I've always been deeply uncomfortable with our close ties to Saudi

Al Qaeda was significantly funded from Saudi. Saudi promotes an extreme form of Islam - Wahhabism - on which Daesh's ideology is founded.

We are told that they're our friends and they warn us of attacks that might affect us. We sell them significant amounts of armaments, look the other way when they bribe their way to contracts, ignore their human rights record and do everything we can to stay chums with them.

I simply don't get it. I'm sure we develop useful intelligence from them, but from their perspective, we clearly don't matter enough that they'd, you know, not fund this s**t any more. Maybe the Paris attacks wouldn't have happened in London because we'd have been tipped off. I can only hope that's a calculation - protect British lives, but let's not worry too much about the French - that hasn't happened.

One way or another, we're at war with Daesh. Saudi promotes the ideology of our enemy and acts counter to anything that could remotely be called our value system. So how come we're still their friends?

Posted By: Old Man, Feb 28, 15:03:36