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House Opens Inquiry Into Proposed US Nuclear Venture In Saudi Arabia (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: President Trump's former national security adviser and other White House officials pushed a venture to bring nuclear power plants to Saudi Arabia over repeated legal and ethical warnings that potential conflicts of interest around the plan could put American security at risk, concluded a new report from House Democrats released on Tuesday. The 24-page report from the House Oversight and Reform Committee outlined actions taken in the early weeks of the Trump administration to secure government backing to have American companies build dozens of nuclear power plants across Saudi Arabia, potentially at the risk of spreading nuclear weapons technology. But House Democrats said there was evidence that as recently as last week, the White House was still considering the proposal.
Claims presented by whistle-blowers and White House documents obtained by the committee show that the company backing the nuclear plan, IP3 International, and its allies in the White House were working so closely that the company sent a draft memo to the former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, to circulate just days after the inauguration. Mr. Flynn had worked on the plan for IP3 during the Trump campaign and transition, the Democrats said, and continued to advocate for it in the White House. Even after Mr. Flynn left the White House in February 2017, officials on the National Security Council pushed ahead, the Democrats said, ignoring advice from the N.S.C.'s ethics counsel and other lawyers to cease all work on the plan because of potentially illegal conflicts. At a March 2017 meeting, a National Security Council aide tried to revive the IP3 plan "so that Jared Kushner can present it to the President for approval," the Democratic report said, a reference to Mr. Trump's son-in-law and top adviser. The draft memo also referenced another close Trump associate, Thomas J. Barrack, who served as chairman of the president's inaugural committee. It said that Mr. Trump had appointed Mr. Barrack as a special representative to implement the plan, which it called "the Middle East Marshall Plan." The memo also directed agencies to support Mr. Barrack's efforts.
Claims presented by whistle-blowers and White House documents obtained by the committee show that the company backing the nuclear plan, IP3 International, and its allies in the White House were working so closely that the company sent a draft memo to the former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, to circulate just days after the inauguration. Mr. Flynn had worked on the plan for IP3 during the Trump campaign and transition, the Democrats said, and continued to advocate for it in the White House. Even after Mr. Flynn left the White House in February 2017, officials on the National Security Council pushed ahead, the Democrats said, ignoring advice from the N.S.C.'s ethics counsel and other lawyers to cease all work on the plan because of potentially illegal conflicts. At a March 2017 meeting, a National Security Council aide tried to revive the IP3 plan "so that Jared Kushner can present it to the President for approval," the Democratic report said, a reference to Mr. Trump's son-in-law and top adviser. The draft memo also referenced another close Trump associate, Thomas J. Barrack, who served as chairman of the president's inaugural committee. It said that Mr. Trump had appointed Mr. Barrack as a special representative to implement the plan, which it called "the Middle East Marshall Plan." The memo also directed agencies to support Mr. Barrack's efforts.
Aluminium and Steel from Canada? National Security Risk.
Wahhabi Nuclear? Potential profit!
Literally nothing. He's giving nuclear technology to a nation that hates Israel and funds and supplies terrorists.
They still 100% support him unconditionally.
Bush gave the Saudis weapons, Obama gave the Saudis a TON of weapons. After all that some power plants seem pretty tame.
Not that I support this nonsense. We shouldn't be doing ANY business with the Saudis while they're carrying out a genocide in Yemen.
Here's the truth: the current logic of Trump and company is to accuse very loudly "the other side" of precisely the crimes they're engaged in. This is intended to later muddy the waters, to issue call backs to "why weren't *they* investigated?", and generally underplay the outrage by making it something the public has felt for years and felt frustrated because nothing was done against "those" people. Having said all that, I wonder how pizza-gate will turn out.
Saudi Arabia gets 90%+ of their electricity from oil and natural gas. To make a profit on oil they have to export it, not burn it locally. To stop burning it for electricity they need something to replace it. They may be building lots of solar but they are also building nuclear. It seems they plan to build far more nuclear than solar. If solar power cannot support Saudi Arabia then it's not likely to work anywhere else either. Their lack of faith in solar power should concern us all.
A citation:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.