Can we now reasonably say that the entire War on Terror is a propaganda ploy masking dark-side intentions?
A long article, here are excerpts:
Saudi Arabia is hub of world terror
The desert kingdom supplies the cash and the killers
Nick Fielding and Sarah Baxter, Washington
...Yet wealthy Saudis remain the chief financiers of worldwide terror networks.
...Saudi religious scholars have caused consternation in Iraq and Iran by issuing fatwas calling for the destruction of the great Shi’ite shrines in Najaf and Karbala in Iraq, some of which have already been bombed. ...leading figures within the kingdom who advocate extremism are tolerated.
More:
...the chief justice...was recorded on tape...“If someone knows that he is capable of entering Iraq in order to join the fight, and if his intention is to raise up the word of God, then he is free to do so.”
...not one person identified by America or the United Nations as a terrorist financier has been prosecuted by Saudi authorities. A fortnight ago exasperated US Treasury officials named three Saudi citizens as terrorist financiers. “In order to deter other would-be donors, it is important to hold these terrorists publicly accountable,” Levey said.
....Yet the Saudis’ ambivalence towards terrorism has not gone away. Money for foreign fighters and terror groups still pours out of the kingdom,
...the interior ministry has given £14.7m to {militant} detainees and their families to help them to repay debts, ...The most needy prisoners’ families receive £286 to £384 a month. ...a lecturer at King Khaled University in Abha, protested: “I’m afraid that holding {extremist} views leads to earning a prize or, worse, a steady income.”
It was 32 years ago Jimmy Carter tried to set the nation on oil independence. We could probably get very close to it here with a decent conservation program alone.
But it's important we keep our friends, the Saudis (who just bought helicopters and tanks from Bush's soul-buddy Putin.
I should be offering up some insights here, or at least snark. But I've just become as stone in my astonishment. It's not like you or I didn't know, or intuit, or gather, this. But hell, everyone in our government probably has known it all along.
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are our friends. Who, between them, help produce almost all the terror in the world. And BushCo wants war with Iran.