Mark,
Thank you for your reply, your input is most appreciated even though I don’t agree.
The reason I don’t agree is because how can we and our government that’s been intent upon using the terrorist attacks to carry out the invasion of Iraq, prevent bringing to justice those who’ve been established as being directly responsible for it?
Saudi’s “OPEN” support includes financial backing for minority Sunnis because of the civil war between them and Iraq’s Shiite majority. Before that the Sunnis were getting the money from private donations such as extremist Wahhabi mosques and the Bin Laden family which is an immensely wealthy family intimately connected with the innermost circles of the Saudi royal family.
So why are we doing nothing to combat the real terrorist the “SAUDI’S”! Who warned Cheney that they were going to supply the Sunnis with advanced weaponry and cash (to buy more) if we sided with the Shiites. There has been evidence that they had been funding them from the beginning.
U.S. intelligence reports and the U.S. Iraq Study Group report as well as Iraqi intelligence reports said Saudis are funding Sunni Arab insurgents and the money is used to buy weapons, including Strelas, Russian shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles.
Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah has warned Vice President Dick Cheney that Saudi Arabia would back the Sunnis if the United States pulls out of Iraq, according to a senior American official.
The official said the king “read the riot act” to the vice president when the two met in the Saudi capital, Riyadh.
The New York Times first reported the conversation saying Saudi support would include financial backing for minority Sunnis in the event of a civil war between them and Iraq’s Shiite majority.
Asked about the meeting, a senior Saudi official – who spoke on condition he not be named – ruled out using terminology such as “warning” or “threatening.” He said, “I believe the Saudi position was clear, that things might deteriorate or drift in Iraq, and then the kingdom will find itself forced to interfere.”
Saudi Arabia believes the Iraqi government is not up to the challenge and has told the United States that it is prepared to move its own forces into Iraq should the violence there degenerate into chaos, a senior U.S. official told NBC News.
The Saudis’ primary concern is the Sunni population of Anbar province, the senior U.S. official. The official said the Saudis had informed Washington that they were considering a plan to send troops into the province if Bush’s plan failed.
The Saudi’s are mad as hell at “US” turning the government over to people who are known to be Iranian agents like Ahmad Chalabi, Al-Jafari, Al-Hakim and Al-Maliki!
This has caused many Sunni Saudis concern and outrage over the single handed give away in Sunni Iraq to Shia Iranian interests while demonizing and sabre rattling against Tehran.
If, indeed, the Iranians are funding, arming and training Shiite militias (who are responsible for 4% of American military deaths in Iraq and 5% of injuries inflicted on American military in Iraq) who COMBINED with the Taliban are responsible for 9% of TOTAL American military deaths and 8% of TOTAL injuries inflicted on the American military. For which we are threatening military action against Iran. Then doesn’t it logically follow that we should be threatening military action against Saudi Arabia which has been funding the Sunni insurgency (who is responsible for 91% of TOTAL American military casualties and 92% of TOTAL injuries inflicted on the American military) an insurgency that has killed far more Americans than the Taliban and Shiite insurgency COMBINED?
Doesn’t it logically follow that we should be threatening military action against Saudi Arabia which has been “OPENLY” funding the Sunni insurgency, an insurgency that has killed far more Americans than the Shiite insurgency?
Especially when according to U.S. intelligence reports Saudi Arabia has an active role as a player in the nuclear black-market!
According to Mohammed Khilewi, first secretary at the Saudi mission to the United Nations until July 1994, the Saudis have sought a bomb since 1975; they sought to buy nuclear reactors from China, supported Pakistan’s nuclear program, and contributed $5 billion to Iraq’s nuclear weapons program between 1985 and 1990. While the U.S. government vocally opposes the development or procurement of ballistic missiles by non-allies, it has been very quiet in Saudi Arabia’s case, considering the fact that it possesses the longest-range ballistic missiles of any developing country.
In his 2003 Naval Post graduate thesis titled “Is Saudi Arabia a Nuclear Threat?”Steven R. McDowell writes:
Now that the CSS-2 missiles are nearing the end of their lifecycle, the Saudi regime may choose to replace them. During a March 11, 1997 interview with Defense News, Saudi military chief of staff, Lt Gen. Saleh Mohaya stated [referring to the Saudi's CSS-2 ballistic missile inventory], “The [Saudi Arabian] oil kingdom is now considering replacing or refurbishing the desert missile force.”
Early in 2006, the German periodical Cicero reported that satellite imagery obtained by Germany’s secret service indicated that Saudi Arabia has set up in Al-Sulaiyil, south of Riyadh, a new secret underground city and dozens of underground silos for missiles. TPMcafe has also picked up on this item
According to some Western security services, long-range Ghauri-type missiles of Pakistani-origin are housed inside the silos.
The Ghauri missile has a range of 1,500 kilometers, while the CSS-2.
missile has a longer 2500km range.
The East Wind’s modified range/payload (5) of 2,500 km/2,000 kg (conventional load) brings many countries within striking range, including Israel, the former Soviet Union, and Iran, though the missiles are said to be targeted on Tehran and other Iranian population centers, rather than Israel.
It seems that Saudi Arabia has replaced its aging Chinese missiles with North Korean/Pakistani “Ghauri” missiles, albeit with 1000km less range, they have essentially modernized their missile fleet.
Leaders of Hezbollah, the Iranian- backed party trying to overthrow the Lebanese government, have recently visited the Saudi king in Riyadh, according to officials who attended the meeting. And Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi chief security adviser, has met with his Iranian counterpart, Ali Larijani, in Riyadh and Tehran to try to stop Lebanon’s slide into civil war.
“The only hope is for the Iranians and Saudis to go further in easing the situation and bringing people back to the negotiating table,” said Radwan al- Sayyed, an adviser to Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.
“It is true, whoever governs will decide Lebanon’s political direction,” said Muhammad Fneish, a senior Hezbollah member who said he recently attended a meeting with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.
“Saudi Arabia and Iran are near an agreement,” said Toufic Sultan, a former leader in the main government-aligned Druse party who has maintained close ties to Saudi officials.
“The United States is the first to be blamed for the rise of Iranian influence in the Middle East,” said Khaled al-Dakhil, a Saudi writer and academic. “There is one thing important about the ascendance of Iran here. It does not reflect a real change in Iranian capabilities, economic or political. It’s more a reflection of the failures on the part of the U.S. and its Arab allies in the region.”
“It was necessary to create an enemy to justify the failure of the American occupation in Iraq,” Talal Salman, the editor-in-chief of as-Safir, a Lebanese newspaper, wrote in a column this month. “So to protect ourselves against the coming of the wolf, we bring the foreign fleets that fill our lands, skies and seas.”
Iran has found itself strengthened almost by default, first with the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan to Iran’s east, which ousted the Taliban rulers against whom it almost went to war in the 1990s, and then to its west, with the American ouster of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, against whom it fought an eight-year war in the 1980s.
“I disagree with Iranian policy, but you have to give the Iranians credit,” said Abdullah al-Shayji, a political science professor and head of Kuwait University’s American Studies Unit. “You have to appreciate that they have an agenda, they’re planning for it, they seize the opportunity, they see an American weakness and they are capitalizing on it.”
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – Kuwait rarely rebuffs its ally, the United States, partly out of gratitude for the 1991 Persian Gulf War. But in October it reneged on a pledge to send three military observers to an American-led naval exercise in the Gulf, according to U.S. officials and Kuwaiti analysts.
“We understood,” a State Department official said. “The Kuwaitis were being careful not to antagonize the Iranians.”
If America withdrew from Iraq and a Sunni-Shi’ite war took off, the narrative of the long war would inevitably change. It would go from Islam versus the West to Islam versus itself and we would reap dividends in the long run.
Redefining the war on terror as essentially the product of ancient feuds within Islam immediately shifts the argument onto terrain favorable to the West. As it stands now our being in Iraq unites the Muslim world against “US” while both sides are using “US” our children and our resources.
