe and North America, the story grew bigger by the day. Turkey feeding daily info could not have kept the story at the top of the headlines, especially with Trump doing everything to make it disappear.

Someone else must have been involved, I thought.

Then (to my utter surprise) powerful financial forces joined the fray and started pulling out of the Davos in the Desert, which is a brainchild of MBS.

The Dutch, French, UK ministers were the first along with Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. World Bank and IMF followed suit.

On the business side, besides Richard Branson, the CEOs of Deutsche Bank, Siemens, ABB, Uber, JP Morgan Chase and Softbank cancelled. Bloomberg, CNN, Financial Times and New York Times withdrew their media sponsorship.

When was the last time, business titans rebuked a wealthy autocrat?

These are folks who didn't even raise the issue of tens of thousands of Yemenis being slaughtered by Saudi bombs every day. Why would they let go of an opportunity to make more billions just because a journalist was killed in a diplomatic mission.

It makes sense only if one of their friends leaned on them and promised future business opportunities if they embarrass MBS further and damage him economically.

At Ritz-Carlton Prison
There is only one Saudi in the world who can do that and that is Al-Waleed bin Talal.

The man whom MBS imprisoned, tortured, humiliated for 83 days and extorted billions from. The largest individual shareholder of the Citigroup and second largest voting shareholder of the 20th Century Fox.

Besides being worth $30 billion, he is close friends with Rupert Murdoch, everybody on Wall Street and all the CEOs listed above.

Why Would Qatar and Turkey (Erdogan) Do This?

In Qatar's case the stakes are obvious. The costly embargo is still on and the invasion plans are simply on hold. Weakening and then removing MBS is a critical goal for Qatar.

In Turkey's case, this is a gift that keeps on giving.

Saudi Arabia had cooled its relations with Turkey after Erdogan's angry criticisms of Saudi-sponsored could d'etat that toppled Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi. Now they are begging Erdogan not to release the murder evidence.
The New York Times, citing an unnamed Turkish official, reported that Saudi Prince Khalid bin Faisal Al Saud, who secretly met with Erdogan last week in Turkey, had “offered a package of inducements for Turkey to drop the case — including financial aid and investments to help Turkey’s struggling economy and to end a Saudi embargo on Qatar, a Turkish ally.” Erdogan had “angrily rejected” them as a “political bribe.” 
It's likely that Prince Mohammed made some fresh offers to Erdogan, who is now clearly in the driver’s seat.
Ending the Qatar embargo was on the table. Can you believe that? And he rejected it as he wants more.

Wow!

Erdogan has also pushed Trump in a tight corner.

Sure, Trump is a cynical and shameless liar, but how do you handle the daily drip-drip information coming from the Turkish side. MBS is Kushner's buddy and Trump's main partner against Iran. If he goes, there goes Trump's entire Middle East policy.

And Erdogan says he has the goods to make it happen. And he shared them with every intelligence agency that mattered. So Trump cannot afford to attack Erdogan.

What does Erdogan wants from Trump?

A much smaller Halkbank fine would be the first thing. If that happens, you'll know that my crazy contrarian theory makes sense.

Two, he would insist on Iran oil waivers. Currently, eight countries have received them, there is still no word about Turkey. If that happens, well, you know what that means.

Moreover, in the Middle East, this would position Erdogan as the honest broker between Sunni and Shia. Once MBS is out of the way, Al-Sisi of Egypt would become a much lonelier figure and he is the only competition Erdogan has.

Erdogan deals with Iran on a daily basis and has no (real) problem with them. Every other Sunni country does. So that makes him the go to guy in the region. And that spells regional superpower.

Finally, that enables Erdogan to present himself as the guy who takes the moral ground, someone who, far from being an autocrat, fights such odious people.

Would This Be Enough to Get Rid of MBS

I don't know.

Saudi Arabia is doing a little better with $80 barrel price point but the war in Yemen is eating up all the additional revenue.

If the price goes higher, fracking outlets will come back online so MBS does not have much room of maneuver.

The Aramco IPO is not happening and may never happen.

On the other hand, King Salman is not lucid and he might not be able to sign a decree to replace MBS with someone else.

Time will tell.

-------------------------
UPDATE:

This is from the BBC:
Do the senior princes temper this all-powerful figure by removing just enough of his powers to appease the US Congress and other Western bodies, some of which are now calling for an arms boycott? 
Do they "dethrone" him altogether, giving him some titular promotion to a meaningless sinecure? 
Or do they try to weather the storm, as they tried to do, unsuccessfully, after this story broke a month ago?
In fact, there are extremely serious discussions going on right now behind closed doors in Saudi royal circles. 
Returning Brother
The gravity of the crisis facing the ruling al-Saud family can be gauged by the sudden return to Riyadh on Tuesday of Prince Ahmed bin Abdelaziz, the last surviving full brother of the 82-year old King Salman. 
What is interesting is that Prince Ahmed bin Abdulaziz, the last of the Sudairi Seven was convinced that MBS was out to get him for having criticized the war in Yemen and he was living in London in self-imposed exile.

Some view this as a challenge to MBS. And a power play for the throne.

MBS was one of the senior people who greeted him at the airport.

Clearly he is worried.

------------------------
UPDATE 2

Turkey's bombastic President Tayyip Erdogan came out with another accusation against MBS and brought Nato in.

In an op-ed published in the Washington Post, he maintained that while King Salman was unaware of the plot to kill Jamal Khashoggi, the order was given by the highest levels of Saudi government.
"We also know that those individuals came to carry out their orders: Kill Khashoggi and leave. Finally, we know that the order to kill Khashoggi came from the highest levels of the Saudi government."
If King Salman is out, this could only mean MBS.

And for good measure he added this:
"No one should dare to commit such acts on the soil of a Nato ally again," he said. "If anyone chooses to ignore that warning, they will face severe consequences."
That is clearly a hint to Trump, reminding him that what happened in Turkey should be seen in the larger context of Nato alliance.

According to the Washington Post, Egypt's President Al-Sisi and Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu lobbied the White House to protect MBS.

Curiously, Washington Post's editorial board brought Nato in as well to support their argument that MBS should be removed.
Mohammed bin Salman’s advocates argue that holding him accountable would risk turmoil. There is a fundamental illogic to this. The crown prince has already done much to destabilize the region, by leading a military intervention in Yemen, launching a boycott of Qatar and kidnapping the Lebanese prime minister. If he is allowed by the United States to get away with murdering a journalist inside a diplomatic facility in a NATO country, what will he be emboldened to do next — and what license will other dictators take, both in the Middle East and elsewhere?
And the silence from the White House and the State Department is deafening.

12 October 2018

Khashoggi Case: How Foreign Investment Will be Affected?

In my last post, I expressed my incredulity about Khashoggi murder being just a botched Saudi operation.

There were too many unprecedented elements including the massive media attention and unusually strong reactions from Western leaders, including, the US Congress and with some delay, and some equivocation, The Orange Man.

All of which is unheard of.

Now Sir Richard Branson suspended investment talks with Saudi Arabia over the Khashoggi assassination.
In a statement, Sir Richard said: "What has reportedly happened in Turkey around the disappearance of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, if proved true, would clearly change the ability of any of us in the West to do business with the Saudi Government.
Note the "any of us in the West to do business with the Saudi Government" bit.

It's not just him, it's any of us.

When MBS imprisoned, selectively tortured and extorted money from his relatives or when he abducted and made disappear three royal princes in the last three years or when he persisted in killing hundreds of thousands of Yemenis to teach Iran a lesson, did any of these incidents affected the ability of "any of us in the West doing business with the Saudi Government?"

They did not.

How likely is it for Sir Richard to give up a cool billion dollars and jeopardize future investment opportunities in the Kingdom because Saudis murdered one of their citizens?

Remember, nobody even pressured Virgin or questioned this transaction. Nobody knew.

He volunteered it himself.

Can you remember another such incident where people gave up Saudi money because Saudi government did something terribly wrong?

Ever?

Me neither.

There is only one plausible explanation.

There is an expectation that MBS will be pressured to go as a result of this scandal (or rather because of the surprisingly concerted and effective Western reaction to it) and when that happens, those who helped the process by standing up to him will be rewarded.

That's my take. Tell me what else makes more sense.

One more thing.

The Turkish government is toying with MBS.

There is a drip, drip information leaking they undertake everyday. This time, they announced that they have a recording of Jamal Khashoggi being tortured and killed.

Once again, they did not share it with the media. They simply asserted that they have the recording.

Without knowing what they have Saudis are unable to issue specific denials.

More importantly, since these audio and video recordings would have to come from inside the consulate (his smartwatch wouldn't have video), meaning from Turkish intelligence assets working there, why would they expose them over a story like this?

Would they burn their assets for a murdered foreign journalist? Of course not.

It is as if they want to see what they can get from MBS to make the whole thing go away.

Maybe the price is Mohammed Bin Salman giving up his dreams of becoming the king.

We live in interesting times as I say frequently.

You know what? Since I went out on a limb with a theory no one even contemplates, let me put forth this additional speculation.

I wouldn't be surprised if, at some point, we found out that Waleed Bin Talal was somehow associated with all this.

At least on the Western end of things.

Yeah, interesting and cynical times.
----------------
UPDATE:

I changed the title after finding out that Jim Kim, the head of the World Bank has pulled out of the Future Investment Initiative conference that is going to take place on 23 October in Riyadh. For now IMF chief Christine Lagarde and US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin are still participating but this could change.

In the next few days, if more businesspeople follow the example of Sir Richard then we could safely assume that MBS is outmaneuvered and cornered. I don't think he will give up his position but he will be much weakened for his enemies to take him on without fear.

By the way, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres joined the chorus and called on the Saudis to come clean.

The pressure is mounting.
________
UPDATE 2

A former British foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind, called for the removal of MBS and if that doesn't happen sanctions to punish Saudi Arabia.
“If the current crown prince remains in power for the indefinite future, then in the first instance the United Kingdom must work with the United States, France and other countries to see if there can be a combined response, a punishment of some kind, of sanctions of some kind."
Do you know who joined the "punish the Saudis" chorus a little later?
 In an interview with CBS News, Mr Trump said that, if true, the fact that a journalist was murdered was "terrible and disgusting".
"We're going to get to the bottom of it and there will be severe punishment," he said. "As of this moment, they deny it vehemently. Could it be them? Yes," he added.
As for the Davos of the Desert, the Guardian reports that, besides Sir Richard Branson, Viacom and Uber pulled out.

Moreover,
The Financial Times and CNN said they were pulling out as media sponsors, with all CNN’s anchors withdrawing from the event. Bloomberg also pulled out. 
The New York Times withdrew its sponsorship two days ago, prompting a string of withdrawals across the globe, including of Ariana Huffington, the LA Times owner, Dr Patrick Soon-Shiong, and the CNBC anchor Andrew Ross Sorkin.
When Saudi Arabia realizes that they can put all this behind them by simply removing the Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman will be in trouble.

Especially now that Trump is not firmly on his side.

And Jared has no reason to be nice to him as Qatar took care of his mortgage problem.

11 October 2018

Mohammed Bin Salman and Serious Questions About the Khashoggi Case

Mohammed Bin Salman, aka MBS, Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince and de facto ruler, struck again.

Jamal Khashoggi, a self-exiled Saudi journalist was allegedly killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. On 2 October, he went in to get a copy of his divorce papers and he never came back out.

His Turkish fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, who was waiting outside the building, alerted the Turkish police. And, uncharacteristically, they immediately launched an investigation.

There was a media frenzy with pro-government pundits pondering how much of an insult was this to Turkey and reporters speculating about the way the guy was murdered. It was pandemonium.

Jamal Khashoggi
Clearly taken aback, Saudi Arabia issued a statement that Khashoggi was indeed missing but denied any knowledge on his whereabouts. Turkish authorities started an investigation.

On 5 October, MBS told Reuters that Turkish authorities are welcome to search the building.

The next day, anonymous sources within Turkish police told the media that they knew that Khashoggi was killed by a special squad that came from Riyadh. They alleged that the Saudi Hashishin dismembered the body and took the pieces out of the country.

They had a lot of details, including how many assassins, their names, their cars and private jets and of course, juicy bits about dismemberment.

But they offered no evidence for these claims and didn't reveal how they knew all of that.

By that time, practically frothing at the mouth, Turkey's pugnacious president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, also known by his initials RTE, jumped into the fray and declared that Riyadh should prove its claim that that Khashoggi left the consulate.

Then there was a massive international reaction.

While Trump was MIA, his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was calling for a full-out and transparent investigation. And EU Policy Chief Federica Mogherini seconded him right away echoing his demands.

Not to be left behind, and probably encouraged by the unexpected publicity the case was getting, the UN's Human Rights Office "voiced deep concern (...) urged the two countries to investigate" with a whiff of outrage:
“Yes, this is of serious concern, the apparent enforced disappearance of Mr Khashoggi from the Saudi consulate in Istanbul,” U.N. human rights spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani told a Geneva news briefing. 
“If reports of his death and the extraordinary circumstances leading up to it are confirmed, this is truly shocking,” she said. 
The same day, UK's foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt called the Saudi ambassador and demanded an explanation.

At that point, my head exploded with questions.

This whole really tragic and unfortunate incident is also so odd that I am at a loss for an explanation.

Why Jamal Khashoggi?

It is no secret that the House of Saud dislikes dissent intensely. I know that's putting it very mildly. And MBS is even more thin-skinned than all his predecessors. So he and his predecessors ordered abductions, murder and other punitive actions with gleeful abandon.

Just focusing on MBS, in 2016, in Geneva, his thugs drugged and violently abducted Prince Sultan bin Turki bin Abdulaziz, a nephew of the late King Fahd for being critical of Saudi leadership.

In late 2015, Prince Turki bin Bandar, a former police major turned Youtube activist disappeared in Paris. Also in 2015, a minor royal and dissident Prince Saud bin Said al-Nasr vanished in Italy.

In these instances, you could say that MBS had a point in getting worried. These guys were members of the House of Saud and they called for extensive reforms and even some form of democracy. And their online activities drew a decent following in Saudi Arabia.

None of it is true for Khashoggi. There was almost no need to worry about him. He had a monthly column in the Washington Post, he appeared on US TV programs. His tone was measured, he hardly criticized MBS or anyone else, other than suggesting a one man rule was not good for the Kingdom.
A critic of the crown prince, Mr Khashoggi was living in self-imposed exile in the US and writing opinion pieces for the Washington Post before his disappearance.
A former editor of the al-Watan newspaper, he was for years seen as close to the Saudi royal family. He served as an adviser to senior Saudi officials.
Why kill that guy? Why go to the trouble of sending a 15-strong death squad in two private jets, dismember him and smuggle him out of the country and risk at some major negative fallout.

He was not a threat to the House of Saud.

I can see the deterrent value of the vanishing princes. I am sure, as a result of their disappearance, other minor royals became more circumspect, especially when you also take into account his hotel-prison stunt to extort $100 billion from much more important relatives.

But Khashoggi? Why?

Why the Extensive Media Coverage and Diplomatic Pushback?

I summarized the reactions. They are simply unprecedented.

Saudi Arabia is probably the worst or the second worst dictatorship in the world. Some days the House of Kim is ahead, on others the House of Saud takes the lead. Yet nothing they do makes it into Western headlines. They kill, behead, abduct, torture with impunity.

Do you remember reading about the three princes recently abducted? Of course not.

They are killing millions of Yemenis. You read one or two articles every two months deploring the tragedy and that's about it.

Think about it for a second: Since when Jeremy Hunt gets upset over the disappearance of a relatively unknown Saudi writer? The May government would not even bring up the human tragedy in Yemen for fear of losing arms deals.

Why the reaction for Jamal Khashoggi?

The only reaction that made sense was Trump's as he was using the regular rulebook.

When asked whether he talked to the Saudi ambassador, he said that he did not but he would at some point. He added that he knew nothing right now. He corrected himself and said “I know what everybody else knows — nothing.”

That's what I expected from the other leaders as this is how they normally deal with Saudi horrors.

Then this happened:
Mr Trump told reporters he had talked to the Saudi authorities "at the highest level" about Mr Khashoggi. 
Mr Khashoggi, a US resident and critic of the Saudi monarchy, entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on 2 October and has not been seen since. 
Turkish authorities say Mr Khashoggi was killed. Saudi Arabia denies this.
"We cannot let this happen to reporters, to anybody," Mr Trump said on Wednesday.
"We're demanding everything. We want to see what's going on there."
This is surreal. In less than 12 hours this is a complete about face.  From Mr Double Down!

Are you kidding me?

Why Turkey?

Why did MBS chose Turkey for this operation?

Khashoggi is a frequent traveller and they could have lured him to a trap like they did with the three abducted princes.

In case his disappearance became public (as it did) it would be a safe assumption that Turkey would not be as malleable as, say, the UK, since it sided with Qatar in last year's Gulf showdown and its president and ruling party adore Muslim Brotherhood, MBS' bete noire.

Besides, Erdogan does not expect any more investment from Saudi Arabia and has no reason to accommodate MBS. This was evident from Erdogan's initial reaction when he demanded proof:
Erdogan told reporters on Oct. 8, during a press conference in Budapest with Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban, that it was “Turkey’s political and humane duty” to follow this affair closely with all the means available to it. 
“Consulate officials cannot exonerate themselves by simply saying [Khashoggi] left the premises. If he did, then they have to prove this with visual material,” Erdogan said.
In fact, pro-government pundits began agitating the very next day of Khashoggi's disappearance calling it a matter of honor for Turkey.
Aktay later penned op-eds on the affair for pro-government Yeni Safak daily, stating that it was a “matter of international honor for Turkey” to find out the truth. “What happened to Khashoggi in Turkey, to put it bluntly, is not only an operation against him, but also an operation against Turkey,” he wrote Oct. 6.
Another pro-government pundit warned of dire consequences for Saudi Arabia.
“If Saudi Arabia had a journalist and dissident murdered at a diplomatic mission in a foreign country, it deserves to be designated a rogue state more than any other nation in the world,” Bostan wrote. 
“If Jamal Khashoggi has indeed been killed at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, there will be legal, political and diplomatic consequences,” he added. 
Whoever in MBS' inner circle thought that this would be a walk in the park seriously underestimated the political mood and open animosity in Turkey.

How Did The Turkish Authorities Know What Happened?

Another puzzling element is the detailed narrative about Khashoggi's fate within 48 hours of the incident that was serviced to the media. Anonymous sources within the Turkish security establishment knew everything and didn't mind sharing that knowledge.

They had the entire story ready for the media.
Source: BBC

How could they have known that two Saudi jets brought in 15 assassins to kill the journalist?

How could they have known that his body was in a black van that left at the same time as two black Mercedeses?

More importantly, why did the Turkish authorities point the finger when there is no body and no evidence of foul play against such a powerful regional ally?

Normally, Turkey's Islamist government would stay silent in such situations as it wouldn't want to offend the House of Saud whose largess is appreciated by all Middle East countries.

In fact, even without such concerns, the typical police response would be that they were investigating to determine if there was any foul play.

In this instance, they were too happy to share every detail they had and more.

So you say, good questions but do you have any answers?

I don't and I doubt that anyone has any at this point.

But let me venture a guess.

My Speculation

I would not be surprised if this is the beginning of a complicated plot to get rid of Mohammed bin Salman.

He alienated the House of Wahhab and the House of Saud. The entire royal family is scared of him and hates him.

He insists on pursuing a ruinous war in Yemen that is killing hundreds of thousands and depleting the Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund. His initial popularity is in the wane as he had to remove major subsidies to pay for his war.

And he is not even the King right now. There are many concerned countries around the world about his brash decisions and his hothead temperament. He is a man capable of starting a war with Iran that could engulf the whole region, including Turkey and Israel.

That speculation would go a long way of explaining the botched operation in Turkey, the swift and extensive media and diplomatic reactions to the case and the surprising about-face of Donald Trump.

This is just a speculation along the lines of  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. We'll see in due course.

But if a palace coup happens your resident contrarian will not be shocked.

03 October 2018

Did Republicans Deplore Trump Mocking Dr Ford?

No they did not.

But it was reported that they did.

You see The Orange Man couldn't help himself, he is a narcissistic bully, so he organized a rally in Mississippi and mocked Dr Christine Blasey Ford and her testimony.

This is what he said:
The audience laughed as the president said: "Thirty-six years ago this happened: I had one beer! Well, you think it was…? Nope! It was one beer. 
"Oh, good. How'd you get home? I don't remember. How'd you get there? I don't remember. Where was the place? I don't remember. 
"How many years ago was it? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know! I don't know! What neighbourhood was it in? I don't know. 
"Where's the house? I don't know! Upstairs, downstairs, where was it? I don't know! But I had one beer. That's the only thing I remember. And a man's life is in tatters."
The BBC (not the Fox News) reported that the Republicans deplored his remarks.


Who are the Republicans who deplored his remarks? Any senior member? Anyone from the Senate leadership? Mitch McConnell? Lindsey Graham?

No. It was just Jeff Flake who said:
"To discuss something this sensitive at a political rally is just not right. It's just not right. I wish he hadn't had done it."
But he did not say that he would vote against Brett Kavanaugh.

And the other deplorer of the deplorable in chief was the venerable Susan Collins from Maine. She also refused to say how she would vote.
Ms Collins, a moderate Republican from Maine, has not yet said whether she will vote for Judge Kavanaugh either. 

"The president's comments were just plain wrong," she told reporters on Wednesday.
 This is how corporate media launder Republican talking points.

02 October 2018

Will Brett Kavanaugh Be Confirmed?

He will be.

Unless the FBI finds a smoking gun, which I seriously doubt (and Mark Judge's ex-girlfriend's story will not cut it), Kavanaugh will be voted in before the end of this week.

Well, let me go all in. He will be confirmed even if the FBI finds a smoking gun.

This is what Mitch McConnell said yesterday:
"The goal posts keep shifting," he said as he accused Democrats of attempting to derail the nomination. "But the goal hasn't moved an inch. 
"The time for endless delay and obstruction has come to a close."
They need him on the bench and they need him badly.

Brett Kavanaugh is a partisan hack who was nominated not because he will overturn Roe v. Wade, which he will, but because, as a Supreme Court Justice, he will give his imprimatur to more deregulation and more restrictions of workers' and consumers' rights and he will acquiesce to anything on the Republican agenda, including extreme gerrymandering and voter suppression.

If Roe v Wade was as important as the corporate media claim, Trump would have nominated Amy Coney Barrett or someone like her.

What the Republicans want is a pro-business hack who will push the Koch brothers' agenda with gleeful abandon.

This is so important that they would happily risk a major short term defeat to get it done.

And now that they've paid the piper and alienated millions of women they cannot afford not to have Kavanaugh confirmed.

What about Jeff Flake and his courageous stand you say.

Well, I can tell you that it wasn't done because of Anna Maria Archilla's elevator tirade.

The investigation was introduced to provide cover to Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins for this week's confirmation vote.

Now they will all vote yes (plus the Democrat Joe Manchin) and point to the new investigation that uncovered no new evidence to defend their decision.

If you don't believe me check out the reports that FBI is refusing to interview people who came forward about Kavanaugh lying under oath.
According to a Sunday New Yorker article, multiple people have tried to go to the FBI with pertinent information about Kavanaugh, only to be stymied by seemingly unorganized and uninterested agents. (...)

Another is an unnamed Yale classmate who wanted to corroborate Deborah Ramirez’s accusation that Kavanaugh had exposed himself to her at a college party. “I thought it was going to be an investigation, but instead it seems it’s just an alibi for Republicans to vote for Kavanaugh,” the unnamed Yale classmate told the New Yorker. 
No kidding.

Moreover, throughout the process the so-called liberal media has been providing a helping hand to the Republicans and will continue to do the same.

Okay, you say, you are making very radical statements but where is your evidence?

I am glad you asked.

Let's start with my claim that Brett Kavanaugh is a partisan hack.

The History of Brett Kavanaugh's Partisan Hackery

Starr Pupil
At the young age of 33, Brett Kavanaugh was one of the main authors of the Starr Report that was used to impeach Bill Clinton for having oral sex with Monica Lewinsky.

That is fine.

But what is not fine is the fact that, in that capacity, he tried to link every nasty Clinton rumor to the final report, including the suicide of Vince Foster.
Recently opened National Archives records from the 1990s independent counsel probe reveal some of Kavanaugh's actions, including his aggressive pursuit of documents tied to Vince Foster, a top Clinton administration lawyer who committed suicide.
His work was driven by his hatred for Bill Clinton which was obvious in his memo to Ken Starr:
"The President has disgraced his Office, the legal system, and the American people by having sex with a 22-year-old intern and turning her life into shambles -- callous and disgusting behavior that has somehow gotten lost in the shuffle," Kavanaugh wrote in an August 15, 1998, memo to Starr and other lawyers. 
"He should be forced to account for all of that and to defend his actions. It may not be our job to impose sanctions on him, but it is our job to make his pattern of revolting behavior clear -- piece by painful piece," he wrote.
I'll leave it up to you to appreciate the irony.

Kavanaugh's next career move was to take on the representation of Elian Gonzalez in order to stop his Cuban father to gain the five-year-old's custody.  This was done at the urging of the then Florida governor Jeb Bush, who became his patron saint.

He then represented Jebster in his quest to set up a voucher program to support private religious schools in Florida.

Finally, he became a major figure in the GOP efforts to lobby the Supreme Court to stop the Florida recount paving the way to Bush presidency.

Because of this trajectory, when W nominated him to the United States Court of Appeal for the District of Columbia Circus, during his confirmation hearings, Dick Durbin called him the “Forrest Gump of Republican politics … whether it’s Elian Gonzalez or the Starr Report, you are there.”

When Kavanaugh's confirmation stalled for three years, W made him his staff secretary between 2003-2006. It doesn't sound like an important job but it was:
[Kavanaugh] wielded extraordinary influence as the adviser responsible for screening, reviewing and editing documents delivered to Bush, interviews and documents show.
“Ultimately, the umpire was Brett,” said Karl Rove, a Bush adviser and one of the people Kavanaugh worked with closely as staff secretary.
He was behind every controversial decision, including Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), torture of enemy combatants and warrantless wiretapping.
Documents and interviews show that while Kavanaugh was not a policymaker, he was directly involved in helping the White House manage a wide array of sensitive matters, including the war on terrorism, the treatment of enemy combatants and warrantless wiretapping. 
“It put Kavanaugh at the center of every political and policy decision at the Bush White House,” said Peter Irons, professor emeritus at the University of California at San Diego and author of several books about the Supreme Court. “He is exactly the kind of person that the legal conservative movement wants on the court.”
His Appeals Court nomination was finally approved in 2006. His ideologically driven partisan approach was evident there as well.
An analysis found that Kavanaugh had the most or second-most conservative voting record on the D.C. Court, in every policy area, in period 2003 to 2018.
Koch brothers
This is why he is the Koch Brothers' wet dream.

In case you don't know who they are, this dynamic duo founded and funded the Tea Party and they are behind every conservative effort to bust unions and remove environmental regulations.

They are octogenarian billionaires who will leave behind a sinking planet without much oxygen to their coal-rich grandchildren.

In fact, Kavanaugh's record is so bad that the White House refused to release his emails and policy opinions even though it is the accepted practice to do so.

Picture of Judicial Temperament
In any event, even if Kavanaugh's history of far-right decision making and ideological hackery failed to convinced you, take a look at his partisan outburst during the Blasey Ford hearings.

In his angry tirade, he brought up conspiracy theories against Clintons, he insulted and belittled Democratic senators (he even accused one of blacking out for heavy drinking) and he lashed out at everyone who stood between him and the court chair he firmly believed he deserved.

And he issued a threat:
“You have replaced ‘advise and consent’ with ‘search and destroy,’” he chastised Democrats, warning moments later: “What goes around comes around.”
That's judicial temperament for you.

Not surprisingly, none of these facts made it into coherent pieces in the mainstream media.

There were a few bits here and there but to my knowledge, no one said, well, he is a thoroughly partisan hack and this is his history of hackery and look at the shameful playacting to defend his nomination.

Instead most media outlets praised (or made room for those who did) his judicial temperament and his oversized intellect.

Brett Kavanaugh The Brilliant Jurist and Carpool Dad

Ah yes.

From the beginning, we got interminable narratives about what a great guy he was.

And it wasn't just the usual suspects.
Lisa Blatt, a self-described ”liberal Democrat and feminist,” wrote a piece in Politico telling the Supreme Court to confirm Kavanaugh and even introduced him at his Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing, giving him a boost of bipartisan credibility. 
Did I mention that he was a great guy:
“I don’t know Kavanaugh the judge. But Kavanaugh the carpool dad is one great guy,” read the headline for one Washington Post op-ed by Julie O’Brien, a woman who knows Kavanaugh through their daughters’ school. 
His impressive credentials were praised by moderate GOP senators like Murkowski and Collins.

Moreover,
Almost immediately after Kavanaugh’s nomination, nearly three dozen of his former law clerks (all of those, the clerks wrote, who are “not prohibited by their current or pending employment from signing”) sent a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee in which they praised his intellectual rigor but also described him as “unfailingly warm and gracious with his colleagues no matter how strongly they disagree about a case.” 
There were more letters.
Eighty students who had Kavanaugh as a professor at Harvard Law School signed a letter saying he was an ”inspiring professor.”
And Yale University, where he went to undergraduate and law school, issued a glowing press release with five distinguished professors and faculty members congratulating him and extolling his intellectual talent. 
And do you know what happened after the Dr. Ford allegations surfaced?
The day after those allegations came out, 65 women who knew Kavanaugh in high school were still willing to issue a letter attesting to his character and his treatment of women. 
The guy went to an all boys high school. How do you get 65 women testify to your character 24 hours after you were accused of a horrible crime?

Do you even know 65 women from your own high school?

Think about it.

And think about how many "liberal" media outlets mentioned this fact?

Well, at least one of these women thought differently after signing the letter. She was Renate Schroeder Dolphin who was mentioned by Kavanaugh and his football teammates in their yearbook as someone they had sex with (making them Renate alumnus).

Nice, isn't it?

He truly is a great guy.

Media Cover

Speaking of corporate media, they did a wonderful job supporting Kavanaugh's nomination.

Besides introducing him as the brilliant jurist without really touching upon his Florida recount efforts or the three long years that took for him to be confirmed to the District of Columbia Appeals Court or his extremely conservative record, they also helped the confirmation process by sucking the oxygen out of such points.

New York Times came up with a third hand sourced story about Rod Rosenstein trying to overthrow Donald Trump using the 25th Amendment. Michael Schmidt's piece drew categorical denials but no one cared.

Fox News and Sean Hannity were happy to just run with it.

Let me make a prediction right here and right now: When Kavanaugh is confirmed, Trump will first fire Rosenstein or force him to resign. Then he will fire Mueller.

You read it here first.

And we'll have the "liberal" New York Times to thank for this.

Another interesting thing is how the media outlets regurgitated GOP talking points without raising any questions. For instance, when they report the above-mentioned McConnell quote about delays and delaying tactics they never remind us that the same cynical senator delayed Merrick Garland's confirmation hearing for over a year.

And his argument was based on the need to wait for the will of the people to be expressed in the upcoming elections which were more than a year away at the time. Now there are elections in a few weeks time and somehow the entire corporate media could not recall McConnell's previous claim.

The same media folks also maintain that the new situation is very different from the Anita Hill hearings 27 years ago because of the #MeToo movement.

It is not, because IOKIYAR trumps #MeToo any time.

Here is what a female Trumpkin said about Blasey Ford:
"As a woman, a mother, and a former victim of assault myself, how any of you feminazis out there are buying this is completely beyond me."
At a Trump rally, the Guardian reporter could not find a single person who believed Christine Blasey Ford:
Tammy DeWitt, a 52-year-old state employee from Shinnston, West Virginia, also thought Ford was lying. 
“It’s kind of obvious,” she said. “Thirty-some years later, right when he was getting the nomination, that she all the sudden remembers it.” She suggested “maybe she was paid by the Democrats”, and repeated: “They are crucifying that poor man.”
But that is mostly because of the corporate media coverage.

Sure Trumpkins get their talking points from Fox News where they are told about a doppelganger who assaulted Dr Ford. But that is because there is no consistent counter narrative from the likes of New York Times.

Case in point, when the mainstream media made a lot of noise about Roy Moore he lost to a Democrat in Alabama.

But usually, the corporate media is more interested in highlighting Democratic sins.

When Bill Clinton was accused by Gennifer Flowers or Paula Jones GOP operatives turned his private life a 24/7 circus throughout his presidency and the liberal media outlets covered every single one of them.

The current president is accused of sexual assault by 19 women and his is on tape with his proud pussy grabbing anecdote. Yet, we never see them mentioned with the same regularity.

One last thing.

Corporate media mentions the evangelical fixation with Roe v. Wade all the time.

As I documented previously, abortion was a Catholic issue prior to 1979 and the evangelical Christians couldn't care less about it. It was Pat Buchanan and GOP strategists Richard Viguerie and Paul Weyrich who made the issue an important part of Nixon's Southern Strategy.

But everyone is now pretending that abortion has always been the most important factor in evangelical voting when it was just an execrable GOP manipulation with no basis in religion.