READING JAMIE GLAZOV'S JIHADIST PSYCHOPATH
January 10, 2019
Here's a chance to sit back, relax, sip some apple cider on a cold winter night and launch a deep dive into the psyche of the Islamic Jihadist as he is masterfully described in Jamie Glazov's new book, Jihadist Psychopath: How He Is Charming, Seducing, and Devouring Us.
January 10, 2019
Here's a chance to sit back, relax, sip some apple cider on a cold winter night and launch a deep dive into the psyche of the Islamic Jihadist as he is masterfully described in Jamie Glazov's new book, Jihadist Psychopath: How He Is Charming, Seducing, and Devouring Us.
ABOUT DANIEL GREENFIELD
SWAMP KEEPER TRUMP’S BIGGEST DEAL EVER:
Saving the 9-11 invading Saudis’ arses!
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/11/mike-lee-swamp-keeper-trump-and-his.html
"I doubt that
Trump understands -- or cares about -- what message he's sending. Wealthy
Saudis, including members of the extended royal family, have been his patrons
for years, buying his distressed properties when he needed money.
“The Wahhabis finance thousands of madrassahs
throughout the world where young boys are brainwashed into becoming fanatical
foot-soldiers for the petrodollar-flush Saudis and other emirs of the Persian
Gulf.” AMIL IMANI
I
recommend that Ignatius read Raymond Ibrahim's outstanding book Sword
and Scimitar, which
contains accounts of dynastic succession in the Muslim monarchies of the Middle
East, where standard operating procedure for a new monarch on the death of his
father was to strangle all his brothers. Yes, it's
awful. But it has been happening for a very long
time. And it's not going to change quickly, no matter how outraged
we pretend to be. MONICA SHOWALTER
*
“You saved my a rse again and again… So, I’ll save yours like Bush and
Obama did!
WHO IS FINANCING ALL THE TRUMP AND SON-IN-LAW’S
REFINANCING SCAMS???
FOLLOW THE MONEY!
"I doubt that
Trump understands -- or cares about -- what message he's sending. Wealthy
Saudis, including members of the extended royal family, have been his patrons
for years, buying his distressed properties when he needed money. In the early
1990s, a Saudi prince purchased Trump's flashy yacht so that the
then-struggling businessman could come up with cash to stave off personal
bankruptcy, and later, the prince bought a share of the Plaza Hotel, one of
Trump's many business deals gone bad. Trump also sold an entire floor of his
landmark Trump Tower condominium to the Saudi government in 2001."
“The Wahhabis finance thousands of madrassahs
throughout the world where young boys are brainwashed into becoming fanatical
foot-soldiers for the petrodollar-flush Saudis and other emirs of the Persian
Gulf.” AMIL IMANI
“The tentacles of the Islamist hydra have deeply
penetrated the world. The Egyptian-based Muslim Brotherhood poses a clear
threat in Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood also wages its deadly campaign through
its dozens of well-established and functioning branches all over the world.”
*
“The Wahhabis
finance thousands of madrassahs throughout the world where young boys are
brainwashed into becoming fanatical foot-soldiers for the petrodollar-flush
Saudis and other emirs of the Persian Gulf.” AMIL IMANI
* We
will take advantage of their immigration policy to infiltrate them.
* We
will use their own welfare system to provide us with food, housing, schooling,
and health care, while we out breed them and plot against them. We will
Caliphate on their dime.
* We
will use political correctness as a weapon. Anyone who criticizes us, we will
take the opportunity to grandstand and curry favor from the media and Democrats
and loudly accuse our critics of being an Islamophobe.
* We
will use their own discrimination laws against them and slowly introduce Sharia
Law into their culture..
ONLY THE OBOMBS AND
GRIFTERS HILLARY AND BILLARY HAVE LOOTED THE COUNTRY AS MUCH AS THE BUSH CRIME
FAMILY!
The perilous ramifications of the September 11 attacks on the
United States are only now beginning to unfold. They will undoubtedly be felt
for generations to come. This is one of many sad conclusions readers will draw
from Craig Unger's exceptional book House of Bush House of Saud: The Secret Relationship
Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties. As Unger claims in this incisive study, the seeds for the
"Age of Terrorism" and September 11 were planted nearly 30 years ago
in what, at the time, appeared to be savvy business transactions that
subsequently translated into political currency and the union between the Saudi
royal family and the extended political family of George H. W. Bush.
Six killed in “preemptive” security operation in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province
The bloody siege by security forces of a village in the coastal Qatif region of Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province has left at least six people dead and a number of others wounded.
The assault, described by Saudi officials as a “preemptive” security operation, saw heavily armed troops storm the village of Al-Jish after surrounding it for 15 hours. The Saudi regime claimed that the operation was aimed at capturing “terrorists” and that those killed had been given a chance to surrender but died in an “exchange of fire.”
No credibility whatsoever can be given to this official story from a monarchical dictatorship that describes anyone who opposes its rule or dares to insult the Saudi king or the country’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, as a “terrorist,” whose offenses are punishable by beheading.
The Eastern Province, where the siege took place, has been the scene of continuous repression by the Saudi regime since 2011, when demonstrations broke out among the area’s Shia population demanding democratic rights and an end to the systemic discrimination exercised by the monarchy, whose rule is bound up with the official, state-sponsored religious doctrine of Wahhabism, an ultra-conservative Sunni sect.
The leader of the 2011 protests, the Shia cleric Nimr al-Nimr, who called for an end to the monarchy, was executed in January 2016, along with 46 others on charges of “terrorism.” Forty-three were beheaded, and four were shot to death by firing squads.
The brutal repression has left the region, which is a center of Saudi Arabia’s oil industry, but whose population is the poorest in the country, seething. Sporadic demonstrations have continued, even as the Saudi regime maintains what amounts to a military occupation.
In 2017, dozens were killed in protests over the regime’s decision to raze the historic Musawara district in Awamiyah, which had been al-Nimr’s hometown. Some 30,000 people fled the town to escape the state terror. The pounding of Awamiyah into rubble was executed shortly after Crown Prince bin Salman took the reins of power.
The Saudi regime has continued to carry out arrests, imprisonment and executions of Shia prisoners convicted in rigged trials. Among those on the Saudi death row, threatened with beheading, is Isra al-Ghomgham and her husband, Moussa al-Hashem, along with three others, who were convicted under Saudi Arabia’s notorious 2017 “counter-terrorism” law of the “crimes” of peacefully protesting against the dictatorship, chanting anti-regime slogans and posting videos of the protests on social media.
Al-Ghomgham would be the first woman to be executed for political opposition. Saudi Arabia has put many other women to death for other offenses, including adultery, for which women are routinely stoned.
The latest state violence in the Eastern Province came as US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was conducting his eight-nation tour of the Middle East aimed at shoring up Washington’s anti-Iranian axis in the wake of President Donald Trump’s announcement of a planned Syria troop withdrawal, whose timetable has become ever vaguer amid suggestions that US forces could stay on indefinitely.
Saudi Arabia, one of Pompeo’s scheduled stops, is the linchpin of this axis, along with the other Sunni oil sheikdoms of the Persian Gulf.
The repression in the Eastern Province is bound up with Saudi Arabia’s regional role in promoting war against Iran along with terrorism and violence against non-Sunni populations. Among the motives for the US-backed Saudi war against Yemen, pitting the region’s richest nation against its poorest, is the fear that the rise of the Houthi rebels, who follow an offshoot of Shiism, could inspire a revolt by the impoverished working class Shia population.
Unable to achieve its objectives in Yemen, despite a savage war that has claimed the lives of at least 60,000 people and brought two-thirds of the population to the brink of starvation, the Saudi monarchy has also proven incapable of suppressing social unrest in the Eastern District and elsewhere.
Meanwhile, Riyadh is going through the motions of a trial of 15 state officials charged with carrying out the gruesome murder and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi, a journalist and former regime insider, at the country’s Istanbul consulate on October 2.
Not on trial is Crown Prince bin Salman, whom the CIA has declared with “high confidence” ordered the murder of Khashoggi. Also in doubt is the status of his senior advisor, Saud al-Qahtani, who reportedly participated in the abduction, torture and murder of Khashoggi via a Skype connection between Riyadh and the Istanbul consulate. Turkish intelligence reported that he had instructed the 15-member assassination team sent to Istanbul: “Bring me the head of the dog.”
During the course of the assassination, bin Salman sent at least 11 messages to al-Qahtani. The leader of the assassination team was recorded by Turkish intelligence as telling Qahtani, “tell your boss” that the job had been completed.
Qahtani has been reported sighted in various parts of Saudi Arabia and is apparently not being detained or being brought into the Saudi court. His prosecution would only point to bin Salman’s role as the chief instigator of the murder.
In a conference call with the media, a senior US State Department official said that the Trump administration was “pleased” to see the beginning of the trial of the alleged Khashoggi assassins but added that the legal process had not yet “hit that threshold of credibility and accountability.”
How such a “threshold” could be reached without the indictment of bin Salman, Trump’s closest ally in the Arab world, is unclear, to say the least.
While the brazenness of the Khashoggi assassination triggered a brief wave of protest within the US political establishment and the media—including a Timemagazine cover—the issue has now been largely dropped.
Both of the major US capitalist parties support the continuation of the alliance between US imperialism and the House of Saud, which has been the axis of counterrevolution in the Middle East for over seven decades.
Despite the passage of largely symbolic resolutions in the US Senate last month condemning bin Salman for the murder of Khashoggi and calling for an end to US support for the near-genocidal Saudi war against Yemen, Washington’s support for Riyadh continues unabated.
Under a deal approved by the State Department last month, nearly $200 million worth of upgrades to Saudi Arabia’s missile defense systems are being carried out by American military contractors.
Meanwhile, the weapons used in the repression of oppressed workers in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern District are largely supplied by the US, while the special operation troops that carry it out are trained and advised by the US military.
Australians Hold Topless Protest in Support of Ex-Muslim Saudi Runaway
3:27
SYDNEY (AP) — Four women held a topless protest in Sydney on Thursday to support runaway Saudi woman Rahaf Mohammed Alqunun, as Australia began considering her bid to settle in the country as a refugee.
Alqunun was on Wednesday deemed a refugee by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, after being detained in Bangkok en route to Australia. The 18-year-old publicized her case via social media after barricading herself in her Bangkok hotel room, saying she feared for her safety if sent back to her family in Saudi Arabia.
In downtown Sydney on Thursday morning, four women, dressed only in jeans and calling themselves the Secret Sisterhood, protested outside the building housing the Saudi Consulate, calling on Australia to grant Alqunun residency.
With “Secret Sisterhood” written on their backs, the women held placards with messages including “Let her in,” ″Rahaf Sisterhood Hero” and “All women free + safe.”
Secret Sisterhood founder Jacquie Love said the protest was held to urge the Australian government to recognize Alqunun’s plight, and that of oppressed women everywhere.
“We are here to encourage them to let her in,” Love said. “She’s been recognized by the U.N. as a refugee so we believe the Australian government needs to step up, recognize her plight and recognize what she’s gone through, and she could be an icon for the rest of the world that women shouldn’t be oppressed and they should be fleeing countries that they are oppressed in.”
“We decided to go topless because we believe all women should be able to express themselves freely and safely and we wanted to send a message to Rahaf that we can actually do that in Australia, that women can actually be free and safe,” Love said.
Secret Sisterhood has also set up a GoFundMe account, which had raised $2,290 dollars for Alqunun by Thursday morning.
Alqunun’s case has highlighted the cause of women’s rights in Saudi Arabia. Several female Saudis fleeing abuse by their families have been caught trying to seek asylum abroad in recent years and returned home. Human rights activists say many more similar cases will have gone unreported.
After mounting a campaign for assistance on Twitter from her Bangkok airport hotel, Alqunun was allowed to temporarily stay in Thailand under the care of the U.N. refugee agency, which ruled her claim for asylum valid and referred her case to Australia. Following that decision, Australia’s Home Affairs Department said it would “consider this referral in the usual way, as it does with all UNHCR referrals.”
Alqunun’s father arrived in Bangkok on Tuesday, but his daughter refused to meet with him.
Thailand’s Immigration Police chief Lt. Gen. Surachate Hakparn said the father — whose name has not been released — denied physically abusing Alqunun or trying to force her into an arranged marriage, which were among the reasons she gave for her flight.
Surachate said Alqunun’s father wanted his daughter back but respected her decision. Surachate described the father as being a governor in Saudi Arabia.
“He has 10 children. He said the daughter might feel neglected sometimes,” Surachate said. “But he didn’t go into detail.”
Before the U.N. agency’s decision to refer her case to Australia, the country’s Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton said there would be no “special treatment” for her.
However, Health Minister Greg Hunt, also speaking before the U.N.’s decision, said: “If she is found to be a refugee, then we will give very, very, very serious consideration to a humanitarian visa.”
Double Standard: Only
Obama Can Obliterate His Own Citizens
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/12/double_standard_only_obama_can_obliterate_his_own_citizens.html
Seven Facts About Jamal Khashoggi’s Life, Writing, and Politics
Washington
Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi became a
figure of global importance when he disappeared on October 2 after visiting the
Saudi consulate in Istanbul, leading to allegations that agents from Saudi
Arabia lured him to the consulate so they could murder him.
HILLARY CLINTON'S VERY PROFITABLE
CONNECTION TO THE SAUDI TERRORIST DICTATORSHIP
THE CRIME WAVE THAT IS THE BU$H FAMILY STARTED TWO WARS AGAINST IRAQ ON BEHALF OF THEIR SAUDI PAYMASTERS.
FBI holds 80,000 pages
of secret documents on Saudi-9/11 links
By Patrick
Martin
By Jean Shaoul
House
of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most
Powerful Dynasties Paperback – October 5, 2004
Newsbreaking and controversial - an award-winning investigative journalist uncovers the thirty-year relationship between the Bush family and the House of Saud and explains its impact on American foreign policy, business, and national security. House of Bush, House of Saud begins with a politically explosive question: How is it that two days after 9/11, when U.S. air traffic was tightly restricted, 140 Saudis, many immediate kin to Osama Bin Laden, were permitted to leave the country without being questioned by U.S. intelligence? The answer lies in a hidden relationship that began in the 1970s, when the oil-rich House of Saud began courting American politicians in a bid for military protection, influence, and investment opportunity. With the Bush family, the Saudis hit a gusher - direct access to presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W.Bush. To trace the amazing weave of Saud- Bush connections, Unger interviewed three former directors of the CIA, top Saudi and Israeli intelligence officials, and more than one hundred other sources. His access to major players is unparalleled and often exclusive - including executives at the Carlyle Group, the giant investment firm where
the House of Bush and the House of Saud each
has a major stake. Like Bob Woodward's The Veil, Unger's House of Bush, House of Saud features unprecedented reportage; like Michael Moore's Dude, Where's My Country? Unger's book offers a political counter-narrative to official explanations; this deeply sourced account has already been cited by Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Charles Schumer, and sets 9/11, the two Gulf Wars, and the ongoing Middle East crisis in a new context: What really happened when America's most powerful political family became seduced
The perilous ramifications of the September 11 attacks on the United States are only now beginning to unfold. They will undoubtedly be felt for generations to come. This is one of many sad conclusions readers will draw from Craig Unger's exceptional book House of Bush House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties. As Unger claims in this incisive study, the seeds for the "Age of Terrorism" and September 11 were planted nearly 30 years ago in what, at the time, appeared to be savvy business transactions that subsequently translated into political currency and the union between the Saudi royal family and the extended political family of George H. W. Bush. On the surface, the claim may appear to be politically driven, but as Unger (a respected investigative journalist and editor) probes--with scores of documents and sources--the political tenor of the U.S. over the last 30 years, the Iran-Iraq War, the war in Afghanistan, the birth of Al Qaeda, the dubious connection between members of the Saudi Royal family and the exportation of terror, and the personal fortunes amassed by the Bush family from companies such as Harken Energy and the Carlyle Group, he exposes the "brilliantly hidden agendas and purposefully murky corporate relationships" between these astonishingly powerful families. His evidence is persuasive and reveals a devastating story of Orwellian proportions, replete with political deception, shifting allegiances, and lethal global consequences. Unger begins his book with the remarkable story of the repatriation of 140 Saudis directly following the September 11 attacks. He ends where Richard A. Clarke begins, questioning the efficacy of the war in Iraq in the battle against terrorism. We are unquestionably facing a global security crisis unlike any before. President Bush insists that we will prevail, yet as Unger so effectively concludes, "Never before has an American president been so closely tied to a foreign power that harbors and supports our country's mortal enemies." --Silvana Tropea --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
In this potentially explosive book, investigative journalist Unger, who has written for the New Yorker, Esquire and Vanity Fair, pieces together the highly unusual and close personal and financial relationships between the Bush family and the ruling family of Saudi Arabia—and questions the implications for Bush's preparedness, or possible lack thereof, for September 11. What could forge such an unlikely alliance between the leader of the free world and the leaders of a stifling Islamic theocracy? First and foremost, according to Unger, is money. He compiles figures in an appendix indicating over $1.4 billion worth of business between the Saudi royal family and businesses tied (sometimes loosely) to the House of Bush, ranging from donations to the Bush presidential library to investments with the Carlyle Group ("a well-known player in global commerce" for which George H.W. Bush has been a senior advisor and his secretary of state, James Baker, is a partner), to deals with Halliburton, of which Dick Cheney was CEO. James Baker’s law firm even defended the House of Saud in a lawsuit brought by relatives of victims of September 11. Unger also questions whether the Bush grew so complacent about the Saudis that his administration ignored then White House terrorism czar Richard Clarke’s repeated warnings and recommendations about the Saudis and al-Qaeda. Another question raised by Unger’s research is whether millions in Saudi money given to U.S. Muslim groups may have delivered a crucial block of Muslim votes to George W. Bush in 2000—and it’s questions like that will make some readers wonder whether Unger is applying a chainsaw to issues that should be dissected with a scalpel. But whether one buys Unger’s arguments or not, there’s little doubt that with this intensely researched, well-written book he has poured more flame onto the political fires of 2004.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Double Standard: Only
Obama Can Obliterate His Own Citizens
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/12/double_standard_only_obama_can_obliterate_his_own_citizens.html
Anwar
al-Awlaki was an American citizen who chose to advocate terrorism and built a
career on orchestrating activities intended to weaken, injure, and ultimately
overthrow the government of the United States. He was a member of
numerous subversive groups, dating back to his college days. He was
an avowed Islamist, who pledged to do all in his power to subjugate the world,
and everyone in it, under Islam, by any means necessary.
As
an able propagandist, Awlaki became a valuable recruiter for terror
groups. By any objective measure, the man was an enemy of his own
nation. Awlaki was a fiery Islamic preacher. His words
were unreservedly anti-American. They inflamed Islamic passions. Awlaki
wielded words as weapons.
He
met his demise in 2011, on the receiving end of an American drone strike in
Yemen ordered by then-president Barack Obama. That strike also
killed Awlaki's American-born 16-year-old son.
While
there were a few bleats and squawks from various civil libertarians on the left
and right over the assassination of not one, but two American citizens without
due process of law, the issue grew stale quickly as the media sensed that their
favorite son (Obama) might be harmed politically with further reporting.
Fast-forward
to the present day, and while keeping the circumstances of Awlaki's death in
the forefront of your mind, ask yourself why so many on both sides of the aisle
are now exercised over Saudi Arabia allegedly doing the exact same thing to a
Saudi national, Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi national guilty of every crime (and a
few more!) for which Awlaki paid with his life.
There
is little reason to mourn the deaths of Khashoggi and Awlaki, as both surely
understood the risk inherent in attempting to bring down the governments of
their respective nations. The two scenarios are, in nearly all
aspects, identical.
Khashoggi
was Muslim Brotherhood. Not only did he belong to groups committed
to overthrowing the House of Saud, but he founded two of them
himself. He was a proud friend of Osama bin Laden, even taking up
arms and fighting alongside bin Laden in his younger days. He was as
committed an Islamic supremacist as Awlaki. Khashoggi's diatribes
were instrumental in sparking and sustaining the Muslim Brotherhood-led
uprisings collectively known as the "Arab Spring," which was not the
grassroots demand for democracy the Obama administration and the media claimed,
but rather a series of coups to replace secular-minded leaders with Islamist
theocrats who shared the ideology of the Brotherhood.
In
Khashoggi's posthumously published final article in the Washington Post, he
wrote: "The Arab world was ripe with hope during the spring of 2011,"
echoing verbatim the tape-recorded words of al-Qaeda founder Osama Bin Laden,
praising the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, and speaking
of a "rare historic opportunity" for Muslims to rise
up. Throughout Khashoggi's career, his words and those of bin Laden
were largely indistinguishable in sentiment, purpose, and vitriol toward the
West.
More
recently, Khashoggi became incensed over the progressive direction taken by
Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince bin Salman regarding the social strictures of Islam
and the role of Islam in government. For the first time since the
founding of the kingdom one hundred years ago, Islam in Saudi Arabia has been
removed from its favored perch in the affairs of government. No
longer willing to accept a Middle East where the only exports are oil and terrorism,
MBS has taken concrete steps to enforce a growing separation of church and
state in his nation, has arrested and prosecuted those wealthy patrons of
terrorism among Saudi society, and has initiated diplomatic overtures to Israel
and the West.
MBS
is the embodiment of everything the Muslim Brotherhood despises, and his
continued rule in Saudi Arabia means the continued decline of the Brotherhood
and its influence. Khashoggi knew it. The Muslim Brotherhood knew
it. Most of all, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia knew it.
Did
bin Salman consider Khashoggi a threat to the throne, as the media and
political pundits claim? There is little evidence for
this. There are no elections in Saudi Arabia, so MBS couldn't have
worried about Khashoggi mounting a political campaign to win
control. Khashoggi's influence in the Middle East had been greatly
diminished with the failure of the Arab Spring, reducing his readership to
boutique status, no longer capable of fomenting major shifts of opinion.
If
the crown prince did indeed order his death, it likely wasn't for the reasons
Western media are reporting, but more likely due to his backdoor facilitation
of continued terror funding of Saudi origin through his so-called
democracy-building organizations. Khasoggi was a dangerous Islamic
ideologue whose employment as a "journalist" with the Washington Post
gave him a hyper-magnified platform for his radical Islamic thoughts and the
perfect patina of legitimacy to conceal his more nefarious activities.
Due
almost exclusively to the efforts of the Muslim Brotherhood in America, Islamic
ideology here in the U.S. is alive, well, and thriving. A federal
judge recently ruled that it is unconstitutional to prevent female genital
mutilation of girls as young as five, ruling that authorities have no
constitutional basis for interfering in that Islamic rite.
The
elevation of Islam above all other religions by criminalizing criticism of it
remains a shining beacon for Muslim activists and the groups to which they
belong. The international Muslim Brotherhood is not a fantastical
concoction of Arab-phobic morons, but is an active and powerful organization
that has been committed to civilizational jihad for the better part of a
century.
They
operate through front groups masquerading as civil rights organizations, and
the unwillingness of responsible authorities to investigate and dismantle these
Islamic Trojan horses does not constitute evidence of their innocence, but is
indicative of their mastery of propaganda and "lawfare," using our
open system against us. This is the arena where Khashoggi operated
in plain sight.
We
are in a war with Islamic extremism and the ideology that gave birth to groups
like ISIS and al-Qaeda. President Trump knows that a good
relationship with a progressive Muslim ruler in the Middle East like bin Salman
is key to winning that war. He was wise to make a measured response
to the murder of Khashoggi, eschewing the overreach demanded by his detractors.
Apparently,
either the Post didn't check into the background of this man it publicly mourns
or it wasn't bothered by his lifelong commitment to facilitating Islam's goal
of global dominance.
A
question remains unanswered by those calling for harsh sanction of the young
Saudi ruler: "Why is the U.S. permitted to defend itself by assassinating
a citizen who was a clear and active threat, but the Saudis are not?"
If
we ought to sanction the Saudi crown prince for an order we have no firm
evidence was given, then we certainly ought to revisit Obama's well documented
order and apply the same standard.
Dr. Christian is the executive director of the Global Faith
Institute and invites you to visit www.globafaith.org. Joe Herring
writes from Omaha, Neb.
Congress
overrides Obama veto of bill allowing 9/11 lawsuits
By
Tom Carter
30
September 2016
On
Wednesday, the US Congress overturned President Obama’s veto of legislation
that would permit victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks and their families
to sue Saudi Arabia. Declassified documents released this year confirm the
involvement of Saudi intelligence agents in the funding, organization, and
planning of the attacks—facts which were covered up for years by the Bush and
Obama administrations.
The
vote, 97-1 in the Senate and 348-77 in the House of Representatives, represents
the first and only congressional override of Obama’s presidency. Under the US
Constitution, the president’s veto can be overturned only by a two-thirds
majority vote in both houses of Congress.
The
Obama administration and the military and intelligence agencies, backed by
sections of the media, including the New York Times, have vigorously denounced
the legislation. Obama personally, together with Central Intelligence Agency
director John Brennan, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, and Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford among others, have all publicly opposed
the bill.
In a
letter to Congress opposing the legislation, Obama warned that the bill would
“threaten to erode sovereign principles that protect the United States,
including our U.S. Armed Forces and other officials, overseas.”
In a
lead editorial on Wednesday, the New York Times similarly warned that “if the
bill becomes law, other countries could adopt similar legislation defining
their own exemptions to sovereign immunity. Because no country is more engaged
in the world than the United States—with military bases, drone operations,
intelligence missions and training programs—the Obama administration fears that
Americans could be subject to legal actions abroad.”
In
other words, the bill would set a precedent for families of victims of American
aggression abroad—such as the tens of thousands of victims of “targeted
killings” ordered by Obama personally—to file lawsuits against US war criminal
in their own countries’ courts.
Obama
denounced the vote with unusual warmth on Wednesday. “It's an example of why
sometimes you have to do what's hard. And, frankly, I wish Congress here had
done what's hard,” Obama declared. “If you’re perceived as voting against 9/11
families right before an election, not surprisingly, that's a hard vote for
people to take. But it would have been the right thing to do ... And it was,
you know, basically a political vote.”
“Oh,
what a tangled web we weave,” Sir Walter Scott famously wrote, “When first we
practice to deceive!” As the tangled web of lies surrounding the September 11
attacks continue to unravel, one senses that the American ruling class and its
representatives do not see a clear way out of the dilemma.
Openly
torpedoing the legislation is tantamount to an admission of guilt. Indeed, the
Obama administration, the military and intelligence agencies, and theNew York
Times are publicly working to cover up a crime perpetrated by Al Qaeda and its
backers in Saudi Arabia, which in turn is an ally of the United States. The
mere fact that Obama vetoed this bill constitutes an admission that the US
government is hiding something with respect to the September 11 attacks.
The
alternative, from the standpoint of the American ruling class, is also fraught
with risks. Court proceedings initiated by the families of September 11 victims
will inevitably expose the role played by the Saudi monarchy, an ally of both
Al Qaeda and the United States, in the September 11 attacks. This, in turn,
will highlight long and sordid history of American support for Islamic
fundamentalism in the
Middle
East, which continues to the present day in Syria and Libya.
Perhaps
most dangerously of all, a full public accounting of the roles of Saudi
intelligence agents in the September 11 attacks will once again raise
questions about the role of the American state in the attacks. Why did US
intelligence
agencies
ignore the activities of Saudi agents before the attacks, based on Saudi
Arabia’s supposed status as a US ally?
Why
did the US government deliberately cover up the Saudi connection after the
fact, instead claiming that Afghanistan was a “state sponsor of terrorism” and
that Iraq was developing “weapons of mass destruction?” Why was nobody
prosecuted?
The
New York Times, for its part, simply lied about the evidence of Saudi
complicity. “The legislation is motivated by a belief among the 9/11 families
that Saudi Arabia played a role in the attacks, because 15 of the 19 hijackers,
who were members of Al Qaeda, were Saudis,” the editors wrote. “But the
independent American commission that investigated the attacks found no evidence
that the Saudi government or senior Saudi officials financed the terrorists.”
In
fact, at least two of the hijackers received aid from Omar al-Bayoumi, who was
identified by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a Saudi intelligence agent
with “ties to terrorist elements.” Some of the hijackers were paid for work in
fictitious jobs from companies affiliated with the Saudi Defense Ministry, with
which Al-Bayoumi was in close contact. The night before the attacks, three of
the hijackers stayed at the same hotel as Saleh al-Hussayen, a prominent Saudi
government official.
These
and other facts were confirmed by the infamous 28-page suppressed chapter of
the 2002 report issued by the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community
Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001. After
14 years of stalling, the document was finally released to the public this
summer.
Yet
the New York Times continues to describe the Saudi monarchy, the principal
financier and sponsor of Islamic fundamentalist groups throughout the world, as
“a partner in combating terrorism.”
The
Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, passed Wednesday, is a direct
reaction to these revelations of Saudi complicity in the September 11 attacks,
under pressure from organizations of survivors and families of victims. The law
amends the federal judicial code to allow US courts “to hear cases involving
claims against a foreign state for injuries, death, or damages that occur
inside the United States as a result of. .. an act of terrorism, committed
anywhere by a foreign state or official.”
Although
the bill nowhere names Saudi Arabia, the Saudi government has threatened
massive retaliation, including by moving $750 billion in assets out of
the country before they can be seized in American legal proceedings.
This reaction alone confirms the monarchy’s guilt.
During
Wednesday’s session, many of the statements on the floor of the Senate were
nervous and apprehensive. Casting his vote in favor of the bill, Republican
Senator Bob Corker declared, “I have tremendous concerns about the sovereign
immunity procedures that would be set in place by the countries as a result of
this vote.” More than one legislator noted that if the bill had unintended
consequences, it would be modified or repealed.
The
anxious comments of legislators and the crisscrossing denunciations within the
ruling elite reflect the significance of this controversy for the entire
American political establishment. For 15 years, the American population has
been relentlessly told that the events of September 11, 2001 “changed
everything,” warranting the elimination of democratic rights, the
militarization of the police, renditions, torture, assassinations, totalitarian
levels of spying, death and destruction across the Middle East, and trillions
of dollars of expenditures.
The
collapse of the official version of that day’s events shows that American
politics for 15 years has been based on a lie.
Seven Facts About Jamal Khashoggi’s Life, Writing, and Politics
18 Oct 2018610
12:25
Washington
Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi became a
figure of global importance when he disappeared on October 2 after visiting the
Saudi consulate in Istanbul, leading to allegations that agents from Saudi
Arabia lured him to the consulate so they could murder him.
Khashoggi has a long career as
both a writer and political activist, but accounts of his disappearance usually
refer to him as simply a “journalist.” Following are some details of his
background:
Khashoggi
was a Saudi national and lawful permanent resident of the U.S.: He was born in Medina, Saudi Arabia, 59 years ago and was educated in
Saudi Arabia before traveling to the United States and earning a bachelor’s
degree in business administration from Indiana State University.
According to an article his
Turkish fiancée Hatice Cengiz wrote for the Washington Post a week after his
disappearance, he recently spent a year in “self-imposed exile in the United
States” and planned to divide his time between Washington and Istanbul while he
worked on his career as a writer. Cengiz said Khashoggi had applied for full
U.S. citizenship. At the time of his disappearance, he was a lawful permanent
resident of the United States — in more common parlance, he had a “green card.”
He had
some famous relatives and big connections in the Saudi elite: Jamal Khashoggi’s uncle was
Adnan Khashoggi, the arms dealer of Iran-Contra fame, who diedin 2017 at the age of 81. Adnan Khashoggi was, at one point, the
personal physician to the first monarch of the modern Saudi line, King Ibn
Saud. At the height of his fame, he was widely but incorrectly hailed as the
“richest man in the world.”
Jamal Khashoggi’s
cousin Dodi al-Fayed became posthumously famous as the boyfriend of England’s Princess
Diana, dying along with her in a car crash in 1997.
Khashoggi was at one time a
supporter of the Saudi royal family. According to the UK Independent, last
year he looked up a Saudi expatriate who had been his anti-regime sparring
partner on numerous talking-head shows and said he was wrong to have defended
the monarchy for so long.
In his younger days,
Khashoggi traveled with then-King Abdullah, befriended billionaire investment
mogul Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, and worked as an adviser for Prince Turki
al-Faisal, who served as head of Saudi intelligence and ambassador to the
United States and the United Kingdom. Prince Alwaleed was among the
highest-profile Saudi royals detainedin a hotel during Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s crackdown on
corruption and/or consolidation of power in early 2018.
He had
long experience in media: Khashoggi wrote for numerous publications in Saudi Arabia and the
Middle East, including the Saudi Gazette. He held some of
these positions while largely supportive of the government in Riyadh and others
after he became critical of the leadership.
In 2003, he became editor of a
reform-minded Saudi paper called Al Watan, which fired him only two months later because he published articles and
cartoons critical of senior clerics, who complained to the Interior Ministry
that he was undermining their authority. He returned to Al Watan in
2007 and served as editor for three years, and he resigned after publishing an
opinion piece critical of fundamentalist Salafi Islam.
In 2015, after five years of
planning with Prince Alwaleed, Khashoggi launched the independent Al-Arab News
Channel from Bahrain. It lasted less than 24 hours before the Bahraini
monarchy shut it down supposedly because the network violated Gulf
Cooperation Council media guidelines by airing an interview with an opposition
leader. The Al-Arab News Channel eventually resumed operations but was shut
down permanently in early 2017.
Khashoggi has been a regular
contributor to the Global Opinions section of the Washington Post since
2017.
He
interviewed and traveled with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan: The interview that made
Khashoggi’s career was with Osama bin Laden, who personally invitedthe young journalist to cover resistance against the Soviet
occupation of Afghanistan.
The nature of Khashoggi’s
relationship with bin Laden is one of the most hotly debated aspects of his
complex past. Khashoggi’s admirers say he was simply covering an important
leader in a resistance movement against Soviet imperialism that was, after all,
supported by the United States, and he was disgusted with bin Laden for
mutating the successful mujahideen resistance against the
Russians into the worldwide horror of al-Qaeda.
Khashoggi is said to have
pleaded with bin Laden to turn away from terrorism in the 1990s and, in 2002,
described the 9/11 atrocity as an attack on “the values of tolerance and
coexistence that Islam preaches,” as well as an attack on the World Trade
Center and Pentagon.
“I collapsed crying a while
ago, heartbroken for you,” he wrote to the spirit of Osama bin Laden after the latter was killed
in 2011 by U.S. special forces. “You were beautiful and brave in those
beautiful days in Afghanistan before you surrendered to hatred and passion.”
Khashoggi’s critics see him as either star-struck by the mystique of the Afghan
resistance fighters or much too comfortable with the Islamist goals of al-Qaeda,
breaking with bin Laden primarily because he thought the terrorist leader’s
approach was too aggressive. Khashoggi did not fly out to Afghanistan for a
quick interview with bin Laden; he spent a great deal of time with the founders
of al-Qaeda and could not plausibly have been blind to their emerging ideology.
He was a
member of the Muslim Brotherhood and supports Hamas: A great deal of the
increasingly partisan argument in the U.S. over Khashoggi’s past boils down to
how much credit to give him for apparently changing his mind about people like
Osama bin Laden and organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood.
He unquestionably saw himself as a member of the Brotherhood in his youth; it
was one of the reasons he secured the bin Laden interview. The friendly
interpretation of his history is that he and the Muslim Brotherhood both
changed over time.
Although left-wingers are treating mentions of Khashoggi’s past with the Brotherhood as a
“smear” or “hate crime,” Khashoggi himself wrote in defense of the
organization only a few months ago. He said the U.S. has an unhealthy and
irrational “aversion” to the Muslim Brotherhood, which he portrayed as the true
force of democracy in the Arab world and the only antidote to “authoritarian
and corrupt regimes.”
Khashoggi castigated the United
States for accepting the overthrow of Muslim Brotherhood president Mohammed
Morsi in Egypt and strongly supported “political Islam,” which he saw the
Brotherhood as embodying. In his view, authoritarian regimes desperate to
stifle democracy prodded American policymakers into opposing the Muslim
Brotherhood, allowing them to retain their power and keep corrupt income
streams flowing.
“There can be no political
reform and democracy in any Arab country without accepting that political Islam
is a part of it. A significant number of citizens in any given Arab country
will give their vote to Islamic political parties if some form of democracy is
allowed,” he wrote.
In recent years, Khashoggi has
allegedly supported the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas, presenting its
cause as a battle against sinister Israel that all Arabs are obliged to
support.
The New York Times admitted in a largely admiring October 14 profile that Khashoggi’s
relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood at the time of his disappearance was
“ambiguous.” The overall tenor of the profile was that support for “political
Islam” is not inherently unreasonable and Khashoggi spent the latter decades of
his life making a strong effort to avoid extremism. The term almost invariably
used to describe his beliefs by those favorably disposed to him is “complicated.”
To simplify them somewhat, he
believed in Islamic political supremacy and thought only a properly managed
religious government could be honest, but he appeared aware his preferred
political model could easily slip into the hands of extremists. He was inclined
to support the legitimacy of governments that allowed democratic
representation, even if their duly-enacted policies were repressive by Western
standards, and challenge the legitimacy of those which did not — a comparison
most clear in his writings about Egypt and his native Saudi Arabia.
He was an
implacable critic of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS): Khashoggi’s last few years were
dominated by his antipathy to the government of Saudi Arabia after Mohammed bin
Salman was elevated to Crown Prince.
His work with Prince Turki
al-Faisal and closeness to Prince Alwaleed bin Talal aligned him with a faction
of the royal family he saw as moderates. They lost power and influence with
Crown Prince Mohammed’s rise.
Among other complaints, he saw
the already tenuous freedom of the press in Saudi Arabia disintegrating almost
completely when MBS took power and left Saudi Arabia in 2017 for his safety. “I
was under the risk of either being banned from travel, which would be
suffocating, or being physically arrested, just like many of my colleagues,”
he told the Colombia Journalism Review in March.
Khashoggi saw MBS as paranoid,
obsessed with eliminating all challenges to his power, and more authoritarian
than imposing an ambitious reform agenda on traditionalist Saudi Arabia could
possibly require. As he noted to the Colombia Journalism Review, he
was a longtime supporter of many of the reforms MBS implemented and had been
fired on more than one occasion for advocating them.
Khashoggi
was especially critical of Saudi Arabia’s military intervention in Yemen and the
strange treatment of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, who was effectively
summoned to Saudi Arabia, imprisoned, and forced to resign, precipitating a
regional political crisis. Khashoggi was highly skeptical of the Trump
administration’s embrace of the crown prince and has said he was “ordered silent” by the Saudi monarchy after
criticizing President-Elect Donald Trump shortly after the 2016 election.
He was
politically active: Some of the objections to classifying Khashoggi as simply a
“journalist” concern his ongoing political activism. The Saudi ambassador to
the United States, Prince Khalid bin Salman, said last week that Khashoggi retained many active contacts in
the Kingdom and was still in regular contact with him personally. Prince
Khalid returned to Saudi Arabia shortly after those remarks and evidently
will not return to his post in Washington.
At the time of his
disappearance, Khashoggi was working on launching a non-governmental
organization called Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN). The Daily
Beast described this group’s charter as an expression of Khashoggi’s
Islamist philosophy, offering “a counter-narrative in the Arab world and the
West to Arab Spring skeptics” and endorsing free elections even if they “result
in some governments that are less favorable to U.S. interests.”
The Washington
Post was said to be aware Khashoggi was raising funds for this group
and intended to serve as its leader and was confident he would be fully
“transparent with readers about these efforts as they progressed.”
Former Wall Street Journal publisher
Karen Elliott House speculated DAWN was the reason Saudi
agents may have taken action against Khashoggi, perceiving the organization as
“funded by Saudi regional rivals” and essentially pushing a Muslim Brotherhood
vision of the Arab Spring inimical to the Saudi government.
“Democracy is currently being
slaughtered everywhere. He wanted to alert Western public opinion to the
dangers of remaining silent in the face of the assassination of democracy. The
Muslim Brothers and Islamists were the biggest victims of the foiled Arab
spring,” Khashoggi’s friend Azzam Tamimi told the Associated Press last week.
Tamimi said he and Khashoggi
created a similar organization in 1992 called Friends of Democracy in Algeria,
intended to push back against the government of that country after it nullified
an “imminent Islamist victory” in an election.
The Associated Press forgot to
mention that the thwarted Islamists in that election went on a massive
killing spree that left the streets filled with bloody corpses. The goal of the Islamic Salvation
Front was to turn Algeria into a fundamentalist Islamic republic. Its
descendant organization, the Islamic Salvation Army, is allied with al-Qaeda in
Syria.
Conclusion: The problem with taking the
full measure of Jamal Khashoggi’s writing and political careers is
that everything in the Middle East is “complicated.” Idealistic
organizations are often linked to brutal extremist groups and aspiring
fundamentalist tyrants, with the strength of those links hotly debated by
observers within and beyond the region.
The dimmest view of Khashoggi’s
history is that he was a public-relations man for the Muslim Brotherhood and
perhaps even al-Qaeda; the brightest view is that he truly believed democracy
was more important than almost anything else to Arab nations, the necessary
precursor to all other benevolent reforms, and stable democracy in the Middle
East is impossible without making room for political Islam.
Khashoggi’s view of the Arab
Spring and his plans for a political organization are the mirror image of the
theory that authoritarian means, as practiced by Crown Prince Mohammed bin
Salman, must be employed to impose liberal reforms on Islamist countries in
order to create the cultural conditions necessary for democracy to flourish. If
Khashoggi has been murdered, his death will be the latest bloody milestone in
an ideological battle that is far from over.
Congress overrides
Obama veto of bill allowing 9/11 lawsuits
By Tom Carter
30 September 2016
On Wednesday, the US
Congress overturned President Obama’s veto of legislation that would permit
victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks and their families to sue Saudi
Arabia. Declassified documents released this year confirm the involvement of
Saudi intelligence agents in the funding, organization, and planning of the
attacks—facts which were covered up for years by the Bush and Obama
administrations.
The vote, 97-1 in the Senate and 348-77 in the House of
Representatives, represents the first and only congressional override of
Obama’s presidency. Under the US Constitution, the president’s veto can be
overturned only by a two-thirds majority vote in both houses of Congress.
The Obama administration and the military and intelligence
agencies, backed by sections of the media, including the New York Times, have
vigorously denounced the legislation. Obama personally, together with Central
Intelligence Agency director John Brennan, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, and
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford among others, have all
publicly opposed the bill.
In a letter to Congress opposing the legislation, Obama
warned that the bill would “threaten to erode sovereign principles that protect
the United States, including our U.S. Armed Forces and other officials,
overseas.”
In a lead editorial on Wednesday, the New York Times
similarly warned that “if the bill becomes law, other countries could adopt
similar legislation defining their own exemptions to sovereign immunity.
Because no country is more engaged in the world than the United States—with
military bases, drone operations, intelligence missions and training
programs—the Obama administration fears that Americans could be subject to
legal actions abroad.”
In other words, the bill would set a precedent for families
of victims of American aggression abroad—such as the tens of thousands of
victims of “targeted killings” ordered by Obama personally—to file lawsuits
against US war criminal in their own countries’ courts.
Obama denounced the vote with unusual warmth on Wednesday.
“It's an example of why sometimes you have to do what's hard. And, frankly, I
wish Congress here had done what's hard,” Obama declared. “If you’re perceived
as voting against 9/11 families right before an election, not surprisingly,
that's a hard vote for people to take. But it would have been the right thing
to do ... And it was, you know, basically a political vote.”
“Oh, what a tangled web we weave,” Sir Walter Scott famously
wrote, “When first we practice to deceive!” As the tangled web of lies
surrounding the September 11 attacks continue to unravel, one senses that the
American ruling class and its representatives do not see a clear way out of the
dilemma.
Openly torpedoing the legislation is tantamount to an
admission of guilt. Indeed, the Obama administration, the military and
intelligence agencies, and theNew York Times are publicly working to cover up a
crime perpetrated by Al Qaeda and its backers in Saudi Arabia, which in turn is
an ally of the United States. The mere fact that Obama vetoed this bill
constitutes an admission that the US government is hiding something with
respect to the September 11 attacks.
The alternative, from the standpoint of the American ruling
class, is also fraught with risks. Court proceedings initiated by the families
of September 11 victims will inevitably expose the role played by the Saudi
monarchy, an ally of both Al Qaeda and the United States, in the September 11
attacks. This, in turn, will highlight long and sordid history of American
support for Islamic fundamentalism in the
Middle East, which continues to the present day in Syria and
Libya.
Perhaps most dangerously of all, a full public accounting of the roles of Saudi intelligence agents in the
September 11 attacks will once again
raise questions about the role of the American state in the attacks. Why did US
intelligence
agencies ignore the activities of Saudi agents before the
attacks, based on Saudi Arabia’s supposed status as a US ally?
Why did the US government deliberately cover up the Saudi
connection after the fact, instead claiming that Afghanistan was a “state
sponsor of terrorism” and that Iraq was developing “weapons of mass
destruction?” Why was nobody
prosecuted?
The New York Times, for its part, simply lied about the
evidence of Saudi complicity. “The legislation is motivated by a belief among
the 9/11 families that Saudi Arabia played a role in the attacks, because 15 of
the 19 hijackers, who were members of Al Qaeda, were Saudis,” the editors
wrote. “But the independent American commission that investigated the attacks
found no evidence that the Saudi government or senior Saudi officials financed
the terrorists.”
In fact, at least two of the hijackers received aid from Omar
al-Bayoumi, who was identified by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a
Saudi intelligence agent with “ties to terrorist elements.” Some of the
hijackers were paid for work in fictitious jobs from companies affiliated with
the Saudi Defense Ministry, with which Al-Bayoumi was in close contact. The
night before the attacks, three of the hijackers stayed at the same hotel as
Saleh al-Hussayen, a prominent Saudi government official.
These and other facts were confirmed by the infamous 28-page
suppressed chapter of the 2002 report issued by the Joint Inquiry into
Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of
September 11, 2001. After 14 years of stalling, the document was finally
released to the public this summer.
Yet the New York Times
continues to describe the Saudi monarchy, the principal financier and sponsor
of Islamic fundamentalist groups throughout the world, as “a partner in
combating terrorism.”
The Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, passed
Wednesday, is a direct reaction to these revelations of Saudi complicity in the
September 11 attacks, under pressure from organizations of survivors and
families of victims. The law amends the federal judicial code to allow US
courts “to hear cases involving claims against a foreign state for injuries,
death, or damages that occur inside the United States as a result of. .. an act
of terrorism, committed anywhere by a foreign state or official.”
Although the bill
nowhere names Saudi Arabia, the Saudi government has
threatened massive
retaliation, including by moving $750 billion in assets out of the country before they can be seized in
American legal proceedings. This
reaction alone confirms
the monarchy’s guilt.
During Wednesday’s session, many of the statements on the
floor of the Senate were nervous and apprehensive. Casting his vote in favor of
the bill, Republican Senator Bob Corker declared, “I have tremendous concerns
about the sovereign immunity procedures that would be set in place by the countries
as a result of this vote.” More than one legislator noted that if the bill had
unintended consequences, it would be modified or repealed.
The anxious comments of legislators and the crisscrossing
denunciations within the ruling elite reflect the significance of this
controversy for the entire American political establishment. For 15 years, the
American population has been relentlessly told that the events of September 11,
2001 “changed everything,” warranting the elimination of democratic rights, the
militarization of the police, renditions, torture, assassinations, totalitarian
levels of spying, death and destruction across the Middle East, and trillions
of dollars of expenditures.
The collapse of the official version of that day’s events
shows that American politics for 15 years has been based on a lie.
HILLARY CLINTON'S VERY PROFITABLE
CONNECTION TO THE SAUDI TERRORIST DICTATORSHIP
Can America Ultimately Survive the Crimes of Bush, Clinton and
Obama?
THE CRIME WAVE THAT IS THE BU$H FAMILY STARTED TWO WARS AGAINST IRAQ ON BEHALF OF THEIR SAUDI PAYMASTERS.
The perilous ramifications of the September 11 attacks on the
United States are only now beginning to unfold. They will undoubtedly be felt
for generations to come. This is one of many sad conclusions readers will draw
from Craig Unger's exceptional book House of Bush House of
Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties. As Unger claims
in this incisive study, the seeds for the "Age of Terrorism" and
September 11 were planted nearly 30 years ago in what, at the time, appeared to
be savvy business transactions that subsequently translated into political
currency and the union between the Saudi royal family and the extended
political family of George H. W. Bush. On the surface, the claim may appear to
be politically driven, but as Unger (a respected investigative journalist and
editor) probes--with scores of documents and sources--the political tenor of
the U.S. over the last 30 years, the Iran-Iraq War, the war in Afghanistan, the
birth of Al Qaeda, the dubious connection between members of the Saudi Royal family
and the exportation of terror, and the personal fortunes amassed by the Bush
family from companies such as Harken Energy and the Carlyle Group, he exposes
the "brilliantly hidden agendas and purposefully murky corporate
relationships" between these astonishingly powerful families.His evidence is
persuasive and reveals a devastating story of Orwellian proportions, replete
with political deception, shifting allegiances, and lethal global consequences.
Unger begins his book with the remarkable story of the repatriation of 140
Saudis directly following the September 11 attacks. He ends where Richard A. Clarkebegins, questioning the
efficacy of the war in Iraq in the battle against terrorism. We are
unquestionably facing a global security crisis unlike any before. President
Bush insists that we will prevail, yet as Unger so effectively concludes,
"Never before has an American president been so closely tied to a foreign power
that harbors and supports our country's mortal enemies." --Silvana
Tropea --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition
of this title.
THESE
ENDLESS WARS HAVE COST US BILLIONS OF DOLLARS AND THOUSANDS OF LIVES.... all
because Saddam gave the middle finger to the filthy Saudis!
IT WAS THE SAUDIS THAT INVADED US 9-11 AND ARE THE GLOBAL FINANCIERS OF TERRORISM. IT IS THE BUSH PRESIDENTS, HILLARY AND BILLARY and their little Muslim Obama THAT SHOULD BE TRIED AS TRAITORS FOR DEFENDING A DICTATORSHIP THAT IS ANTI-JEWISH, ANTI-CHRISTIAN and ANTI-AMERICAN!
WHO WILL FUND AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARIES WITH BRIBES IF THE SAUDIS ARE EXECUTED?
WHO WILL PUMP MILLIONS INTO THE PHONY CLINTON FOUNDATION IF THE FILTHY SAUDIS ARE EXECUTED?
AT WHOSE FEET WILL BARACK OBAMA KNEEL AND KISS IF HIS PAYMASTERS, THE FILTHY SAUDIS GO UNDER?
FBI holds 80,000 pages of secret documents on Saudi-9/11 links
IT WAS THE SAUDIS THAT INVADED US 9-11 AND ARE THE GLOBAL FINANCIERS OF TERRORISM. IT IS THE BUSH PRESIDENTS, HILLARY AND BILLARY and their little Muslim Obama THAT SHOULD BE TRIED AS TRAITORS FOR DEFENDING A DICTATORSHIP THAT IS ANTI-JEWISH, ANTI-CHRISTIAN and ANTI-AMERICAN!
WHO WILL FUND AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARIES WITH BRIBES IF THE SAUDIS ARE EXECUTED?
WHO WILL PUMP MILLIONS INTO THE PHONY CLINTON FOUNDATION IF THE FILTHY SAUDIS ARE EXECUTED?
AT WHOSE FEET WILL BARACK OBAMA KNEEL AND KISS IF HIS PAYMASTERS, THE FILTHY SAUDIS GO UNDER?
FBI holds 80,000 pages of secret documents on Saudi-9/11 links
FBI holds 80,000 pages
of secret documents on Saudi-9/11 links
By Patrick
Martin
14 May 2016
The American FBI has a
secret cache of documents, more than 80,000 pages in all, concerning possible
ties between the 9/11 hijackers and an upper-class Saudi family who lived in
Florida and fled the United States two weeks before the suicide hijackings that
killed nearly 3,000 people.
A federal judge in Tampa, Florida has been reviewing the documents for more than two years as a consequence of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by a trio of online reporters—Anthony Summers, Robbyn Swan and Dan Christensen. The review process has been extremely slow because of restrictive FBI rules on how many pages Judge William Zloch may access at any one time.
The existence of the document trove was revealed Friday in a front-page article in the US-based web publication the Daily Beast. The article identified the Saudi family as Abdulaziz al-Hijji and his wife Anoud, who was the daughter of Esam Ghazzawi, an adviser to a nephew of Saudi King Fahd.
Ghazzawi owned the home in which they were staying in a gated community in Sarasota, Florida. The home was raided by the FBI after 9/11 but the residents had all departed in evident haste on August 30, 2001.
Visitor logs in the community, known as Prestancia, showed that the alleged ringleader of the 9/11 hijackers, Mohammad Atta, had visited al-Hijji, along with two other 9/11 hijackers, Ziad Jarrah and Marwan Al-Shehhi.
Former Senator Robert Graham, co-chair of the joint congressional committee that investigated the 9/11 attacks, told the Daily Beast that he had never known of the FBI documents on the Saratoga home until they were uncovered by the investigative journalists. He later viewed a portion of these records and confirmed that they identified the three 9/11 hijackers as visitors.
Throughout this period, the FBI had denied that the al-Hijji family had any connection to the 9/11 attackers. The agency changed its story only when Graham said he would testify under oath about what he had read in the file of documents. At this point the FBI conceded the existence of 35 pages of documents.
When Judge Zloch ordered a further search for records, the Tampa office of the FBI came back with 80,226 pages of files marked PENTTBOM, which stands for “Pentagon/Twin-Towers Bombing” in FBI jargon. Judge Zloch has been reviewing these since May 1, 2014 and has given no date by which he expects to finish.
The al-Hijji family exited its Sarasota home, leaving behind three cars, an open safe and disarray that suggested a hasty departure. The security guards at the gated community noted their departure, but did not consider it suspicious until the 9/11 attacks two weeks later.
The FBI initially made only a perfunctory response and did not open a formal investigation until eight months later, in April 2002, “based upon repeated citizen calls” about the conduct of the family during their stay in the United States. One of the few documents released said that this investigation “revealed many connections” between a member of the family “and individuals associated with the terrorist attacks.”
The Daily Beast report adds to recent revelations of evidence of Saudi regime ties to the 9/11 hijackers that has been covered up by the US government under both the Bush and Obama administrations.
Graham has actively campaigned for the release of 28 pages of material on the Saudi-9/11 connection comprising an entire chapter of the joint congressional committee report on the 9/11 attacks in which he participated. This material has been withheld for more than 13 years. On April 10, Graham was the main witness interviewed by the CBS program “60 Minutes” in a segment on the continuing cover-up of Saudi-9/11 connections.
In an op-ed column this week in the Washington Post, Graham reiterated his demand for release of the 28 pages, noting that President Obama had promised a decision on declassifying the material by next month. Graham denounced CIA Director John Brennan, who responded to the “60 Minutes” program by publicly opposing any release of the 28 pages.
Also Friday, the Guardian newspaper published an interview with a former member of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission appointed by President George W. Bush, who flatly declared that there was extensive Saudi involvement in supporting the hijackers. Of the 19 perpetrators, 15 were Saudi citizens, most of them having recently arrived in the United States when they seized control of four jetliners on September 11, 2001.
Former Navy Secretary John Lehman, a Republican, told the newspaper: “There was an awful lot of participation by Saudi individuals in supporting the hijackers, and some of those people worked in the Saudi government.” While only one Saudi consular official in Los Angeles, Fahad al-Thumairy, was implicated in supporting the hijackers, according to the official account, Lehman believes that at least five officials were involved.
Al-Thumairy was linked to the two hijackers who lived in San Diego before the 9/11 attacks, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, but he was deported rather than charged with a crime. The other five, whom Lehman did not name, “may not have been indicted, but they were certainly implicated. There was an awful lot of circumstantial evidence.”
Another former 9/11 commissioner, who spoke to the Guardian without direct attribution, recounted what the newspaper called “a mostly unknown chapter of the history of the 9/11 commission: behind closed doors, members of the panel’s staff fiercely protested the way the material about the Saudis was presented in the final report, saying it underplayed or ignored evidence that Saudi officials—especially at lower levels of the government—were part of an al-Qaida support network that had been tasked to assist the hijackers after they arrived in the US.”
The 9/11 Commission director, Philip Zelikow, who later served in the Bush administration as senior counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, fired one staffer who protested over the suppression of the Saudi ties to 9/11 after she obtained a copy of the suppressed 28 pages of the joint congressional committee report. Zelikow and the commission members overruled staff protests on the soft-pedaling of the Saudi connection.
These press reports confirm what the World Socialist Web Site has long maintained: the official 9/11 investigations were a series of whitewashes aimed at concealing the role of the Saudi government and US intelligence agencies during the period leading up to the terrorist attacks.
There has long been evidence that sections of the US government were aware of the plot to hijack and suicide-crash airliners, but turned a blind eye because such an atrocity could be used to stampede American public opinion and provide a pretext for escalating US military interventions throughout the Middle East and Central Asia.
Saudi Arabian regime gripped by factional infighting amid mounting economic crisis
A federal judge in Tampa, Florida has been reviewing the documents for more than two years as a consequence of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by a trio of online reporters—Anthony Summers, Robbyn Swan and Dan Christensen. The review process has been extremely slow because of restrictive FBI rules on how many pages Judge William Zloch may access at any one time.
The existence of the document trove was revealed Friday in a front-page article in the US-based web publication the Daily Beast. The article identified the Saudi family as Abdulaziz al-Hijji and his wife Anoud, who was the daughter of Esam Ghazzawi, an adviser to a nephew of Saudi King Fahd.
Ghazzawi owned the home in which they were staying in a gated community in Sarasota, Florida. The home was raided by the FBI after 9/11 but the residents had all departed in evident haste on August 30, 2001.
Visitor logs in the community, known as Prestancia, showed that the alleged ringleader of the 9/11 hijackers, Mohammad Atta, had visited al-Hijji, along with two other 9/11 hijackers, Ziad Jarrah and Marwan Al-Shehhi.
Former Senator Robert Graham, co-chair of the joint congressional committee that investigated the 9/11 attacks, told the Daily Beast that he had never known of the FBI documents on the Saratoga home until they were uncovered by the investigative journalists. He later viewed a portion of these records and confirmed that they identified the three 9/11 hijackers as visitors.
Throughout this period, the FBI had denied that the al-Hijji family had any connection to the 9/11 attackers. The agency changed its story only when Graham said he would testify under oath about what he had read in the file of documents. At this point the FBI conceded the existence of 35 pages of documents.
When Judge Zloch ordered a further search for records, the Tampa office of the FBI came back with 80,226 pages of files marked PENTTBOM, which stands for “Pentagon/Twin-Towers Bombing” in FBI jargon. Judge Zloch has been reviewing these since May 1, 2014 and has given no date by which he expects to finish.
The al-Hijji family exited its Sarasota home, leaving behind three cars, an open safe and disarray that suggested a hasty departure. The security guards at the gated community noted their departure, but did not consider it suspicious until the 9/11 attacks two weeks later.
The FBI initially made only a perfunctory response and did not open a formal investigation until eight months later, in April 2002, “based upon repeated citizen calls” about the conduct of the family during their stay in the United States. One of the few documents released said that this investigation “revealed many connections” between a member of the family “and individuals associated with the terrorist attacks.”
The Daily Beast report adds to recent revelations of evidence of Saudi regime ties to the 9/11 hijackers that has been covered up by the US government under both the Bush and Obama administrations.
Graham has actively campaigned for the release of 28 pages of material on the Saudi-9/11 connection comprising an entire chapter of the joint congressional committee report on the 9/11 attacks in which he participated. This material has been withheld for more than 13 years. On April 10, Graham was the main witness interviewed by the CBS program “60 Minutes” in a segment on the continuing cover-up of Saudi-9/11 connections.
In an op-ed column this week in the Washington Post, Graham reiterated his demand for release of the 28 pages, noting that President Obama had promised a decision on declassifying the material by next month. Graham denounced CIA Director John Brennan, who responded to the “60 Minutes” program by publicly opposing any release of the 28 pages.
Also Friday, the Guardian newspaper published an interview with a former member of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission appointed by President George W. Bush, who flatly declared that there was extensive Saudi involvement in supporting the hijackers. Of the 19 perpetrators, 15 were Saudi citizens, most of them having recently arrived in the United States when they seized control of four jetliners on September 11, 2001.
Former Navy Secretary John Lehman, a Republican, told the newspaper: “There was an awful lot of participation by Saudi individuals in supporting the hijackers, and some of those people worked in the Saudi government.” While only one Saudi consular official in Los Angeles, Fahad al-Thumairy, was implicated in supporting the hijackers, according to the official account, Lehman believes that at least five officials were involved.
Al-Thumairy was linked to the two hijackers who lived in San Diego before the 9/11 attacks, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, but he was deported rather than charged with a crime. The other five, whom Lehman did not name, “may not have been indicted, but they were certainly implicated. There was an awful lot of circumstantial evidence.”
Another former 9/11 commissioner, who spoke to the Guardian without direct attribution, recounted what the newspaper called “a mostly unknown chapter of the history of the 9/11 commission: behind closed doors, members of the panel’s staff fiercely protested the way the material about the Saudis was presented in the final report, saying it underplayed or ignored evidence that Saudi officials—especially at lower levels of the government—were part of an al-Qaida support network that had been tasked to assist the hijackers after they arrived in the US.”
The 9/11 Commission director, Philip Zelikow, who later served in the Bush administration as senior counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, fired one staffer who protested over the suppression of the Saudi ties to 9/11 after she obtained a copy of the suppressed 28 pages of the joint congressional committee report. Zelikow and the commission members overruled staff protests on the soft-pedaling of the Saudi connection.
These press reports confirm what the World Socialist Web Site has long maintained: the official 9/11 investigations were a series of whitewashes aimed at concealing the role of the Saudi government and US intelligence agencies during the period leading up to the terrorist attacks.
There has long been evidence that sections of the US government were aware of the plot to hijack and suicide-crash airliners, but turned a blind eye because such an atrocity could be used to stampede American public opinion and provide a pretext for escalating US military interventions throughout the Middle East and Central Asia.
Saudi Arabian regime gripped by factional infighting amid mounting economic crisis
By Jean Shaoul
13 May 2016
The ruling House of Saud, issued a
series of royal decrees unceremoniously dumping its longstanding oil minister
Ali al-Naimi, central bank governor Fahad al-Mubarak, and other senior
officials.
The wide-ranging shakeup of
government bodies is part of an attempt to resolve the Kingdom’s growing
economic crisis at the expense of the Saudi masses.
The sackings follow the removal last
month of Abdullah al-Hasin, the water and electricity minister, in a bid to
deflect popular anger over high water rates and new rules over the digging of
wells and cuts in energy subsidies aimed at saving the ruling family
collectively in excess of one and a half trillion dollars.
The shake-up is intended to
concentrate power in the clique around Crown Prince Mohammed, the 30-year-old
son of the aging King Salman. It will further exacerbate the enormous
political, economic and social tensions wracking this semi-feudal regime that
has, since 1945, constituted an essential prop for US imperialist policy in the
region and a bulwark of reaction and repression in the Arab world.
The Saudi monarchy, threatened by the
revolutionary overthrow of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and the subsequent
political turmoil that threatened almost every regime in the region, moved
rapidly to topple the elected Muslim Brotherhood-led government of President
Mohammed Mursi, even at the risk of conflicting with Washington, and helped
install and bankroll the brutal military dictator Abdul Fatah el-Sisi to
suppress the Egyptian masses.
It sought—at the cost of tens of
billions of dollars—to move against the Syrian regime of President Bashir
al-Assad in Syria by funding an Islamist insurgency, and to shore up the rule
of its regional allies in Yemen, Bahrain and Jordan. Accompanying its moves in
Syria, it sought to undermine pro-Iranian governments in Iraq and Lebanon,
through direct or covert military interventions, the use of Islamist fighters
as proxies, or economic aid.
Its relations with its chief backer,
US imperialism, are now at an all-time low. Riyadh was furious over
Washington’s failure to sustain its support for Mubarak against the Egyptian
masses in 2011.
The US-led interventions in Iraq and
Syria to assert Washington’s hegemony over the Middle East’s vast energy
resources have destabilised Saudi Arabia’s neighbours. Washington’s various
pragmatic manoeuvres, its failure to intervene decisively in the war to
overthrow Assad in Syria allowing Russia to intervene to shore up the regime,
its deal with Iran and support for the Shi’ite government in Iraq, helped
strengthened the influence of Saudi Arabia’s main regional rival, Tehran.
At home, Riyadh attempted to assuage
popular opposition and protests in the Shia-dominated Eastern Province with a
combination of violent suppression and a $350 billion package of benefits and
social spending, a lifeline for the estimated 28 percent of the population who
live in poverty. Between 2 million and 4 million Saudi citizens are believed to
be living on less than $530 a month. With its thousands of princes, the
parasitic Saudi monarchy deprives its citizens of basic democratic rights It
has sought to ruthlessly suppress public discussion of social inequality,
imprisoning bloggers who dare to raise such issues or criticise the regime.
This attempt at repression is being
undermined by the precipitous fall in oil prices, the result of the Saudis’
political decision to maintain output in an attempt to undermine Russia and
Iran. This has led to a $100 billion government deficit in 2015 (15 per cent of
GDP). The new oil minister Khalid al-Falih is not expected to rein in oil
production and thus boost oil prices because this would also boost the revenues
of Saudi Arabia’s rivals.
With 70 percent of its revenue
dependent on oil, the government has cut public spending for 2016 by 25
percent, slashing subsidies on fuel, power and water, with gas prices set to
increase by 80 percent. It took the unprecedented step of introducing a tax on
Saudi nationals—a 5 percent value added tax—in a bid to prevent the budget
deficit soaring to $140 billion and to conserve its $600 billion in reserves.
Riyadh’s sponsorship of Islamist
forces has led to the advance of ISIS, al-Qaeda and similar outfits with their
own agendas in Saudi Arabia and the Arabian Peninsula. ISIS cells have launched
dozens of attacks over the last two years and were alleged to have been behind
a spate of bombings targeting the Kingdom’s Shia minority.
Last week, Saudi forces carried out
an operation against ISIS in Mecca, killing four “wanted” men in a shootout,
and another in the southwestern province of Bisha, killing two ISIS suspects
and injuring another. It followed the arrest of Ukab Atibi, allegedly a member
of the ISIS cell that carried out a suicide attack on a mosque used by members
of a local security force in southwest Saudi Arabia in August 2015. Security
forces carried out another raid on a house in Jeddah, arresting two suspects.
The ruling clique is torn with
dissent over the succession to the ailing King Salmon, who promoted his
30-year-old son Prince Mohammed bin Salman to the positions of deputy crown
prince and minister of defence in charge of the murderous, but largely
unsuccessful war in Yemen, sidelining other older claimants to the throne.
Mohammed has overturned the Kingdom’s decades-long policy of buying political
quiescence with a social contract that has provided some security—via low
utility prices, social subventions and public sector jobs—for the Saudi
population, and promoted a wave of Sunni-based Saudi nationalism.
Last month, in an announcement that
the Economist described as “manic optimism,” Mohammed
unveiled his Vision 2030, drawn up by the McKinsey & Company global consultants
McKinsey and aimed at ending the Kingdom’s dependence on oil by 2030. He later
declared on Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya news channel an end to
“any dependence on oil” by 2020. The measures include the public listing of 5
percent of Aramco, the world’s largest oil company valued at $2.5 trillion, the
creation of a sovereign wealth fund with a potential value of $2 trillion to
invest in assets, the development of non-oil industries, including a domestic
arms industry; more private sector jobs and a new visa system to allow
expatriate Muslims and Arabs to work long-term in Saudi Arabia.
Symptomatic of the insoluble
contradictions of the Saudi economy was the announcement last week that one of
the largest companies, the construction giant the Saudi Bin Laden Group (SBG)
that has built most of the country’s public buildings, was unable to pay its
workforce.
SBG fired 77,000 of its 200,000
workforce and issued them with exit visas. Immigrant workers, angry that they
had not been paid for months, have held daily protests outside SBG’s offices,
burnt company buses in Mecca and refused to leave the country until they are
paid. The company also dismissed 12,000 of its 17,000 Saudi managerial and
professional staff, calling on them to resign or wait for their wages and a
two-month bonus worth $220 million.
With $30 billion in debts, SBG’s
financial problems stem from the cutbacks in government spending and the crane
collapse on a major expansion of the Grand Mosque in Mecca last year that
killed 107 workers and pilgrims. It prompted an investigation of its government
projects, many of which were reportedly being carried out without any signed
contracts. The company was hit with a withholding of government payments and a
ban on SBG tendering for further public building projects.
The impending collapse of SBG
provoked such a crisis that the government agreed to allow it to bid for state
contracts, said it would ensure that government payments would continue and
urged other companies to honour their commitments and pay up on their contracts
with SBG.
The author also recommends:
The 9/11 cover-up continues[3 May 2016]
Once again on Saudi complicity in the 9/11 attacks[13 April 2016]
The 9/11 cover-up continues[3 May 2016]
Once again on Saudi complicity in the 9/11 attacks[13 April 2016]
House
of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most
Powerful Dynasties Paperback – October 5, 2004
Craig Unger (Author)
Find all the books, read about the author, and more.
|
Newsbreaking and controversial - an award-winning investigative journalist uncovers the thirty-year relationship between the Bush family and the House of Saud and explains its impact on American foreign policy, business, and national security. House of Bush, House of Saud begins with a politically explosive question: How is it that two days after 9/11, when U.S. air traffic was tightly restricted, 140 Saudis, many immediate kin to Osama Bin Laden, were permitted to leave the country without being questioned by U.S. intelligence? The answer lies in a hidden relationship that began in the 1970s, when the oil-rich House of Saud began courting American politicians in a bid for military protection, influence, and investment opportunity. With the Bush family, the Saudis hit a gusher - direct access to presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W.Bush. To trace the amazing weave of Saud- Bush connections, Unger interviewed three former directors of the CIA, top Saudi and Israeli intelligence officials, and more than one hundred other sources. His access to major players is unparalleled and often exclusive - including executives at the Carlyle Group, the giant investment firm where
the House of Bush and the House of Saud each
has a major stake. Like Bob Woodward's The Veil, Unger's House of Bush, House of Saud features unprecedented reportage; like Michael Moore's Dude, Where's My Country? Unger's book offers a political counter-narrative to official explanations; this deeply sourced account has already been cited by Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Charles Schumer, and sets 9/11, the two Gulf Wars, and the ongoing Middle East crisis in a new context: What really happened when America's most powerful political family became seduced
The perilous ramifications of the September 11 attacks on the United States are only now beginning to unfold. They will undoubtedly be felt for generations to come. This is one of many sad conclusions readers will draw from Craig Unger's exceptional book House of Bush House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties. As Unger claims in this incisive study, the seeds for the "Age of Terrorism" and September 11 were planted nearly 30 years ago in what, at the time, appeared to be savvy business transactions that subsequently translated into political currency and the union between the Saudi royal family and the extended political family of George H. W. Bush. On the surface, the claim may appear to be politically driven, but as Unger (a respected investigative journalist and editor) probes--with scores of documents and sources--the political tenor of the U.S. over the last 30 years, the Iran-Iraq War, the war in Afghanistan, the birth of Al Qaeda, the dubious connection between members of the Saudi Royal family and the exportation of terror, and the personal fortunes amassed by the Bush family from companies such as Harken Energy and the Carlyle Group, he exposes the "brilliantly hidden agendas and purposefully murky corporate relationships" between these astonishingly powerful families. His evidence is persuasive and reveals a devastating story of Orwellian proportions, replete with political deception, shifting allegiances, and lethal global consequences. Unger begins his book with the remarkable story of the repatriation of 140 Saudis directly following the September 11 attacks. He ends where Richard A. Clarke begins, questioning the efficacy of the war in Iraq in the battle against terrorism. We are unquestionably facing a global security crisis unlike any before. President Bush insists that we will prevail, yet as Unger so effectively concludes, "Never before has an American president been so closely tied to a foreign power that harbors and supports our country's mortal enemies." --Silvana Tropea --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
In this potentially explosive book, investigative journalist Unger, who has written for the New Yorker, Esquire and Vanity Fair, pieces together the highly unusual and close personal and financial relationships between the Bush family and the ruling family of Saudi Arabia—and questions the implications for Bush's preparedness, or possible lack thereof, for September 11. What could forge such an unlikely alliance between the leader of the free world and the leaders of a stifling Islamic theocracy? First and foremost, according to Unger, is money. He compiles figures in an appendix indicating over $1.4 billion worth of business between the Saudi royal family and businesses tied (sometimes loosely) to the House of Bush, ranging from donations to the Bush presidential library to investments with the Carlyle Group ("a well-known player in global commerce" for which George H.W. Bush has been a senior advisor and his secretary of state, James Baker, is a partner), to deals with Halliburton, of which Dick Cheney was CEO. James Baker’s law firm even defended the House of Saud in a lawsuit brought by relatives of victims of September 11. Unger also questions whether the Bush grew so complacent about the Saudis that his administration ignored then White House terrorism czar Richard Clarke’s repeated warnings and recommendations about the Saudis and al-Qaeda. Another question raised by Unger’s research is whether millions in Saudi money given to U.S. Muslim groups may have delivered a crucial block of Muslim votes to George W. Bush in 2000—and it’s questions like that will make some readers wonder whether Unger is applying a chainsaw to issues that should be dissected with a scalpel. But whether one buys Unger’s arguments or not, there’s little doubt that with this intensely researched, well-written book he has poured more flame onto the political fires of 2004.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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