Ok, 9/11 conspiracists, I know what you're going to say:
Obama's been fully indoctrinated into the vast coverup of the conspiracy, they implanted him with the chip or whatever:
The case has put the Obama administration in the middle of a political and legal dispute, with the Justice Department siding with the Saudis in court last month in seeking to kill further legal action. Adding to the intrigue, classified American intelligence documents related to Saudi finances were leaked anonymously to lawyers for the families. The Justice Department had the lawyers' copies destroyed and now wants to prevent a judge from even looking at the material.
from Documents Back Saudi Link to Extremists by Eric Lichtblau for the June 23 New York Times.
Chops to Lichtblau for trying, but sadly I don't think saying
The documents provide no smoking gun connecting the royal family to the events of Sept. 11, 2001. And the broader links rely at times on a circumstantial, connect-the-dots approach to tie together Saudi princes, Middle Eastern charities, suspicious transactions and terrorist groups.
is going to discourage you that much. Especially since he also adds this later:
...two intriguing pieces of evidence in the Saudi puzzle might still remain off limits.
One is a 28-page, classified section of the 2003 joint Congressional inquiry into the Sept. 11 attacks. The secret section is believed to discuss intelligence on Saudi financial links to two hijackers, and the Saudis themselves urged at the time that it be made public. President George W. Bush declined to do so.
More seriously, it sure would be nice to know what the heck is going on here, especially what the leaker is up to and what he or she doesn't like about what Obama's Justice Department is doing.
er.........even prior to 9/11, there were reports that the Saudis were funneling $ to Osama in Afghanistan through Paki Pastun connections with the Taliban.
It's absurd to think that no one in the Saudi RF, which number in the thousands, hadn't been funding Osama and that some continue to support hardcore AQ-linked Salafist terrorist groups that are plaguing Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, etc.
It's a religious obligation to some the fundamentalist Wahabi Sunnis.
BTW, on another forum, a long-time DC lobbyist in the petroleum sector revealed to me that American oil companies (partnered with the Saudis) doing business in the KSA paid "protection money" to Osama et al in order to insure that they were able to do business there sans sabotage. Such shennanigens are and have been for decades, the cost of doing oil business in the ME.
My informant, a Messianic Jew from Texas, was hardcore GOP fan of George Bush and had no ideological or political reasons to make stuff up. Our conversation on these matters was in the months following 9/11.
From your link:
Critics have said that some members of the Saudi ruling class pay off terrorist groups in part to keep them from being more active in their own country.
June 24, 2009 3:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, I know. These people actually have a lot better case than like, the asbestos thing. I read ample evidence of all you say.
The one that really gets me still interested, though, is this thing with the Saudi government wanting the info. on them released, and Bush refusing, and now Obama won't do it either. Doesn't sound good, to say the least, as in, American public would not like.
June 24, 2009 3:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
If the U.S. doesn't want it released, then it must be a CIA operation.
June 25, 2009 1:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, I know. These people actually have a lot better case than like, the asbestos thing. I read ample evidence of all you say.
The one that really gets me still interested, though, is this thing with the Saudi government wanting the info. on them released, and Bush refusing, and now Obama won't do it either. Doesn't sound good, to say the least, as in, American public would not like.
June 24, 2009 5:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
The one that really gets me still interested, though, is this thing with the Saudi government wanting the info. on them released, and Bush refusing, and now Obama won't do it either.
;~{)
This stance is eerily similiar to the tack taken by the defense in the AIPAC trial...
What so many so-called "progressives" don't want to acknowledge is that so much of this crap, including rendition and torture, was US policy under the Clinton administration, too.
We luvs our partisan blinders more than the truth. Isn't that convenient?
BTW....here's a link to an exhaustive and typically byzantine 3-part series on the Saudi/US games; from pt 3:
The Saudi regime had long acted to keep the United States away from the bin Laden trail in Saudi. During the Afghan War, high-ranking Saudi officials, including interior minister Prince Nayef himself, had worked closely with bin Laden. And those ties had apparently continued even after the Saudi government revoked bin Laden’s citizenship, froze his assets, and began cracking down on some anti-government Islamic extremists in 1994.
Evidence soon appeared that the regime had allowed Saudi supporters of bin Laden to finance his operations through Saudi charities, while encouraging bin Laden to focus on the U.S. military rather than the regime.
9/11 Commission investigators later learned that, after bin Laden’s move from Sudan to Afghanistan in May 1996, a delegation of Saudi officials had asked top Taliban leaders to tell bin Laden that if he didn’t attack the regime, "recognition will follow".
Meanwhile, Nayef was resisting CIA requests for bin Laden’s birth certificate, passport and bank records.
The CIA had been sharing its own intelligence on bin Laden with the Mabahith, the Saudi secret police, including copies of National Security Agency interceptions of the cell phone conversations of suspected al Qaeda officials. Then the militants suddenly stopped using their cell phones, indicating they had been tipped off by the Mabahith.
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47347
I recall that the FBI investigators involved in examining the bombings of the USS Cole were also forbidden to follow the Saudi tracks.
PS. don't neglect to rec your own blog, aa.
June 24, 2009 5:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
PS. don't neglect to rec your own blog, aa
Eh, sometimes I don't do it on purpose, because I suspect exposure to the larger audience that a highly recommended post might provide (the top ones go on the front page, don't forget) could possibly result in something I might not just not relish, but get depressed about. Sometimes I'm satisfied with just posting for those who might catch it on their dashboard, and not for the bigger TPM audience.
Today especially would be one of those days. The front page of TPM looked closer to that of the New York Post than it ever had before.
And not only that, one of its editors wrote a post not apologizing for that, but crowing that they thought looking like the New York Post was just one of those wonderful things the blogosphere can do that the old media cannot.
I wondered today what I was doing posting on this website at all, supporting a site where the editors have totally, breathlessly lost all sense of journalistic proportion, have had their brains altered by junk internet input or something, where they think people spending time on "breaking" coverage of a sex scandal equates with being an "informed" person. That if someone can wait until the next morning to read about a governor's sex scandal, they cannot consider themselves an informed person! Sorry, but I think just the opposite, I think people who waste time on "breaking" on such things are warping their perspective so much that they are mal-informed. If they are really serious information people, and not into the dirty pleasure of infotainment, they should be proud to be reading about it in passing a week after it happens, spending 5 minutes total on it, in a summary piece with the repercussions all summed up.
I don't like the feeling I get by supporting that kind of journalism with my minor-as-it-is traffic, it's really something I care about.
I also looked at how many comments were on Andrew Golis' thread on the missing governor, which mostly came from a link from the main page, from people who never visit the Cafe. And I thought, do I really want to be interacting with that audience, especially on this 9/11 topic? And I voted for remaining buried and hopefully off the main page by not recommending my post.
There is a good sub-audience here, and you can find quality interaction by surfing from the results of "following" enough people with similar tastes in content. But if things continue as they seem to be going on the editorial front, I don't know how long that is going to last.
Ok, end of rant, hah. Apologies to subjecting you and the few other followers. No reply required. :-)
P.S. Lest anyone think me a party pooper, I am an unabashed fan of "Page Six," and think that sometimes the Post's front-page headlines play a great role in journalism.
June 25, 2009 1:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
I get it and see your point. But, I was hoping for more exposure "above the line" so to speak. Given the more "serious" content of your posts, I don't think that you would draw the attention of those who would respond to the "red flag" of mentioning 9/11 and "conspiracy" in the headline once they read the body of the blog post.
PS. That said, I loathe the "upgrade". ;~{)
June 25, 2009 5:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Have you read Russ Baker's book, "Family of Secrets"? He makes some interesting suggestions about the CIA and financial institutions connected with the Bush family.
I do believe that the government has quite a bit to cover up with the 911 catastrophe and while I don't believe there is any kind of conspiracy or collusion by the government in the attack, they've sure done a good job in covering up for those who were or might have been.
As an aside, it's interesting to see how many people in this country think our own government could do something like this to us.
June 25, 2009 1:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
I recall some reviews of Baker's book but haven't read it; I am going to now that you recommend it.
June 25, 2009 1:41 PM | Reply | Permalink