Flow of Saudis' Cash to Hamas Is Scrutinized (NYT)

The New York Times ^ | 09-16-2003 | DON VAN NATTA Jr. with TIMOTHY L. O'BRIEN

[WOSG]

"One of Osama's goals was to implicate the Saudis in the 9/11 attacks such that they would lose U.S. support and permit conditions to arise favorable for a Taliban-style takeover of Riyadh."

This should be duly noted as we stop the dagnerous and bad things some Saudis are doing. We dont want to worsen things by polarizing the situation.

IMHO, the Bush admin is playing the balancing act about right, just so long as behind the scenes they are ripping the Saudis a noew one over this support to Hamas. Every country in the world needs to ban the Hamas "charities".

[WOSG]

"Solving" the Israel/plaestinian situation to Hamas means dissolving Israel's democracy of 6 million people (Jews, and Christian and Muslim Arabas, who all participate in the deomcracy) and replacing it with an Islamic Iranian/Taliban like state. 5 million Jews will be killed, forced to leave or made to suffer under "Dhimmitude". They want to drive the Jewish state into the sea.

It's a "Final solution" that harkens back to Himmler.

These issues cannot be solved on Hamas' terms.

And dont confuse Arafat with a nationalist liberator- that Egyptian terrorist was *already* given a state to run and in 10 years he's cuts its GNP by 70% (west back and gaza) and created a generation of haters in their horrible schools and due to the massive unemployment his kakistocracy has created. He walked away from 98% of the west bank and chose war instead. 800 Isrealis killed by terrorism in the last 4 years alone.

A just solution will yield a federated Isreal where west bank and gaza are economically integrated with the successful israeli economy, but they have political/cultural autonomy. But that autonomy needs to be given to freedom-logving republicans/democrats not Terrorists.

[WOSG]

scary - fascinating, but scary.

[WOSG]

The US captilist system against the the Islamic system, just like you did with the communist system.

The US and Western democracy, freedom and free enterprise system against *not* Islam, but against Islamic Jihadist militants in Al Qaeda, Taliban, etc.

It's democracy and freedom against tyranny and repression and violence. Again, like against the communist system.

But you are foolish to think 1 billion muslims are on the side of the Jihadist Terrorists. 5 million Muslims enjoy America's democracy and Indonesia is the largest Muslim-majority democracy. Most Iraqis welcomed their liberation in Iraq, and majority want American troops to stay for some time (recent AEI poll of Iraqis).

Iraqis prefere freedom to tyranny and democracy to dictatorship. Fancy that.

Your argument seems to be that your system is not only better, but the only system and if the world does not agree we will destroy you, either financially or militarily.

Yes, democracy and freedom is better than the Taliban ideology and the Al Qaeda cult of death. As for Vietnam comparisons, the south vietnam fell in 1975 becuse north vietnam broke a peace agreement and the US failed to lift a finger to help.

Bush wont make that mistake, and presidential contenders who wish to make that mistake - like Howard Dean - will be soundly rejected by the American people.

In the end, btw, the losers in Vietnam were he people - suffering under a brutal regime of 'reeducation camps'. Democracy is better, and the good guys in Iraq are the many Iraqis working hard to build a democracy there.

Next stop - Iran!!

[WOSG]

If Saudi said tomorrow that they would not supply the US with any more Oil. The US economy would crash, not in a week or a month or in a year, it would happen overnite.

ROFLMAO! If the Saudis stopped selling oil, they'd be the ones with the economic crash. What a maroon you are!

Oil is fungible, we just keep our sourcing to the other 20 countries exporting oil - mexico, canada, nigeria, venzuala, north sea, cameroon, etc. NO worries. If total oil price rises a lot it would cause a blip in growth rates, but oil above $40/bbl for any period of time would unleash a flood of oil from many marginally economic oil fields, included depleted ones in the US (eg California, Texas).

To create an 'oil shock' the whole of OPEC has to participate, and OPEC is *no longer* an Arab-only club (Norwegians, Russians, Mexicans, etc.). NO to mention it is self defeating, as OPEC found out in the 1980s after their oil shocks of the 1970s boomeranged into lower oil demand and a glut of supplies. You cant defy supply and demand.

And I doubt Kuwait will stop being friendly to us.

[WOSG]

You have a very naive view of ME politics and you over simplify what AQ and the other radical Islamists want. They don't hate us for our stand on Israel, they hate us for the threat that we pose to the reinstatement of a new Islamic Worldwide Kingdom. American style democracy, with its free will and capitalist economic system is the single largest threat to the spread of their first century Islamic rule. Israel is only a major thorn in their side, the US is the MAIN target.

Dittos, well said.

[Bobby777]

gas prices here in town (except for the scumbag profiteers who were prosecuted locally) fell from $1.45 / gallon to $0.89 / gallon immediately after 9/11 ... with the minimal air traffic / driving the backlog of oil pushed the price way down ... probably to where it should be ...

IOW, we agree ...

[Valin]

And not to forget that the US was the chief backer of UBL in Afghanistan, with billions of dollars,

From everything I've read no money went to OBL. Most of the money he got came from our good friends the Saudis.

[Valin]

It's a good site. Rita Katz (who now runs the institute) was one of the few before 9-11 trying to get people to pay attention to what these radical Muslims were up to.
She's also the author of "Terrorist Hunter". Good book.

[John_11_25]

Of course you will not read anything in the press, they do not want to remind the general public, what really happened and of the "Blowback".

Michael Sheehan, the State Department's Counterterrorism Coordinator, has made a big deal about a "geographic shift" in terrorist activity from the Middle East to South Asia. Sheehan attributes the shift to the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan during the 1980s: "This war destroyed the government and civil society of Afghanistan, at the same time bringing arms, fighters from around the world, and narcotics traffickers to the region."

Sheehan eliminates any trace of human involvement--"this war" brought arms, fighters, and narco-traffickers to Afghanistan, destroying civil society.

What Washington tends to conveniently ignore is that bin Laden and the rest of the extremist terrorists empowered to fight in Afghanistan were taught "the logic of terrorism" by our own Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA assembled a terror network that remains a cause of misery worldwide. CIA Director William Casey called it "the kind of thing we should be doing." According to standard sources, aid to extremist groups in Afghanistan was a response to the Soviet invasion. The truth is that President Carter gave the green light for covert support to the Mujaheddin six months before the December 1979 invasion.

In the words of then National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, a major architect of Carter's policy, they were "drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap." The US supported seven fundamentalist extremist groups throughout the 1980s and into the early 90s with cash, sophisticated weapons, and training to the tune of $5 billion--according to official figures.

The secret Black Budget of the CIA reportedly quadrupled to $36 billion per year when Reagan became president in 1980, and some of this money went to support secret operations in Afghanistan.

Some of the earliest training exercises took place inside the US, including rifle shooting at the High Rock gun club in Naugtuck, Connecticut. More technical training took place at the CIA's Camp Peary, nicknamed "The Farm," northeast of Williamsburg, Virginia.

Among the topics covered by training sessions were surveillance and countersurveillance, counter-terrorism, counter-narcotics and paramilitary operations.

Around the same time, a source of private funding was sought for the war. Osama bin Laden, a man with "impeccable Saudi credentials" (his father's construction company had just been awarded a contract to rebuild and restore the holy sites in Mecca and Medina) was given "free rein in Afghanistan" by the CIA.

Using his share of his family's business empire, he built training camps and airplane landing strips, and carved underground bunkers in the mountains of Afghanistan, all with Washington's approval.

Just across the border, bin Laden's base in Pakistan was the Binoori mosque in Karachi. The prayer leader at this mosque was one Mullah Mohammed Omar, now "supreme leader" of the Taliban.

[Valin]

The truth is that President Carter gave the green light for covert support to the Mujaheddin six months before the December 1979 invasion.

Chapter and verse please.

The problem with our involvement in the Afghan war against the Soviets is that after the Soviets left..so did we.

[Guillermo]

It was the Afghanis, not Arabs, who threw the Soviets out of Afghanistan.

It was 19 Arabs who attacked us on 11 Sept, not Afghanis.

[Valin]

This is what I've been given to understand. In addition From what little I've read on this many of the Afgahn were less than thrilled with the arabs who came and stayed.
they (the afgahn arabs) were prone to look down on the Afghans.

[rrrod]

lol ...!

[rrrod]

lol ...!