Saudi Arabia: America's Frenemy -- Part Two

Actions speak louder than words

“Pre-9/11 Ties Haunt Saudis as New Accusations Surface.”

Doing excellent work, the New York Times follows up on the sordid tale of U.S.-Saudi relations and the “kingdom’s” role in 9/11 with more good reporting. The piece is capped with a particularly disgusting picture of President Bush in Riyadh in 2008, shaking hands with the murderers of 3,000 Americans, and opens like this:

During the 1980s and ’90s, the historic alliance between the wealthy monarchy of Saudi Arabia and the country’s powerful clerics emerged as the major financier of international jihad, channeling tens of millions of dollars to Muslim fighters in Afghanistan, Bosnia and elsewhere. Among the project’s major patrons was Prince Salman Bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, who last month became Saudi Arabia’s king.

Some of those fighters later formed Al Qaeda, which declared war on the United States and later mounted major attacks inside Saudi Arabia as well. In the past decade, according to officials of both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, the Saudi government has become a valuable partner against terrorism, battling Al Qaeda at home and last year joining the American-led coalition against the extremists of the Islamic State.

Yet Saudi Arabia continues to be haunted by what some suspect was a tacit alliance with Al Qaeda in the years before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Those suspicions burst out in the open again this week with the disclosure of a prison deposition of a former Qaeda operative, Zacarias Moussaoui, who claimed that more than a dozen prominent Saudi figures were donors to the terror group and that a Saudi diplomat in Washington discussed with him a plot to shoot down Air Force One.

Ask yourself: are you surprised? Why else would the Bush administration have hustled bin Laden’s relatives out of the country as quickly as possible at the Saudis’ behest in the aftermath of the attacks? Let’s take a stroll down memory lane:

Two dozen members of Osama bin Laden’s family were urgently evacuated from the United States in the first days following the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, according to the Saudi ambassador to Washington. One of bin Laden’s brothers frantically called the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Washington looking for protection, Prince Bandar bin Sultan told The New York Times. The brother was sent to a room in the Watergate Hotel and was told not to open the door.

Most of bin Laden’s relatives were attending high school and college. The young members of the bin Laden family were driven or flown under FBI supervision to a secret place in Texas and then to Washington, The Times reported Sunday. Many were terrified, fearing they would be lynched after hearing reports of violence against Muslims and Arab-Americans. They left the country on a private charter plane when airports reopened three days after the attacks.

King Fahd, the ailing Saudi ruler, sent an urgent message to his embassy in Washington pointing out that there were “bin Laden children all over America” and ordered, “Take measures to protect the innocents,” the ambassador said.

“Prince” Bandar — that name sounds familiar! From the Times story:

Among the donors Mr. Moussaoui said were in a Qaeda database that he helped create were Prince Turki al-Faisal, then the head of Saudi intelligence, and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to Washington. Both held high positions in the very government that Al Qaeda was by the late 1990s seeking to destroy, Mr. Gause said.

“Bin Laden children all over America.” I bet there are. The Saudis put them there.

Our geniuses in government can’t seem to wrap their minds around the fact that the duplicitous Saudis have always played a double-game (a trick they learned from their British masters); like Mr. Peachum in The Beggar’s Opera, they are both for rogues and against them. Anything to keep the “kingdom” functioning while merrily destabilizing the West with their money and their mosques. As soon as we break their oil weapon, we need to break them as well. The souls of 3,000 dead Americans demand it.