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Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse

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Re: Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse

#121

Post by iSnow »

swombat wrote: post #31
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #28

And Russia. In the harsh world of realpolitik no one cares if Venezuela falls apart, except for the Venezuelans. If Russia falls apart it's a serious problem for everyone, because it won't fall apart quietly or peacefully.

> If Russia falls apart it's a serious problem for everyone, because it won't fall apart quietly or peacefully. It might still be an improvement over its current approach - which is not falling apart, but is neither quiet nor peaceful. There's a fair bit of political analysis that suggests that Russia is for example about to test NATO by starting a war with Turkey, and that it is deliberately killing civilians in Syr…

NATO has just warned off Turkey, telling them in no uncertain terms that if they start a war with Russia, they are on their own.

So I think the reality is the other way round.

Re: Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse

#122

Post by nickbauman »

s_q_b wrote: post #36
nabla9 wrote: post #25

Boko Haram, al-Qaida, ISIS, Ansar al-Shariah, Jund al-Khilafan, al-Nusra, ... You can backtrack basically all active jihadist groups that attack west back to to the Saudi funded ideology. Even ISIS is offshoot of Wahabbi/Salafism. The "traditional" Islamist like Brotherhood put their efforts in Arab countries. Saudis are not in control of these groups, but they are responsible for the ideology. Saudi Arabia's Curricu…

There are nine pages redacted from the 9/11 report, because they were deemed too incendiary against an ally, Saudi Arabia. I want those pages.

I think we generally know what's in those pages. Seymour Hersh (multi Pulitzer winning journalist who, among other things, uncovered the Mi Lai Atrocities) broke the story that the assassination of Osama Bin Ladin was mainly an attempt by the US to cover up the deep ties between OBL and the Saudi government.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n10/seymour-m-hersh/the-killing-of-...

Re: Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse

#123

Post by matwood »

swombat wrote: post #31
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #28

And Russia. In the harsh world of realpolitik no one cares if Venezuela falls apart, except for the Venezuelans. If Russia falls apart it's a serious problem for everyone, because it won't fall apart quietly or peacefully.

> If Russia falls apart it's a serious problem for everyone, because it won't fall apart quietly or peacefully. It might still be an improvement over its current approach - which is not falling apart, but is neither quiet nor peaceful. There's a fair bit of political analysis that suggests that Russia is for example about to test NATO by starting a war with Turkey, and that it is deliberately killing civilians in Syr…

> I'll take a Russia falling apart noisily over a Russia attempting to hegemonise half of Europe again...

At least in current Russia there is someone in control. If the oligarchs tire of Putin and have him taken care of, Russia could fall into a civil war. Normally, this would not be a huge problem, but Russia has ~5k nukes laying around.

Think Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, but with nukes scattered about.

Re: Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse

#124

Post by matwood »

_0nac wrote: post #22

I've worked a fair amount in Saudi Arabia, and yeah, even by (low) Gulf standards it's a deeply fucked-up place and definitely a ticking time bomb. A few things people don't realize until they've actually been there: - Not all Saudis are rich. Quite the opposite, there are destitute beggars on the streets of Riyadh. The women were the saddest side, kneeling by the roadside begging for alms in their all-enveloping pit…

> - "Hypocritical" doesn't begin to describe the opulence of the Sauds (the ruling family; yup, Saudi Arabia is the world's only country named after its rulers). For example, the massively lucrative alcohol smuggling racket is generally acknowledged to be run by one of the princes (of whom there are hundreds; Ibn al-Saud was such a horny old goat that he had 45 sons who survived to adulthood and had children of their own).

IIRC, there was a "Locked Up Abroad" about this. The guy was quite candid about knowing that smuggling alcohol was illegal, but it was Princes and the like buying it from him. I think he ended up just getting deported.

Re: Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse

#125

Post by tptacek »

nickbauman wrote: post #122
s_q_b wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are nine pages redacted from the 9/11 report, because they were deemed too incendiary against an ally, Saudi Arabia. I want those pages.

I think we generally know what's in those pages. Seymour Hersh (multi Pulitzer winning journalist who, among other things, uncovered the Mi Lai Atrocities) broke the story that the assassination of Osama Bin Ladin was mainly an attempt by the US to cover up the deep ties between OBL and the Saudi government. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n10/seymour-m-hersh/the-killing-of-...

To say that Hersh's story about the OBL Killing is controversial, especially among journalists, would be understating it quite a bit.

The London Review Of Books is not a conventional outlet for Hersh's investigative journalism (he's a regular at The New Yorker, which has one of the more notoriously elaborate fact checking apparatuses in the industry) and not Hersh's first choice for publishing that story.

Re: Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse

#127

Post by mseebach »

bedhead wrote: post #115
hartpuff wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The CIA and/or NSA very likely knew that the 9/11 terrorists were in the US, learning to fly airliners. Has there ever been an explanation why the hijackers risked conspicuously attending flight schools under the noses of the US authorities, rather than, say, absolutely any other country in the world ?

Terrorists tend to be stupid. Honestly. Look at Richard Reid, the shoe bomber. The guy goes to the airplane bathroom to prepare his shoe bomb, then he returns to his seat, covers himself with a blanket, and tries to detonate the bomb by lighting the fuse with matches. People next to him notice this easily and maul him. Plot over. So, ummm, why not just detonate the thing while locked in the bathroom??? The guys in fl…

When you only have a small explosive, you want to detonate it as close to the wing as possible, as this is the weakest spot on the plane - you're basically hoping for the wing to fall off, or at least sever the connections to the control surfaces. Even with a decent hole in the fuselage, there is a very good chance of landing the plane safely as long as the wings stay on.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloha_Airlines_Flight_243

Re: Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse

#128

Post by JoeAltmaier »

matwood wrote: post #124
_0nac wrote: post #22

I've worked a fair amount in Saudi Arabia, and yeah, even by (low) Gulf standards it's a deeply fucked-up place and definitely a ticking time bomb. A few things people don't realize until they've actually been there: - Not all Saudis are rich. Quite the opposite, there are destitute beggars on the streets of Riyadh. The women were the saddest side, kneeling by the roadside begging for alms in their all-enveloping pit…

> - "Hypocritical" doesn't begin to describe the opulence of the Sauds (the ruling family; yup, Saudi Arabia is the world's only country named after its rulers). For example, the massively lucrative alcohol smuggling racket is generally acknowledged to be run by one of the princes (of whom there are hundreds; Ibn al-Saud was such a horny old goat that he had 45 sons who survived to adulthood and had children of their…

On a tangent: more countries named like that: Rhodesia. Bolivia. Colombia. Liechtenstein. Swaziland. Uzbekistan. Denmark. Russia and Belarus.

Re: Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse

#129

Post by tptacek »

sokoloff wrote: post #75
hartpuff wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The CIA and/or NSA very likely knew that the 9/11 terrorists were in the US, learning to fly airliners. Has there ever been an explanation why the hijackers risked conspicuously attending flight schools under the noses of the US authorities, rather than, say, absolutely any other country in the world ?

Most flight training in the world is done in the US, by a wide margin. Because of that, they would probably stick out much less doing it here than trying to do it in one of the few EU airline training facilities.

Not only that, but for the plot to work, the hijackers had to start from within the US. Implanting them in the US long before the attacks made it easier for them to reliably get to their target airports the day of the attack.

In a sense, the comment upthread litigates the whole idea of a "sleeper cell."

Re: Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse

#130

Post by tptacek »

salafi wrote: post #44
nabla9 wrote: post #25

Boko Haram, al-Qaida, ISIS, Ansar al-Shariah, Jund al-Khilafan, al-Nusra, ... You can backtrack basically all active jihadist groups that attack west back to to the Saudi funded ideology. Even ISIS is offshoot of Wahabbi/Salafism. The "traditional" Islamist like Brotherhood put their efforts in Arab countries. Saudis are not in control of these groups, but they are responsible for the ideology. Saudi Arabia's Curricu…

I can't, for the life of me, understand why people associate being a Salafi with the various terrorist groups. I have never heard a Salafi scholar promote any acts terrorism. In fact, every single high-ranking scholar in Saudi Arabia (those who call themselves Salafi), are all opposed to groups like ISIS, Al Qaida, and Al Nusra. There are dozens of audio clips on Youtube from such scholars who clearly warn the Muslim…

I really have no idea what it means to be a Salafist, but there's something unsettling about an HN debate about whether a particular religion is or isn't fundamentally terroristic.

That's especially true if you are yourself somehow affiliated with the religion, in which case: I'm sorry you find yourself litigating this here.

Whether or not you are, and whether or not these are good faith comments, I think this is a pretty weird place for HN to go.

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