Saudi Terrorist Lets Powell Know What Is Required of Him.
"Let me tell you more about islam."
Posted on 12/06/2003 6:42:12 PM PST by quidnunc
The CIA's Illicit Transactions Group isn't listed in any phone book. There are no entries for it on any news database or Internet site. The ITG is one of those tidy little Washington secrets, a group of unsung heroes whose job is to keep track of smugglers, terrorists, and money launderers. In late 1998, officials from the White House's National Security Council called on the ITG to help them answer a couple of questions: How much money did Osama bin Laden have, and how did he move it around? The queries had a certain urgency. A cadre of bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorists had just destroyed two of America's embassies in East Africa. The NSC was determined to find a way to break the organization's back. Working with the Illicit Transactions Group, the NSC formed a task force to look at al Qaeda's finances. For months, members scoured every piece of data the U.S. intelligence community had on al Qaeda's cash. The team soon realized that its most basic assumptions about the source of bin Laden's money — his personal fortune and businesses in Sudan — were wrong. Dead wrong. Al Qaeda, says William Wechsler, the task force director, was "a constant fundraising machine." And where did it raise most of those funds? The evidence was indisputable: Saudi Arabia.
America's longtime ally and the world's largest oil producer had somehow become, as a senior Treasury Department official put it, "the epicenter" of terrorist financing. This didn't come entirely as a surprise to intelligence specialists. But until the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, U.S. officials did painfully little to confront the Saudis not only on financing terror but on backing fundamentalists and jihadists overseas. Over the past 25 years, the desert kingdom has been the single greatest force in spreading Islamic fundamentalism, while its huge, unregulated charities funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to jihad groups and al Qaeda cells around the world. Those findings are the result of a five-month investigation by U.S. News. The magazine's inquiry is based on a review of thousands of pages of court records, U.S. and foreign intelligence reports, and other documents. In addition, the magazine spoke at length with more than three dozen current and former counterterrorism officers, as well as government officials and outside experts in Riyadh, the Saudi capital. Among the inquiry's principal findings:
Starting in the late 1980s — after the dual shocks of the Iranian revolution and the Soviet war in Afghanistan — Saudi Arabia's quasi-official charities became the primary source of funds for the fast-growing jihad movement. In some 20 countries, the money was used to run paramilitary training camps, purchase weapons, and recruit new members.
The charities were part of an extraordinary $70 billion Saudi campaign to spread their fundamentalist Wahhabi sect worldwide. The money helped lay the foundation for hundreds of radical mosques, schools, and Islamic centers that have acted as support networks for the jihad movement, officials say.
U.S. intelligence officials knew about Saudi Arabia's role in funding terrorism by 1996, yet for years Washington did almost nothing to stop it. Examining the Saudi role in terrorism, a senior intelligence analyst says, was "virtually taboo." Even after the embassy bombings in Africa, moves by counterterrorism officials to act against the Saudis were repeatedly rebuffed by senior staff at the State Department and elsewhere who felt that other foreign policy interests outweighed fighting terrorism.
Saudi largess encouraged U.S. officials to look the other way, some veteran intelligence officers say. Billions of dollars in contracts, grants, and salaries have gone to a broad range of former U.S. officials who had dealt with the Saudis: ambassadors, CIA station chiefs, even cabinet secretaries.
Washington's unwillingness to confront the Saudis over terrorism was part of a broader strategic failure to sound the alarm on the rise of the global jihad movement. During the 1990s, the U.S. intelligence community issued a series of National Intelligence Estimates — which report on America's global challenges — on ballistic missile threats, migration, infectious diseases; yet the government never issued a single NIE on the jihad movement or al Qaeda.
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(Excerpt) Read more at usnews.com ...
Saudi Terrorist Lets Powell Know What Is Required of Him.
"Let me tell you more about islam."
Why is Wahhabism's extreme teachings any different from Shiite extreme teachings under the Ayatolla's(sp?) of Iran. They also preached terrorism and carried out those attacks and kidnappings,they also preach the rest are apostates worthy of death. It just depends on the year, which is making the bigger stink. Durring the 70's and 80's it was shiite islam, now it is sunni islam with the bigger plans.
More money/funding, better organization, and lareger operations outside of Saudi Arabia's borders. When you have the support of a rich nation behind you, that feeds its unemployed/underemployed into your schools, and that rich nation happens to be "friends" with what you consider to be your biggest enemy (the USA), you can do bigger things.
Shiite and Sunni islam struggle for who is the big dog and the true representative of islam. With Saudi money gone Iran and Shiite money will once again get the attention. There is some article out today that said that Hammas was going to target Jews in NY. Whoever is seen as being the most effective will get outside support from 3rd parties. Right now it is AQ, but none of us had even heard of them 5 years ago. It is not about the organization or money (that comes with whoever is most effective) it is the religion, and who is using them to get what they want(3rd parties).
Islam is the perfect tool for enemy governments to stir up trouble for your opponent. We used it in Afghanistan against the Russians, and they used it against us in Iran. I would be supprised if Saudi Prince money is the only thing keeping AQ in the money, I would think most is comming from charity donations, and that money can easily go to the next terrorist group that springs up after AQ. I think that those who think only about Saudi Arabia as the big problem and once that is solved we are in the clear are missing the big picture. Saudi Arabia is just a hurdle in the race.
The Saudi Princes are toast, to stay in power they have had to support the spread of fundamentalist islam, that which will kill them in the end. Islam and all of their charities will still exist.
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