smugllama's news review
Tuesday, September 16, 2003
BuzzFlash interview: Greg Palast (Working for Change)
Greg Palast seems to have a pretty good handle on the current situation... Greg tells us his story exposing the Bush administration's odd Saudi relationships and how it "bounced off the electronic Berlin Wall of America". Detailing how FBI investigators were called off an investigation of financing of WAMY (World Assembly of Muslim Youth), a group closely connected to Osama bin Laden. In 1999 and 2000, Clinton quietly sent two delegations to Saudi Arabia with a list of royals, who are funding al-Qaeda, and told them "knock it off." George W Bush comes in and the demands on the Saudis come to a halt. Bush disbands the intelligence unit tracking the Saudi money connection to al-Qaeda. Bush's ambassador, Barbie Bodine, pulled the visas of FBI al-Quda investigation team in Yemen to force them home. Our own embassy pulled the visas of our own FBI investigators, headed by agent John O'Neill, who was in charge of al-Qaeda prosecutions for the Justice Department. In a meeting in Paris between Saudi billionaires, international arms dealers, and the al-Qaeda financial arm get together. In this meeting, the Saudis agreed to pay off al-Qaeda, a shake-down operation of the sheiks. Osama was running a protection racket. "You give me money, I don't blow up your yachts in the Mediterranean; I stay out of Saudi Arabia." Sheik Bahksh, a very rich Saudi who saved Bush's Texas oil company, Harken, was present at that meeting. Money from Arbusto Oil came from the Salim bin Laden, who died in an air crash in Texas in 1988. Not only is the Carlyle group paying senior and junior Bush, but they're also being used as an investment bank by the Saudis, even though they aren't, in order to avoid otherwise tens of millions of dollards in automatic transaction fees. So we are left with the embarrassing fact that, at that 1996 meeting, the people that the intelligence agency should have been investigating were, of course, the same people who were investing in the Bush family enterprises. Princess Haifa al-Faisal, the wife of the Saudi ambassador to the US, sent a check to one of the roommates of two of the terrorists. A State Departement lawyer tells of visas being issued to "counter-terrorists" working for Osama bin Laden in the 80's when Osama was our boy. These guys then went back to Afghanistan; idea was that they were going to fight the Russians. We forgot that sometimes Frankensteins turn around and devour their creators, as we saw with Hussein. "One of my favorite lines of the war was Condoleezza Rice saying it was immoral to leave that butcher in Baghdad for the last 12 years. I'm thinking, wait a minute, lady - he's been there 24 years. The first 12 years he was our butcher, where we got our chops. In fact, Saddam was trying to build an atomic bomb when he got $7 billion from the Saudis to build an "Islamic" bomb. This was in the 1980s, before the "axis of evil," when Saddam was our butcher and he was fighting Iran, which, at that time, was the "epicenter of evil." Now he never completed his bomb program, and the money was moved over to ... Musharraf, dictator of Pakistan. And we're doing it again. We have cuddled up to Osama to get his help in Afghanistan. We cuddled up to Saddam to get his help against Iran. Now we cuddled up to Musharraf to buy his temporary affections against the Taliban, who don't forget, he put into power in Afghanistan." Amazingly WAMY, which has carried tapes for Osama Bin Laden, is still legally allowed to recruit potential terrorists, right here in Florida. However, this is probably due to the charity being a dual-use, as some of the money does go to supporting, for example, soccer leagues for young Muslim kids. In some sort of deranged publicity stunt, Saudi Foreign Minister Saudal-Faisal met with Bush in Washington and claimed the Saudi name was being besmirched, and plea to release the classified pages of the 9/11 report. Using the standard "national security" cry, Bush refused. However, The Saudis, as well as Bush, had no interest in having the papers released. let's open up the file cabinets at the Saudi embassy and let's start opening up where the money for WAMY goes, from Muwafaq and for the International Islamic Relief Organization. We also have one of the perpetrators of the Khobar Towers bombing [Saudi Arabia, 1996], rotting in a Saudi prison, who Bill Clinton, at the request of his dear friend Vernon Jordan, extradited to Saudi Arabia. He's a huge source of information on al-Qaeda operations. Let's bring him back for questioning. Let's bring over some of the characters who are sitting in Saudi Arabia that our Congressmen need for questioning. Or is it too late? Looks like a big fire killed a bunch of Saudi prisoners. Too bad Pointdexter's plan to wager on terrorism didn't pull through, cause I'd put a bet that Vernon Jordan was killed in that fire. Bob Graham is saying a some of the same things as Cynthia McKinney is really saying. Bob Graham? Fighting mad about the cover-up? The Bush administration has made decisions that ultimately are potentially to the detriment of Americ's security, for reasons having more to do with the interests of the Bush family than with the safety of America. Decisions which benefit the Bush family and protect them from political embarrassment and which help them maintain their continuing pipeline of cash into their businesses and financial coffers. The Bush family may be more worried about what the Saudis could reveal about them than what they can reveal about the Saudis. The Bush administration won't make the public aware of the Saudis' relationship to terrorism through financing and the fact that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis or that it was an operation by Saudis, funded by Saudis. It seems that all of our official anti-terrorism vigor for Iraq should have been directed towards Saudi Arabia, but as it turns out, we can't because they control so much of our money. In the lead-up to Iraq, the Bush administration, primarily through spokespeople, went out of its way to divert attention from the Saudi relationship and to project it on Iraq by claiming Iraq had ties to al-Qaeda. The majority of Americans thought and perhaps still think that the majority of hijackers were Iraqi. Wolfowitz admitted in an interview that one of the reasons for declaring the war with Iraq a success was it would allow the U.S. to move its Air Force stations from Saudi Arabia to Iraq, which was one of the two main requests of Osama bin Laden. So Wolfowitz basically conceded that we conducted a war in part to make a concession to Osama bin Laden and take the heat off of the Saudi Arabia. One of the most stunning things is our President announcing we're pulling our troops out of Saudi Arabia. America doesn't pull its troops out of anywhere. The people of Okinawa have been asking us to leave there for a half a century. World War II is over. We never, ever leave a nation. But we'll make an exception for Saudi Arabia, I guess? Well, almost. They bombed Riyadh a week later because Bush tried to bargain with them indirectly. Bush said we're pulling out all our troops, but we're leaving 500 U.S. specialized troops in Saudi Arabia. And, in effect, these 500 troops becomes a Praetorian Guard to protect the royal family... al-Qaeda's way of saying, "No, its all out."
Greg Palast seems to have a pretty good handle on the current situation... Greg tells us his story exposing the Bush administration's odd Saudi relationships and how it "bounced off the electronic Berlin Wall of America". Detailing how FBI investigators were called off an investigation of financing of WAMY (World Assembly of Muslim Youth), a group closely connected to Osama bin Laden. In 1999 and 2000, Clinton quietly sent two delegations to Saudi Arabia with a list of royals, who are funding al-Qaeda, and told them "knock it off." George W Bush comes in and the demands on the Saudis come to a halt. Bush disbands the intelligence unit tracking the Saudi money connection to al-Qaeda. Bush's ambassador, Barbie Bodine, pulled the visas of FBI al-Quda investigation team in Yemen to force them home. Our own embassy pulled the visas of our own FBI investigators, headed by agent John O'Neill, who was in charge of al-Qaeda prosecutions for the Justice Department. In a meeting in Paris between Saudi billionaires, international arms dealers, and the al-Qaeda financial arm get together. In this meeting, the Saudis agreed to pay off al-Qaeda, a shake-down operation of the sheiks. Osama was running a protection racket. "You give me money, I don't blow up your yachts in the Mediterranean; I stay out of Saudi Arabia." Sheik Bahksh, a very rich Saudi who saved Bush's Texas oil company, Harken, was present at that meeting. Money from Arbusto Oil came from the Salim bin Laden, who died in an air crash in Texas in 1988. Not only is the Carlyle group paying senior and junior Bush, but they're also being used as an investment bank by the Saudis, even though they aren't, in order to avoid otherwise tens of millions of dollards in automatic transaction fees. So we are left with the embarrassing fact that, at that 1996 meeting, the people that the intelligence agency should have been investigating were, of course, the same people who were investing in the Bush family enterprises. Princess Haifa al-Faisal, the wife of the Saudi ambassador to the US, sent a check to one of the roommates of two of the terrorists. A State Departement lawyer tells of visas being issued to "counter-terrorists" working for Osama bin Laden in the 80's when Osama was our boy. These guys then went back to Afghanistan; idea was that they were going to fight the Russians. We forgot that sometimes Frankensteins turn around and devour their creators, as we saw with Hussein. "One of my favorite lines of the war was Condoleezza Rice saying it was immoral to leave that butcher in Baghdad for the last 12 years. I'm thinking, wait a minute, lady - he's been there 24 years. The first 12 years he was our butcher, where we got our chops. In fact, Saddam was trying to build an atomic bomb when he got $7 billion from the Saudis to build an "Islamic" bomb. This was in the 1980s, before the "axis of evil," when Saddam was our butcher and he was fighting Iran, which, at that time, was the "epicenter of evil." Now he never completed his bomb program, and the money was moved over to ... Musharraf, dictator of Pakistan. And we're doing it again. We have cuddled up to Osama to get his help in Afghanistan. We cuddled up to Saddam to get his help against Iran. Now we cuddled up to Musharraf to buy his temporary affections against the Taliban, who don't forget, he put into power in Afghanistan." Amazingly WAMY, which has carried tapes for Osama Bin Laden, is still legally allowed to recruit potential terrorists, right here in Florida. However, this is probably due to the charity being a dual-use, as some of the money does go to supporting, for example, soccer leagues for young Muslim kids. In some sort of deranged publicity stunt, Saudi Foreign Minister Saudal-Faisal met with Bush in Washington and claimed the Saudi name was being besmirched, and plea to release the classified pages of the 9/11 report. Using the standard "national security" cry, Bush refused. However, The Saudis, as well as Bush, had no interest in having the papers released. let's open up the file cabinets at the Saudi embassy and let's start opening up where the money for WAMY goes, from Muwafaq and for the International Islamic Relief Organization. We also have one of the perpetrators of the Khobar Towers bombing [Saudi Arabia, 1996], rotting in a Saudi prison, who Bill Clinton, at the request of his dear friend Vernon Jordan, extradited to Saudi Arabia. He's a huge source of information on al-Qaeda operations. Let's bring him back for questioning. Let's bring over some of the characters who are sitting in Saudi Arabia that our Congressmen need for questioning. Or is it too late? Looks like a big fire killed a bunch of Saudi prisoners. Too bad Pointdexter's plan to wager on terrorism didn't pull through, cause I'd put a bet that Vernon Jordan was killed in that fire. Bob Graham is saying a some of the same things as Cynthia McKinney is really saying. Bob Graham? Fighting mad about the cover-up? The Bush administration has made decisions that ultimately are potentially to the detriment of Americ's security, for reasons having more to do with the interests of the Bush family than with the safety of America. Decisions which benefit the Bush family and protect them from political embarrassment and which help them maintain their continuing pipeline of cash into their businesses and financial coffers. The Bush family may be more worried about what the Saudis could reveal about them than what they can reveal about the Saudis. The Bush administration won't make the public aware of the Saudis' relationship to terrorism through financing and the fact that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis or that it was an operation by Saudis, funded by Saudis. It seems that all of our official anti-terrorism vigor for Iraq should have been directed towards Saudi Arabia, but as it turns out, we can't because they control so much of our money. In the lead-up to Iraq, the Bush administration, primarily through spokespeople, went out of its way to divert attention from the Saudi relationship and to project it on Iraq by claiming Iraq had ties to al-Qaeda. The majority of Americans thought and perhaps still think that the majority of hijackers were Iraqi. Wolfowitz admitted in an interview that one of the reasons for declaring the war with Iraq a success was it would allow the U.S. to move its Air Force stations from Saudi Arabia to Iraq, which was one of the two main requests of Osama bin Laden. So Wolfowitz basically conceded that we conducted a war in part to make a concession to Osama bin Laden and take the heat off of the Saudi Arabia. One of the most stunning things is our President announcing we're pulling our troops out of Saudi Arabia. America doesn't pull its troops out of anywhere. The people of Okinawa have been asking us to leave there for a half a century. World War II is over. We never, ever leave a nation. But we'll make an exception for Saudi Arabia, I guess? Well, almost. They bombed Riyadh a week later because Bush tried to bargain with them indirectly. Bush said we're pulling out all our troops, but we're leaving 500 U.S. specialized troops in Saudi Arabia. And, in effect, these 500 troops becomes a Praetorian Guard to protect the royal family... al-Qaeda's way of saying, "No, its all out."
