In a recent bit of babble to perhaps a dozen in audience, presidential nom and former vice president Joe Biden introduced himself, vaguely scratching his forehead, before following his self-intro with his availability for senator.  Aside from that momentary brain freeze, he said for no reason in particular that the death of Jamal Khashoggi would not go unpunished: "Jamal's death shall not be in vain." 

Jamal Khashoggi was a so-so foreign journalist with the Washington Post with a decided leftward cant, residing in the United States, as we recall.  Affianced to a woman who needed papers to get out of Turkey, Khashoggi was "invited" to get her papers at the Saudi Embassy there.  Khashoggi went into the Saudi embassy, but no camera or observer ever caught him coming out. 

An enormous hue and cry went up, attacking the Saudis for making off, somehow, with the journalist, who had on many occasions written scathingly of the Kingdom and its rulers. 

Investigation subsequently unearthed a team of assassins , "agents," who had arrived days beforehand and apparently chopped up the man, bringing his parts out in suitcases of various gradations thereafter. 

But Khashoggi, even alive, meant little to the government of the United States, nor did he mean much to the House, in particular, for which Biden seemed to be taking especial notice and even umbrage. 

Since the advent of President Trump, and the subsequent abrogation of the JCPOA agreement undertaken by the mullahcracy in concert and under the aegis of prior president Barack Hussein Obama for many billions in specie, and $150 million dollars in cash — all to allay or delay or detain the Shia state from advancing their nuclear program — the chilling of Iran-U.S. relations had gone on apace, as President Trump reversed and indeed mocked the JCPOA agreement that he said took billions and returned...nothing, not even a document signature or solid promise that could be backed up by international weapons scientific observers and periodically verified. 

The death of the journalist, however, was not a pivot point for the United States, for the Saudis, or even all that much for the Washington Post minus one. 

What rabbit trail is Biden scurrying down to threaten, clearly, retribution to the Saudis, now on our "side," and softening in any number of ways with the Trump/Kushner Nobel-nominated architected accords between the UAE and Israel, and Bahrain and Israel — with a weathervane clearly pointing in the direction of additional agreements among the heretofore resistant Arab umma and Israel? 

Is he fanning the flames for an eventual military action against our now-ally Saudi Arabia?  If so, what for?  What would it profit him, the U.S., or the polity of the country, one way or the other?  All the while, any such action would help deter future peace accords, discourage further peace efforts and marketing issues, and offer yet another rat-maze of soldiery in arms in a foreign habitat. 

As with the oft-asked Supreme Court–packing question, which both Biden and Senator Kamala Harris have deliberately evaded no matter where asked and how couched, what else don't we the people "deserve to know"? 

Where's the "benefit-to-risk" ratio?