Did the Arabs learn from the Chinese -- or visa versa?
At the center of the federal investigation is a cluster of companies and charities based in Herndon, Va., that was launched in the 1970s by one of Saudi Arabia's leading banking families, the al-Rajhis. The network has owned or invested in businesses worldwide, including dairy farms in Zimbabwe, a poultry business in Georgia and lucrative office buildings in downtown Washington.
For years, most of the firms and foundations searched have engaged in extremely complex business deals with one another. And since the mid-1990s, federal agents have tried to track the $1.7 billion that has sloshed among them. Millions of dollars have ended up being sent to related firms in offshore tax havens, such as the Isle of Man, or to organizations that are under investigation for possible ties to terrorists.
The central figure in the interlocking companies and foundations is M. Yaqub Mirza, a financier with a reputation for brilliance who received a doctorate in physics from the University of Texas before taking the helm of the SAAR Foundation in Herndon, whose money he invested to start or gain positions in dozens of companies around the globe. SAAR and two close affiliates, the Safa Trust and the International Institute of Islamic Thought -- all of whose offices were searched -- donate funds to many legitimate Islamic causes, such as publishing religious texts and training Muslim clerics.
Five of their senior executives live in modest two-story homes on adjoining lots in Herndon. The houses were built on 22 acres that one of their affiliated firms bought and developed in 1987.
Many Muslims are dismayed because some sites searched are among the most established Islamic organizations in the United States, and in some cases, it is unclear what their ties to SAAR or alleged terrorist activity could be.
The Fiqh Council of North America in Leesburg, for example, is an organization of leading clerics that issues religious interpretations for mosques and Islamic centers across the country. The Graduate School of Islamic Social Sciences, also in Leesburg, trains Muslim imams for religious service, including in the U.S. military.
"It is a sad day for America again," said Mohammad Omeish, president of the Success Foundation, which describes itself as devoted to helping Muslim victims of war worldwide and whose Fairfax office was searched. "The message we are getting is, this war, even though they claim it is against terrorism, is against Muslims."
We are in the opening stages of World War III. And Clinton helped us get there.
Jack Kennedy's ghost-written book, for which he received a Doris Kearns Godwin Pulitzer Prize (which is to say he didn't really earn it the old fashioned way), was called Why England Slept, It recounted how and why England found itself largely unprepared for WW II, when Germany invaded Poland and the war began in earnest.
What we are finding out now, is that Clinton offered the same services to America in his eight years. Of course, his myriad scandals would have been less had he merely "slept," but that is another, scumbag story that need not be repeated here.
Remember the claims that Clinton was capable of "compartmentalizing" and "multi-tasking"? All that means is he was capable of screwing up many aspects of American foreign policy and American domestic policy at the same time. Better we should have had a dolt like Jimmy Carter at the helm. He lacked the capacity of doing so may things wrong, simultaneously.
Heck, even Michael Dukakis would have been better, Now there's a scary thought.
As a FReeper whose name I wish I could recall, so cogently remarked in these threads, "I despised him then, I despise him now. I will despise him until he dies. And then I will despise his memory."
Congressman Billybob
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Another sad chapter in the Clinton "Legacy".
Al-Arian/Al-Najjar article ping--
"Now the ex-president is contesting even that, insisting that the war on terrorism, while important, “is not like World War II at all” and will eventually be seen in the context not of the Bush presidency but of Clinton’s global achievements."
Yea right, Bubba.
Now the ex-president is contesting even that, insisting that the war on terrorism, while important, "is not like World War II at all" and will eventually be seen in the context not of the Bush presidency but of Clinton's global achievements.
Al-Arian is no longer a professor at the University of South Florida? Where is he now?
I think this is the first time I've seen it stated that one of these charities was involved in that transfer of money to Atta (by Sheikh at the behest of the director of the ISI, as we know from other stories.)
Maybe those computers seized at that Islamic charity in Texas the week before 9/11 would have yielded a lot of information, given time. Could 9/11 have happened when it did to forestall the feds using that information to block terrorist attacks? Bin Laden said on one of the videotapes that he got word the preceding Thursday (Sept. 6) that the attack was going ahead. The suspicious trading in airline put options occurred on Thursday and Friday. What day that week was the raid on the charity?