What makes this journalists blood worth more than all those murdered in Yemen or the victims of SA's overt or covert terrorism?
Also, they practically took him into their embassy, killed him and then lied about it in the most haphazard way.
That represents a massive break from international status quo. Unfortunately getting involved in third-world civil wars and financing terrorist attacks is quite within the status quo.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition
This is not a massive break from the international status quo by a any means. The USA and all other nations have operated in a similar manner for a long time with equally gruesome outcomes.
If I recall the head of Interpol “disappeared” not long ago, and that little kerfuffle died away right quick.
Perhaps the reasons are more mundane.
1. The Saudis got caught out by the Turks with the evidence. Which has been used effectively. The Turks have a lot to gain by seeing the alliance between SA and the US weakened. 2. The senior leadership of SA can be more directly tied to this incident, as opposed to more common case where plausible deniability exists. Rookie mistake. 3. There exists internal opposition to the leadership in the US and SA that find it convenient to escalate the profile of this issue for their own purposes.
This will blow over and business as usual will resume shortly.
Murdering someone in your embassy (although technically your own sovereign territory) is a new low.
But ... a friend raised an interesting point -- part of the stink around the Russian assassinations in the UK was that they were done on UK territory, and endangered uninvolved UK citizens. The Saudi embassy is Saudi territory. Seems like splitting hairs, but maybe this factored into their decision to do Kashoggi in the embassy.
EDIT> It's just so weird. If you're going to murder someone, you don't invite them over for dinner and do it in your living room, or am I stupid?
Plus there is the "cruel and unusual" aspect. Although the phrase was meant for capricious abuses of power it highlights how evil out of the norm is reacted to more harshly. People are used to shitty things done by militaries and funding violent groups - the definition of a terrorist group had to be very carefully defined to avoid the US being guilty of it themselves under their own laws for instance. Even government assassins don't murder people in their own embassy usually much less so brutally and openly.