If We Are Known by the Company We Keep, Why Are We Keeping Company with Thugs and Butchers?

By "thugs and butchers" I'm referring to the House of Saud and the detritus of princes and sheikhs of the other Gulf States at whose behest we in the West keep getting mired in ground and air wars against the little Sunni hellions they keep spawning.

These jackasses are depraved thugs and butchers. Take the Saudis who practice a form of radical Sunni Islamism that's shared with outfits like al Qaeda and the even bloodier Islamic State.  We know from Hillary Clinton's state department cables, duly leaked and published by WikiLeaks, that the US was well aware that ISIS was a Saudi initiative.  Which goes a long way to explaining why, while we're over there playing aerial "whack-a-mole" with ISIS, Saudi jets are screaming over Yemen bombing Houthi rebels who are actually fiercely fighting both ISIS and al Qaeda forces.

Then there's the beheading business that really offended Western sensibilities when conducted by ISIS insurgents but not so much when directed by our Saudi allies. The Saudis like to execute their condemned in public and they're doing it roughly every other day. Half of those are executed for drug offences which, by simple math, means the Saudis execute someone for drug offences about every four days.

One thing about those Saudis is they're unbelievably tough on drugs. Zero tolerance. Capital punishment - by scimitar blows to the neck in the public square. Unless...

Unless you're a member in good standing of the House of Saud. Then, to borrow a Jim Jeffries line, you can "take drugs like a champion" and it's all okay, even if you're caught.

Saudi prince Abdel Mohsen bin Walid bin Abdulaziz was caught in an airport in Lebanon on Monday with over two tons of drugs.

Lebanese security found 40 suitcases full of more than 4,000 pounds of amphetamine pills and cocaine on the prince’s private plane, which was on its way to Saudi capital city Riyadh. A security source told AFP that this was the largest smuggling operation ever foiled by Beirut International Airport security.

And prince Abdel Abdulaziz? He caught the next flight back to the sanctuary of Riyadh. Word is he might have gotten a scolding - nah!

Mere days before he was caught in Lebanon, female staffers at a Beverly Hills mansion filed a lawsuit against another Saudi prince, Majid bin Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, accusing him of sexually abusing them and using illegal drugs. Staffers say the prince, who was doing cocaine and heavily drinking — another illegal activity in Saudi Arabia — ordered them all to strip naked, while uttering “I am a prince and I do what I want.” They also say the prince engaged in homosexual sex, which is punishable by death in the Saudi regime.

The Saudi royal family is infamous for its decadence. These two recent cases are not isolated. WikiLeaks cables show that Saudi princes regularly throw opulent parties inundated with alcohol, drugs, and sex, while the totalitarian religious police turn a blind eye to their felonious activities.

It's funny how we like to cast a stinkeye at Shiite Iran and yet the Shia had nothing to do with the embassy bombings, the attack on the USS Cole, the first World Trade Center bombing, the 9/11 bombings of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, al Qaeda, al Nusra and ISIS. Those are all on the Sunni side of the ledger and they all link back to the Saudis, the Kuwaitis and the other Gulf States. This is all the handiwork of our allies. 

Christ, no wonder we're furious with Iran. Those underhanded, deceptive buggers didn't do any of this - but I'll bet you they would have if they could have only wanted to but I suppose they couldn't be bothered. Oh well. We've stopped the Shiites from getting nuclear weapons, what a relief! That reminds me, there is a Muslim country with nukes, scads of them. It's the Sunni Muslim nation of Pakistan.