This is the Kator Dilly Podcast for Wednesday, October 17th, 2018.

I'm Caleb Brown.

It's past time for the US to divorce itself from the priorities of Saudi Arabia.

After the likely murder of a well-regarded Washington Post journalist, possibly at the direction

of Saudi officials, Kato's Emma Ashford says it's again a good time to take stock of the U.S.

Saudi relationship.

There are various terms of art that are thrown around with respect to relations between

the U.S. and other countries. The U. the US and Israel have, I think, a special relationship.

U.S. and Britain, I think they also have a special relationship.

What is the term of art that we ought to apply to the relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia?

Well, I think all countries tend to call it the special relationship with the United States.

As someone that grew up in Britain, obviously obviously we tend to think of ours as these special

relationship so it's different but the fact is that those words are pretty meaningless. What actually matters is that the

US and Saudi Arabia have this long-running partnership, call it

partnership, call it an alliance, call it whatever you want. It may or technically not be

an alliance, but the US has had really strong relations with the Saudis going all the way back to World War II.

So with the recent, I mean the guy's dead, we know that much,

Mr. Keshoji, who is employed by a US newspaper, and it seems clear that there may have been some involvement with the Saudi government with his capture and possible torture and possible murder.

So he was a US person, it wasn't a US citizen, as you noted before we started recording, he did have a green card, and he was employed by a major media outlet in the United States.

What do you make of that with respect to the media outlet in the United States.

What do you make of that with respect to the longer standing relationship that the U.S. has with

Saudi Arabia?

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