Wikileaks humiliates Saudi Arabia

Some 60,000 Saudi cables have been made available via Wikileaks. The Saudis have told their citizens that the documents are faked, but nobody is buying that story. The question you are probably asking is: Do any of these documents shed light on Saudi funding of Al Qaeda or ISIS?

The answer: Probably not. However, the NYT (without bothering to mention ISIS or Al Qaeda by name) offers some interesting insights...

Missing from the documents is any evidence of direct Saudi support for militant groups in Syria or elsewhere.

Bruce Riedel, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer now at the Brookings Institution, said that while considerable evidence of such programs exists, they are handled by the kingdom’s intelligence services, and the foreign ministry is often “not in the loop.”

“That allows the Saudis to have plausible deniability and to liaison with other intelligence services aiding the rebels,” he said.

Frankly, I doubt that there would be any documentation for the funding of ISIS or Al Qaeda. Why put such a thing on paper?

In related news: A son of Osama Bin Laden asked for his father's death certificate. The US won't provide one, even though they have had plenty of time to cobble one together. The government claims, in a letter to the younger Bin Laden, that no death certificate was ever issued: "This is consistent with regular practice for individuals killed in the course of military operations."