Posted on Mar 6, 2020
Pentagon did not do enough to vet foreign military students, DoD intel official tells Congress
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Vetting of foreign students depends heavily on the host nation so yeah I agree with the article's assertion that the Saudi government needs to be held accountable for flushing out the anti-sentiment individuals in their military and government before vouching them as candidates for US programs.
Pentagon did not do enough to vet foreign military students, DoD intel official tells Congress
Posted from militarytimes.comPosted in these groups: 
Saudi Arabia
Terrorism
Saudi Arabia Terrorism
Posted 5 y ago
Responses: 5
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It's difficult to speak of certainty in this issue. I attended flight training alongside some of these students (as well as Germans) pre-9/11, and my sense of it was that even then...the veneer of "trust" seemed pretty thin. Islamic culture is hard for Westerners to understand. From the "horse's mouth", I've heard that among the upper classes of Saudi society, even speaking English, is considered shameful...but it's a "slight" they bear in order to gain access to power through education and networking. I've even heard (true or not) that the concept of jihad (within the context of Wahhabism) is closely tied with the primary religious education of the elites...and therefore an indelible part of their individual psyche. We all know well that Western military training focuses on abstract concepts as well as technical absolutes. "Honor", "courage", "commitment"...these are all "baked in" to the syllabus for producing military leaders, and in our case...pings onto even earlier concepts within our own social framework. It's difficult to "vet" someone when there may very well be an invisible "contract" between sentiment and sensibility.
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LCDR Joshua Gillespie
Cynthia C. - The question of the value of training allies, let alone allies who may be harboring potential foes...is one above my experience and knowledge. I'm sure someone, somewhere, has given that issue much thought. However, I do know that we already send U.S. personnel overseas to train foreign allied personnel...in a minor capacity, that was what I finished out my career doing. However, it's important to consider who these personnel are, and where they're drawn from. I was drawn from volunteer Individual Augmentee programs as a "senior" O-3. At the Naval Air Training Command, instructor duty can be a "shore tour" for aviators and flight officers coming from early active at sea tours (usually around two years). Sometimes (as I understand it), instructors are pulled out of the Fleet Replacement Squadrons. I've even heard of at least one instance of an Aviator going straight from completion of his Advanced training and winging, to being an instructor. The point being, that for many of the potential instructor pool, a 12-24 month tour overseas, training foreign flyers, on their equipment (not ours) might be a hard stretch.
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trump wants to send nuclear technology to Saudi that should informed you why Saudi's are not vetted.
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MAJ James Woods
Cynthia C. All foreign militaries students are vetted but depend heavily on the cooperation of the foreign government.
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MAJ James Woods
Cynthia C. Well I would hope he does. I haven’t observed a president yet in my short lifetime that doesn’t care about our military.
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Cpl Tou Lee Yang
MAJ James Woods - just becasue trump illustrate his patriotism by humping the flag at every photographic opportunity, that doesn't mean he's patriotic. the only thing he's patriotic to is money.
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MAJ James Woods
Cpl Tou Lee Yang - I'm not going to say Trump doesn't care about our men and women in uniform. I think he does. I also think he doesn't respect them or their service. Respect and care (with the little bit of empathy he sometimes shows) are two different things to me.
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