Missing Saudi 'reporter' not what he seemed

David Goldman:
Germany's leading right-of-center daily Die Welt this morning reveals that Jamal Khashoggi was not a journalist, but a high-level operative for the Saudi intelligence service, an intimate of Osama bin Laden, and the nephew of the shadiest of all Arab arms dealers, the infamous Adnan Khashoggi. John Bradley reported last week in the Spectator that Khashoggi, who allegedly met a grisly end in a Saudi consulate in Istanbul, was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist organization that among other things wants to replace the Saudi monarchy with a modern Islamist totalitarian state.

So much for the whining in the Establishment media about freedom of the press and protection of the rights of journalists. The presumed-dead Khashoggi was a top-level spook who swore fealty to some of the Arab world's nastiest elements, and who played a high-stakes game in Saudi spookdom. We don't know why he disappeared, but we know what we don't know.

Among other things, we know that Khashoggi was bitterly opposed to the new Saudi government's rapprochement with the state of Israel. As a Muslim Brotherhood member, he backed Palestinian intransigence.
...
... the Muslim Brotherhood is a terrorist organization and has been since its founding. It is also a threat to American security. Of course, Khashoggi was beloved of Establishment types who believe in the Islamist route to democracy, e.g., David Ignatius of the Washington Post. Ignatius covers the intelligence community, and a big section of the intelligence Establishment remains enamored of the notion of Islamist democracy, for example, George W. Bush's former CIA chief Michael Hayden.

There are no good guys in Saudi Arabia, just bad guys and worse guys. This after all is a country ruled by a family, and its family politics often recall Game of Thrones. I condone nothing and endorse no-one, but I don't believe it's America's job to fix the problems of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. I'm not interested in bad guys or good guys, just in our guys vs. their guys. So a bit of caution is warranted in drawing conclusions from Khashoggi affair. We don't know what happened and I don't trust the intelligence Establishment to tell us.
 I have seen other stories that question what Khashoggi was up to, but not in the Washington Post which seems intent on making this guy a martyr.  I do not think they are telling the whole story about Khashoggi.  At any rate, it is too early to jump to conclusions on either side of this story.  There needs to be an investigation that includes all the relevant facts before assigning blame.

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