The reports about Jamal Khashoggi, the missing Saudi journalist and Washington Post contributor, whom I've known for more than 15 years, grow steadily more sickening.
Turkey claims to have audiotape of Saudi interrogators torturing Jamal and killing him in the Saudi Consulate. None of this is confirmed, and we still don't know exactly what happened. But increasingly it seems that the crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, better known as MBS, orchestrated the torture, assassination and dismemberment of an American-based journalist using diplomatic premises in a NATO country.
That is monstrous, and it's compounded by the tepid response from Washington. President Donald Trump is already rejecting the idea of responding to such a murder by cutting off weapons sales.
Frankly, it's a disgrace that Trump administration officials and American business tycoons enabled and applauded MBS as he imprisoned business executives, kidnapped Lebanon's prime minister, rashly created a crisis with Qatar, and went to war in Yemen to create what the United Nations calls the world's worst humanitarian crisis there.
Trump has expressed "great confidence" in MBS and said that he and King Salman "know exactly what they are doing."
The bipartisan cheers from Washington, Silicon Valley and Wall Street have fed MBS' recklessness. If he could be feted after kidnapping a Lebanese prime minister and slaughtering Yemeni children, why expect a fuss for murdering a mere journalist?
MBS knows how to push Americans' buttons, speaking about reform and playing us like a fiddle.
In the end, MBS played Jared Kushner, Trump and his other American acolytes for suckers. The White House boasted about $110 billion in arms sales, but nothing close to that came through. Saudi Arabia backed away from Trump's Middle East peace deal. Financiers salivated over an initial public offering for Aramco, the state-owned oil company, but that keeps getting delayed.
The crackdown on corruption is an example of MBS' manipulation and hypocrisy. It sounded great, but MBS himself has purchased a $300 million castle in France, and a $500 million yacht - and he didn't buy them by scrimping on his government salary.
In fairness, he did allow women to drive. But he also imprisoned the women's rights activists who had been campaigning for the right to drive.
The crown prince showed his sensitivity and unpredictability in August when Canada's foreign ministry tweeted concern about the jailing of Saudi women's rights activists. Saudi Arabia went nuts, canceling flights, telling 8,300 Saudi students to leave Canada, expelling the Canadian ambassador and withdrawing investments. All for a tweet.
Western companies should back out of MBS' Future Investment Initiative conference later this month. That includes you, Mastercard, McKinsey, Credit Suisse, Siemens, HSBC, BCG, EY, Bain and Deloitte, all listed on the conference website as partners of the event.
We need an international investigation, perhaps overseen by the United Nations, of what happened to Jamal.
If Saudi Arabia cannot show that Jamal is safe and sound, NATO countries should jointly expel Saudi ambassadors and suspend weapons sales. The United States should start an investigation under the Magnitsky Act and stand ready to impose sanctions on officials up to MBS.
America can also make clear to the Saudi royal family that it should find a new crown prince. A mad prince who murders a journalist, kidnaps a prime minister and starves millions of children should never be celebrated at state dinners, but instead belongs in a prison cell.
The New York Times