DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus U.S. weapons makers rattled over Saudi Arabia deals

i was actually sitting here waiting and hoping that a conservative was gonna post about the Saudi's murdering a US journalist. but again, i ended up disappointed because conservatives still thinks the Saudi's are actual allies.

Saudi Arabia is the #1 sponsor of terrorism in the world. so what are the weapons manufacturers concerned about?

sales, of course:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/u-weapons-makers-rattled-over-185821949.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Major U.S. defense contractors have expressed concern to the Trump administration that lawmakers angered by the disappearance of a Saudi journalist in Turkey will block further arms deals with Saudi Arabia, a senior U.S. official told Reuters on Friday.

Turkish reports that journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a vocal critic of Riyadh, was killed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and removed have hardened resistance in the U.S. Congress to selling weapons to Saudi Arabia, already a sore point for many lawmakers concerned about the Saudi role in Yemen's civil war.

Saudi Arabia rejects the allegations in Turkey as baseless.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday he was wary of halting arms sales to Riyadh because of Khashoggi as it would just shift its weapons purchases to Russia and China.

Saudi Arabia, where Trump last year announced a $110 billion arms package, has been a centerpiece of his overhaul of weapons export policy in which he has gone further than any of his predecessors in acting as a weapons salesman. However, critics say the new approach gives too much weight to business interests versus human rights concerns.

The senior U.S. official declined to identify the companies that had contacted the administration over their Saudi arms deals. Defense contractors did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N) and Raytheon Co (RTN.N) have been the most active U.S. defense companies with potential sales to Saudi Arabia since Trump announced the package as part of his "Buy American" agenda to create jobs at home.

In Congress, Democrats and Republicans alike are alarmed by the disappearance of Khashoggi, a U.S. resident who wrote columns for the Washington Post. He entered the consulate on Oct. 2 to collect documents for his planned marriage. Saudi officials say Khashoggi left the building shortly afterwards, but his fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, said he never re-appeared.

Even before Khashoggi's unexplained disappearance, Democratic lawmakers had "holds" for months on at least four military equipment deals, largely because of Saudi attacks that killed Yemeni civilians.

"This makes it more likely they'll expand holds to include systems that aren't necessarily controversial by themselves. It's a major concern," the senior administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

About $19 billion in deals have been officially notified to Congress, according to government records, making it unlikely that they can be halted. These include training packages for Saudi troops and pilots and the THAAD anti-missile system that could cost as much as $15 billion.

One lobbyist for a defense company who spoke on condition of anonymity said worries about a potential across-the-board blockage of Saudi sales by Congress had surfaced in recent days, a development that would hurt a range of contractors.

A second U.S. official said there were also current holds in place on training sales for the Saudi government.

Under U.S. law, major foreign military sales can be blocked by Congress. An informal U.S. review process lets key lawmakers use a practice known as a "hold" to stall deals if they have concerns such as whether the weapons being supplied would be used to kill civilians.

Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, an outspoken critic of Saudi Arabia, threatened on Thursday to introduce a resolution of disapproval for any Saudi military deal that came up.

Senator Bob Corker, the Republican chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, told reporters on Thursday he recently told a defense contractor not to push for a deal with the Saudis, even before the Khashoggi case.

"With this, I can assure it won't happen for a while," Corker said.

While details of all the previously blocked Saudi deals were not immediately available, one was the planned sale of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of high-tech munitions to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Since 2015, Gulf Arab states have fought to restore a government in Yemen driven out by the Houthis, Shi'ite Muslim fighters Yemen's neighbors view as agents of Iran. The war has killed more than 10,000 people and created the world's most urgent humanitarian emergency.

Senator Robert Menendez, the top Foreign Relations Committee Democrat, said the Trump administration had not satisfied concerns he first raised in June about the sale to members of the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen of Raytheon's precision-guided munitions.

nobody, huh? nobody cares about a us journalist getting killed by saudi's

Trump says U.S. would be 'punishing' itself if it halts Saudi arms sales

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-says-u-punishing-itself-halts-saudi-arms-080003087--finance.html

Two things Republicans historically don't care about:
1. Journalist
2. Saudi Arabia's reign of terror

The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Iran is the biggest threat today.

if you honestly think that, then you dont know a damn thing about the middle east.

It is you who knows nothing about strategic planning and picking your battles.

Would you rather go after both of them and have to fight the entire middle east? Thought not.

go "after" who, exactly? do you have any idea what you're talking about? you think we need military action against any of them right now?

good god, no wonder you voted for trump. you're both pathetically clueless.

Small thinking is fine for the battlefield but not for world events.

The Saudi's suck and so do the Iranians. We are focused on the Iranians now and the Saudi's, who hate them, are helping us in that regard.

No, we do not need military action at this time but if we end up there, we will need allies in the Arab world.

i agree, which is why your comments, combined with Trump's idiotic comments, isn't what our foreign policy needs.

And your thinking combined with Obama's actions is why we had to take back Iraq and parts of Syria twice.

Now you are mad at Trump for wanting to keep the Saudi's as allies against Iran while not pushing them towards Russia and China.

Glad Trump is Prez and not you.

not really. your thinking is why obama had to even deal with iraq in the first place. often times, there are no good decisions in the middle east, only tough ones.

your thinking is why power vacuums constantly exist in the middle east as well. obama had the iranians thinking less about military power and more about economic power. yet under your presidents watch, with your thinking, now they're back to thinking about military strength as the priority.

there is a reason people like you keep the military industrial complex alive and well. you're less about peace, and more about murder.

the conservative way. i wish i was president over trump. hell, i wish PDR or Razor was president over Trump.

It was Obama who paid Iran who then used that money to expand their military, nearly to the Mediterranean, while supporting Hamas against Israel.

It was Obama who created the ISIS Caliphate by pulling us out of the region.

But facts don't seem to be of interest to you.

you just stated two blatant lies, further proving my point that you and trump are beyond clueless.

Why don't you ask ISIS if Obama is clueless or if Trump is clueless, bet they would tell you Obama, if you can find any that Trump hasn't killed that is.

What world do you live on? Because it's certainly not this Earth. Nothing you've said about the middle East in this thread has been accurate.

No, not if you live by the Libby Handbook it isn't.

Israel is the evil empire according to that book.

libby handbook?

so facts are only used by liberals? thanks for admitting that.

No no no, I myself use the Libby Handbook every day.
It hangs in the Outhouse.

What handbook talks about Saudi Arabia?

maybe the bible?

im posting this from fox news, that way the sheep can't claim "fake news"

Trump: 'I think I know more about' NATO than Mattis does

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-i-think-i-know-more-about-nato-than-mattis-does


what a moron. seriously. what a moron.

Remember like a week ago when you tried to claim that Saudi Arabia wasn’t the world’s leading sponsor of state-funded and sanctioned terrorism, and made the ridiculous assertion that Iran was?

I asked you to measure up the worst terrorist attack each country was responsible for, and you slinked away with your tail between your legs like a frightened dog?

Let’s try that again. I’ll go first

1) Saudi Arabia- 9/11

Your turn -

1) Iran- ???

Maybe this time you might answer and not run away (but doubtful)

Depends on where we think Paran is located...

Tell me again how many Iranians were involved in 911?

OCD over Trump

I'd pull out of the middle east completely. Our nuke threat to make glass in the desert is all we ever needed there. All they ever wanted is to be left alone to their religion and their way of life. They would welcome our tourism and oil money... no more war for us.

And They will leave Israel alone as long as they know it means nuke retaliation. One on One, Israel can handle any of them. So we only have to back them up if they unite against Israel, but they haven't united for anything in over a thousand years.

The funny thing is that 40 clearly has no idea or context as to what’s going on.

He just saw that Saudi Arabia ate Trump’s lunch, so his base knee-jerk impulse is to defend them.

Trump Says 'Rogue Killers' May Be Behind Jamal Khashoggi's Disappearance

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-says-apos-rogue-killers-140507492.html

how come this dude just ups and believes what any of these strongmen tell them?

How is Mike Pompeo going to talk about the legalization of extra judicial killings?

blame John Kerry. that seems to be pompeo's goto playbook.

Balls the size of lentils. Can not stand up to a strongman, wall street, or big corps to save his soul. Everything he does act upon is motivated by greed and cowardice. No surprises here.

It’s pretty well known that you want to be the last person to talk to Trump, because he’s so easily swayed that the last voice he hears is the one he repeats.

If this is really true, somebody should hack all of his communication devices with a message telling him it's time to resign.

Anybody remember all the mocking Obama took here for bowing to a Saudi king? Probably not.

I'm just curious Swish. When Trump said that 80% of the media is the enemy of the people why would you ever think that a Trump supporter would speak out about this?

Khashoggi crisis: The "rogue killers" escape

Saudi officials today outside the consulate in Istanbul. Photo: Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty Images
A day after President Trump's "60 Minutes" interview, in which he said there'd be "severe punishment" if Saudi Arabia were responsible for the alleged murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, he appeared to give the Saudis an out:

"The king firmly denied any knowledge of it. ... It sounded to me like these could have been rogue killers, who knows?"
— Trump to reporters Monday
Between the lines: That a team of "rogue killers" would infiltrate the Saudi consulate and murder an opponent of the regime seems a pretty far-fetched explanation, particularly as the Washington Post has reported that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman himself sought to lure Khashoggi back to the kingdom for capture. But Trump isn't the only one who seems to be offering the Saudis a graceful way out.


Show less
As Soner Cagaptay of the Washington Institute points out, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan would need Trump's backing to confront the Saudis head on. Instead, the rogue killers "exit ramp" allows Erdogan to avoid two bad outcomes:

A blow to his strongman image due to an assassination inside Turkey's borders going unchallenged.
An economically damaging rupture with the Saudis if he does call them out.
We seem to be drifting toward the exit ramp. CNN is reporting that "the Saudis are preparing a report that will acknowledge ... Khashoggi's death was the result of an interrogation that went wrong, one that was intended to lead to his abduction from Turkey ... [but] was carried out without clearance and transparency."

The bottom line: The Saudis initially claimed that Khashoggi left the embassy unharmed. There's no reason to believe them now. But even if this is as bogus as it sounds, all three countries involved might decide a politically expedient lie is preferable to an inconvenient truth.

What to watch: Trump has dispatched Secretary of State Pompeo to Saudi Arabia.


https://www.axios.com/jamal-khashoggi-cr...0d10c5482c.html

State sponsored 1sr degree murder is now the norm. Lil Kim does it. Putin does it. Now The Saudi’s. Rogue friggin killers. Pfft ... yeah killers like Bin Laden

How dumb are the Saudis and how much dumber are we for listening to them?

Trump is ok with letting the deal go on. So nothing else matters. These weapons will be used against us. Mark it down.

US weapon makers should be rattled over this as there is a large contract waiting in the wings.

I laugh to myself at how quickly you guys line up to convict while the facts are still coming in.

It doesn't look good for the Saudi's so far but we need all the facts before condemning an Ally. It is what we do. We are Americans.

The 2012 Magnitsky Act is a lever Congress can pull to punish foreign powers for extrajudicial killings, torture, or detention. President Obama signed the act into law after Russia arrested lawyer Sergei Magnitsky and beat him to death while in custody in 2008. Magnitsky faced scrutiny after unearthing a Kremlin tax fraud scheme.

Under the law, a clock began to run once Corker and Menendez fired off their missive to the White House. The Trump Administration has four months to investigate if a foreign power committed human rights abuses. If so, the U.S. can impose sanctions.

Congress and the President can certainly move more quickly if the situation merits. But it’s hard to see how that could happen with lawmakers entering a lame duck session after the midterm elections. It’s likely that the new Congress would tackle any prospective discipline for Saudi Arabia in 2019.

Lawmakers of both parties have long been suspect of Saudi Arabia. In 2016, Congress approved a measure to allow victims of those killed on 9/11 to sue the Saudi government over purported terrorism ties. President Obama vetoed the plan. But Congress successfully overrode the President, the only veto override of Mr. Obama’s career.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/congres...ashoggi-killing