Saudi Facilities Attacked – Trump is “Locked and Loaded”
Early yesterday morning, two Aramco crude facilities were attacked. Shortly after, satellite photos showed plumes of smoke coming from multiple locations at a scale that could be observed from space. The Saudis announced that HALF of their production had been taken off line. When international trading started a few hours ago, crude prices jumped $6.00 per barrel, increasing to over $60.
Just a little while ago, Trump tweeted: “Saudi Arabia oil supply was attacked. There is reason to believe that we know the culprit, are locked and loaded depending on verification, but are waiting to hear from the Kingdom as to who they believe was the cause of this attack, and under what terms we would proceed!”
Yemeni Houthis claimed responsibility for the attacks. Mike Pompeo accused Iran for the attacks. I call bullshit. This has all the markings of Wag the Dog as a pretense to start a war with Iran. Here’s why I say this:
- The Houthis have been using quadcopters and other small commercial drones bought off of Amazon for their attacks on Saudi Arabia. These drones have little capacity to carry munitions that would cause significant damage.
- Iran has apparently been supplying parts and training to build cheap drones, yet they are small with little capacity to carry significant explosives.
- The attack early on Saturday morning caused enough damage to shut in FIVE MILLION BARRELS PER DAY of Saudi production. This kind of damage was not caused by homemade drones or quadcopters from Amazon.
The Saudi facilities that were allegedly attacked are massive, with modern controls and redundant systems. To claim that an attack with homemade drones was significant enough to shut down 5 million barrels per day of production is laughable. This incident is one of three things:
- An actual attack from Iran, which would be suicide by said country, and an accusation I reject.
- An attack by some other power trying to instigate a war (the US) which is certainly a possibility.
- The entire story is bullshit. Trump and Mohammad bin Salman are in cahoots to start a war with Iran and jack up crude prices.
I’ll take Door Number 3, Monty. This “attack” stinks like yesterday’s crawfish boil, and Trump tweeting that he’s awaiting instructions from Saudi Arabia is the tell. Let’s be clear here: The storyline is that a fleet of small homemade drones from Yemen, built by Iran, was so effective that it knocked out 50% of Saudi Arabia’s production. Bullshit. Alternatively, Iran was so stupid as to attack Saudi directly with powerful drones (or warplanes) guaranteeing a lethal response from the US and its Middle East allies. Bullshit.
I believe that this is nothing more than pretense to justify attacking Iran. Worse, Trump is subjugating the US to Saudi dominance, publicly announcing that he is awaiting instructions from that murdering SOB MBS for how our country should respond.
Christ on a Crutch. 2020 or impeachment can’t come too soon.
Absolutely agree and I would add the other tell is that Pompeo
was so quick to suggest he has proof of Iranian complicity.
Those salon customers who were around in the run up to
the war in Vietnam know the name of this deadly, f-ed up game.
On the other side of the world we have the sudden appearance of American flags and The Star Spangled Banner in Hong Kong. Hmmmm? The military industrial boys have a long reach
1#VoteBlue2020 can’t come soon enough. Watched netflix doc The Family this weekend. So disturbing. Then this mess and kavanaugh. The hand basket to hell is WAY too full right now…….
2Locked & loaded?
3More like Dumb & Dumber.
To borrow a phrase from the movie when Harry and Lloyd took the wrong highway ramp to Colorado:
That Donald Trump is full of shit man.
Why, yes, I WOULD like fries with that!
4When I first heard about the attack, I cheered; the Saudis are no friends of ours, nor any Western country, and they’ve been attacking their neighbors relentlessly for quite some time. They have no friends, only “allies with shared interests.”
We have no business getting up in ANYONE’S grill over this, especially since we know, know for a fact, that our president and his minions are pathological liars and can’t be trusted with a broken skate key, much less the fate of the world.
5Saudis reported no casualties. Wouldn’t a complex so large and vital be staffed 24/7? Was the site evacuated in advance?
Loss of oil production (mitigated by higher prices for the remainder) may be a small price compared to what the Saudis could get as our official war partners.
6I haven’t gone full-blown conspiracy theory, yet. The phrase, “scale that could be observed from space” is actually the key here. The US, Russians, Chinese, Nato, and a host of corporations have satellites that can observe the earth at resolutions varying from the size of a car down to 16″. Eyes in the sky keep a close watch on Iran and the whole Middle East. As always, they have more information than they’re telling us. I’m not convinced the Saudis would participate in any charade that showed them as vulnerable. $$$ and the appearance of strength are the only things that keep them in power.
7This won’t save him from impeachment or a loss in the 2020 election. It just damn won’t.
8First, the most likely weapons that made this strike were almost certainly “cruise missiles”, think GPS-guided, unpiloted medium-small winged aircraft.
Not drones, quad/octocopters, ballistic missiles, or piloted aircraft. Cruise missiles can fly low, be hard to detect, and carry a pretty big payload.
Second, cruise missile technology has been around a long time, is fairly inexpensive, and highly effective against targets that don’t have a maximum defense suite, such as top-tier military assets like our Navy warships.
A morning BBC news program, GMT, reported that the attacking weapon’s impacts appeared to indicate that they came from the direction of Iraq or possibly Syria, not Yemen. Of course Iran has interests there too. Along with numerous others, such as Russia.
Nobody there or here can be trusted, least of all our current US regime. The firing of John Bolton may have several factors involved here that we know nothing about, yet…
“The Saudi facilities that were allegedly attacked…”,
“3. The entire story is bullshit. Trump and Mohammad bin Salman are in cahoots to start a war with Iran and jack up crude prices.”
— Suspiciously, with no loss of life, apparently collateral damage, nor inaccurate or malfunctioning weapons; the whole incident is indeed very suspect.
I’ve been near refineries a very long time, a number of carefully controlled ‘blazing infernos’ could easily be staged for effect [causing minimal damage]. With a complete misinformation propaganda PR package to ac-‘company’ it…
The whole thing could very well be a false-flag op.
Remember, the Cheney-Bush cabal suckered most of the US, UK, and many others into the wholly fabricated false-pretenses Iraq War [which some of us saw through]. Which we are still involved in and still paying for, some estimates run to $3 Trillion dollars for it, mostly pissed away with nothing to show for it..
.
The entire Middle East remains the Snakepit of the World.
9IMO, we should give them all an ultimatum– shape up, behave yourselves, work out your differences, DO NOT involve the rest of us henceforth. Failure to meet these goals will result in nuclear obliteration.
Give them a couple of years to fully comply. If not, annihilate them all.
75% of the world’s tensions and problems solved.
My question is: Why would the Houthis claim responsibility for this if, in fact, they didn’t do it?
10Considering what the Saudis have been doing to the Yemenis for years with our connivance, they don’t have much reason to squawk.
11AND – with the election coming up – Republithug playbook page 124 calls for a war to win re-election. Just sayin’.
12My first thought when I heard this story was – Exxon? But of course a large worldwide corporation would never do anything to a competitor. My second thought was like Mark at #1 – is this a ploy to drag us into something that is not our business. I have a grandson who could be drafted in four years and I could totally see Trump reinstating it – especially since he didn’t serve. I hope this is just one more thing the GOP will try to use for fundraising!
13The Saudis, led by murderous thug Mohammed Bin Salman, have been committing genocide aided by our munitions for years. My only regret about the attack is that it didn’t wipe our MBS and his band of cutthroats.
We need to stay the F out of this.
14I am kind of surprised that no one is having the kind of reaction I am. How easily people forget.
15Does know one remember that it actually was the Saudi’s who brought down the World Trade Center Towers?
Setting aside all the various theories, I think 11 of the 13 hijackers were Saudi’s.
So, my reaction is the sad human trait of ‘revenge’.
Let them burn…..
BarbinDC, to raise their profile. Same reason ISIS claims credit for random acts of violence in the west.
I agree, the official version smells like day-old fish. I’m waiting to hear from the intelligence service of some country with nothing to gain from promoting a war, like France. Or even China. Anyone but pathological liars Trump and Pompeo.
16‘Saudi Arabia First’: Trump Accused of Letting Saudis Dictate US Foreign Policy After Oil Facility Attack
“Congress will not give you the authority to start another disastrous war in the Middle East just because the brutal Saudi dictatorship told you to,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/09/16/saudi-arabia-first-trump-accused-letting-saudis-dictate-us-foreign-policy-after-oil
Trump boxed in after blaming Iran for Saudi oil plant strike
Chris Hayes
✔
@chrislhayes
Congratulations, members of the United States Armed Forces: Mohammed Bin Salman is your new Commander in Chief!
https://triblive.com/news/world/trump-boxed-in-after-blaming-iran-for-saudi-oil-plant-strike/
17I’m thinking that a petroleum engineer could spot places where a couple of pounds of C4, or a small armor-piercing IED, could do lots of damage. All it would take would be some smuggled consumer-size drones and knowledge of the facility and its weak point.
This would put it squarely within the ability of any insurgent group, including the Houthis.
Something for the US to think about – we have lots ofundefended
18Donald J. Trump on Twitter: “Saudi Arabia should fight their own wars, which they won’t, or pay us an absolute fortune to protect them and their great wealth-$ trillion!”
https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/506198852933013504
19Let Trump force a war vote, then add that to his Articles of Impeachment. The United States Armed Forces can’t be used as mercenaries for Trump’s gain.
Of course, they were used that way for Dick(less) Cheney’s gain, so there’s that.
20With all the equipment and training we have given/sold to the Saudis, they should be able to have their own war without our help.
And if worse comes to worst, the Saudis can always hijack a few jet liners and fly them into Iranian targets.
21Thank you Sandridge. Yes, this sounds more like a cruise missile with GPS guidance than a military grade drone, remotely piloted. If the manufacture was traced to Iran, it makes perfect sense. The Houthis are Shi’a and religious allies of Iran. Iran didn’t fire the missile or choose the target so this isn’t an act of war by them. The Houthis are already at war.
Another point is that this is one of two Saudi refineries. Mostly these refineries supply their products in the region, although some products are exported to Europe. The oil fields weren’t attacked and oil production is what it has been. This affects refined products in the region.
I sincerely doubt this is false flag. There might have been enough warning to evacuate night staff, warning from Saudi defenses. Or they might not admit there are casualties, we just don’t know. However, the Houthis have claimed responsibility.
I’m glad Bolton is gone, you know what he’d be doing with this. The press in the US has been less than forthcoming, so I have been grateful for the UK press (and French, Spanish, Italian, all reporting much the same thing).
However, if selling arms to an ally at war was an act of war, we’d all be sitting on glass parking lots. See: Mujahadeen in Afghanistan fighting against the then Soviets.
22I’m not so quick to dismiss the possibility that Iran had a big part in this in support of the Houthis. While the neocons have wanted to attack Iran for years, most Americans have come around to the idea that the Saudi government is at least as bad as the Iranian one and the Saudis are not our friends. Despite “locked and loaded”, there may not be much of an American response. Fighting for Saudi Arabia is not a good election issue. I for one would be happy to see the war in Yemen blow back of the “Kingdom”.
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