I sat down at this guest user PC in the Austin Central Public Library to write about Special Activities pilots and the secrets they hold.
Secrets that may go to the grave with them.
But here is a photo journalist and what similarity is this.
Jamal Ahmad Khashoggi (/kəˈʃoʊɡdʒi, kəˈʃɒɡdʒi/; Arabic: جمال أحمد خاشقجي, romanized: Jamāl ʾAḥmad Ḵāšuqjī, Hejazi pronunciation: [dʒaˈmaːl xaːˈʃʊɡ.(d)ʒi]; 13 October 1958 – 2 October 2018) was a Saudi journalist, dissident, author, columnist for Middle East Eye and The Washington Post, and a general manager and editor-in-chief of Al-Arab News Channel who was assassinated at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on 2 October 2018 by agents of the Saudi government, allegedly at the behest of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.[8][9][10][11] He also served as editor for the Saudi Arabian newspaper Al Watan, turning it into a platform for Saudi progressives.[12] Khashoggi fled Saudi Arabia in September 2017 and went into self-imposed exile. He said that the Saudi government had “banned him from Twitter”,[13] and he later wrote newspaper articles critical of the Saudi government. Khashoggi had been sharply critical of the Saudi rulers, King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.[14] He also opposed the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen.[15]
On 2 October 2018, Khashoggi entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to obtain documents related to his planned marriage, but was never seen leaving. Amid news reports claiming that he had been killed and dismembered inside, an inspection of the consulate, by Saudi and Turkish officials, took place on 15 October. Initially, the Saudi government denied the death, but following shifting explanations for Khashoggi’s death, Saudi Arabia’s attorney general eventually stated that the murder was premeditated.[16][17] By 16 November 2018, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had concluded that Mohammed bin Salman ordered Khashoggi’s assassination.[18][19] Controversy over the murder has created tensions between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, including calls for the U.S. to sever diplomatic ties with the kingdom.
On 11 December 2018, Jamal Khashoggi was named Time magazine’s person of the year for his work in journalism, along with other journalists who faced political persecution for their work. Time referred to Khashoggi as a “Guardian of the Truth”.[20][21][22]
Relationship with Osama bin Laden[edit]
Khashoggi was acquainted with Osama bin Laden in the 1980s and 1990s in Afghanistan while bin Laden was championing his jihad against the Soviets.
The Soviet–Afghan War (1979–1989) was a nine-year guerrilla war fought by insurgent groups known collectively as the Mujahideen, as well as smaller Maoist groups, against the military occupation of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union and their satellite state, the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA). The conflict lasted throughout the 1980s and fighting took place mostly in the Afghan countryside.
The Mujahideen aloing with Osama Bin Laden were variously backed primarily by the United States, Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, China, and the United Kingdom; the conflict was a Cold War-era proxy war the us backing Bin Laden as an existing enemy of the Soviet Union and thus bolstering Bin Laden.
Khashoggi interviewed bin Laden several times, usually meeting bin Laden in Tora Bora, and once more in Sudan in 1995.[54][55] According to The Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, “Khashoggi couldn’t have traveled with the mujahideen that way without tacit support from Saudi intelligence, which was coordinating aid to the fighters as part of its cooperation with the CIA against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. … Khashoggi criticized Prince Salman, then governor of Riyadh and head of the Saudi committee for support to the Afghan mujahideen, for unwisely funding Salafist extremist groups that were undermining the war.”[39]
The foundations of the conflict were laid by the Saur Revolution, a 1978 coup in which the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan seized power, initiating a series of radical modernization and land reforms throughout the country. These lots of stuff.
With fears rising that Amin was planning to switch sides to the United States,[60] the Soviet government, under leader Leonid Brezhnev, decided to deploy the 40th Army across the border on 24 December 1979.[61] Arriving in the capital Kabul, they staged a coup (Operation Storm-333),[62] killing General Secretary Amin and installing Soviet loyalist Babrak Karmal from the rival faction Parcham.[59] The Soviet invasion[nb 1] was based on the Brezhnev Doctrine.
Afghan insurgents began to receive massive amounts of support through aid, finance and military training in neighbouring Pakistan with significant help from the United States and United Kingdom.[69] They were also heavily financed by China and the Arab monarchies in the Persian Gulf.[70][16][71][72] As documented by the National Security Archive, “the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) played a significant role in asserting U.S. influence in Afghanistan by funding military operations designed to frustrate the Soviet invasion of that country. CIA covert action worked through Pakistani intelligence services to reach Afghan rebel groups.”[73]
By mid-1987 the Soviet Union, now under reformist leader General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, announced it would start withdrawing its forces after meetings with the Afghan government.[10][11] The final troop withdrawal started on 15 May 1988, and ended on 15 February 1989, leaving the government forces alone in the battle against the insurgents, which continued until 1992, when the former Soviet-backed government collapsed.
Due to its length, it has sometimes been referred to as the “Soviet Union’s Vietnam War” or the “Bear Trap” by Western media.[85][86][87] The Soviets’ failure in the war[88] is thought to be a contributing factor to the fall of the Soviet Union.[55] It has left a mixed legacy in the former Soviet Union and in Afghanistan.[56] Additionally, U.S. policies in the war are also thought to have contributed to a “blowback” of unintended consequences against American interests, which led to the United States entering into its own war in Afghanistan in 2001.
Al Arabiya reported that Khashoggi once tried to persuade bin Laden to quit violence.[56][39] In 1995 he was sent to Khartoum by the Saudi government to convince bin Laden to abandon jihad, which Crown Prince Abdullah promised would be reciprocated with a restoration of bin Laden’s Saudi citizenship and readmission into Saudi Arabia. During their first meeting bin Laden claimed to have moved on to peaceful agricultural and construction projects and repeatedly condemned the use of violence, but refused to allow Khashoggi to record his statements. During their second meeting bin Laden became more belligerent and called for a military campaign to drive the United States out of the Arabian Peninsula. On the third meeting bin Laden refused to publicly condemn the use of violence without Saudi concessions such as a full pardon or an American military withdrawal.[57]
Khashoggi said: “I was very much surprised [in 1997] to see Osama turning into radicalism the way he did.”[34] Khashoggi was the only non-royal Saudi Arabian who knew of the royals’ intimate dealing with al-Qaeda in the lead-up to the September 11 attacks. He dissociated himself from bin Laden following the attacks.[52]
Khashoggi wrote in response to 11 September attacks: “The most pressing issue now is to ensure that our children can never be influenced by extremist ideas like those 15 Saudis who were misled into hijacking four planes that fine September day, piloting them, and us, straight into the jaws of hell.”[54]
The New York Times describes that after SEAL Team Six killed Osama bin Laden in 2011, Khashoggi mourned his old acquaintance and what he had become. He wrote on Twitter: “I collapsed crying a while ago, heartbroken for you Abu Abdullah”, using bin Laden’s nickname, and continued: “You were beautiful and brave in those beautiful days in Afghanistan, before you surrendered to hatred and passion.”[25]
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden[a] (10 March 1957[6] – 2 May 2011[7]), also transliterated as Usama bin Ladin, was a Saudi Arabian-born[8] militant, mastermind behind the September 11 attacks and founder of the Pan-Islamic militant organization al-Qaeda. The group is designated as a terrorist group by the United Nations Security Council, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the European Union, and various countries. Under bin Laden, al-Qaeda was responsible for the September 11 attacks in the United States and many other mass-casualty attacks worldwide.[9][10][11] On 2 May 2011, he was killed by U.S. special operations forces at his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.[12][13][14]
A member of the wealthy Bin Laden family, Osama bin Laden was born in Saudi Arabia.[15] His father was Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden, a Saudi millionaire from Hadhramaut, Yemen, and the founder of the construction company, Saudi Binladin Group.[16] His mother, Alia Ghanem, was from a secular middle-class family in Latakia, Syria.[17] He studied at university in the country until 1979, when he joined Mujahideen forces in Pakistan fighting against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. He helped to fund the Mujahideen by funneling arms, money, and fighters from the Arab world into Afghanistan, and gained popularity among many Arabs.[18] In 1988, he formed al-Qaeda.[19] He was banished from Saudi Arabia in 1992, lost his Saudi citizenship in 1994,[15] and shifted his base to Sudan until US pressure forced him to leave in 1996. After establishing a new base in Afghanistan, he declared a war against the United States, launching a series of bombings and related attacks.[20] His involvement in the 1998 US embassy bombings landed him on the American Federal Bureau of Investigation‘s (FBI) lists of Ten Most Wanted Fugitives and Most Wanted Terrorists.[21][22][23]
Bin Laden masterminded the September 11 attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people and led President George W. Bush to invade Afghanistan and launch the “War on Terror“. He became the subject of a decade-long international manhunt, during which the FBI offered a $25 million bounty on him.[24]
A major component of bin Laden’s ideology was the concept that civilians from enemy countries, including women and children, were legitimate targets for jihadists to kill.[63][64] According to former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer, who led the CIA’s hunt for Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader was motivated by a belief that US foreign policy has oppressed, killed, or otherwise harmed Muslims in the Middle East.[65] As such, the threat to US national security arises not from al-Qaeda being offended by what the US is but rather by what the US does, or in the words of Scheuer, “They (al-Qaeda) hate us (Americans) for what we do, not who we are.” Nonetheless, bin Laden criticized the US for its secular form of governance, calling upon Americans to convert to Islam and reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling, and usury, in a letter published in late 2002.[66]
Bin Laden believed that the Islamic world was in crisis and that the complete restoration of Sharia law would be the only way to set things right in the Muslim world. He opposed such alternatives as secular government,[66] as well as pan-Arabism, socialism, communism, and democracy.[67] He subscribed to the Athari (literalist) school of Islamic theology.[68]
These beliefs, in conjunction with violent jihad, have sometimes been called Qutbism after being promoted by Sayyid Qutb.[69] Bin Laden believed that Afghanistan, under the rule of Mullah Omar‘s Taliban, was “the only Islamic country” in the Muslim world.[70] Bin Laden consistently dwelt on the need for violent jihad to right what he believed were injustices against Muslims perpetrated by the United States and sometimes by other non-Muslim states.[71] He also called for the elimination of Israel, and called upon the United States to withdraw all of its civilians and military personnel from the Middle East, as well as from every Islamic country of the world.
Ed Donegan interjects OBL likely viewed the Saudi Royal family as a form puppets of foreign nations.
While OBL wanted Russia out of Afghanistan he wanted Great Brittian and USA out of Saudi Arabia where by proxy they were there in 1902 House of Saud.
Russian Commuint Party would not annex Afghanistan nor British Royals Saudi Arabia Indirect Rule of Queen of England or USA by House of Saud puppets.
Dynastic Successions Book 