After a briefing from CIA director Gina Haspel on Tuesday, Republican senators Lindsey Graham and Bob Corker said they had no doubt that Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman had ordered the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
The United States has been helping Saudi Arabia bomb and starve the Middle East’s poorest country for about three years now. One recent estimate suggests that 85,000 children under 5 years old have already died from malnutrition as a result of Riyadh’s intervention in Yemen’s civil war. If the Saudis’ air strikes and blockade continue, Yemen is poised to face the worst famine that humanity has seen in 100 years, according to the U. N.
Eight months ago, the fact that Saudi Arabia was routinely dropping American-made bombs on Yemeni school buses and hospitals — and in the process of deliberately starving tens of thousands of children to death — was not enough to persuade the Senate that the United States should cease supporting the Saudi campaign. Back then, the upper chamber declined to even allow extended debate on a bill that would have ended such support.
According to ABC News, several senators were so furious about Haspel’s absence, and “unhappy with the administration’s lack of answers and unwavering support for the Saudis despite the murder of Khashoggi,” they decided to green-light debate on withdrawing U.
