<quote> The key to the identity and motives of the men who bombed the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam on Friday lies deep within the nation that the Americans regard as their principal ally. In the Arab Gulf - Saudi Arabia," Fiske wrote. "The growing fury of thousands of Saudis-including, some say, members of the Royal Family - [is aimed] at America's continued military and political presence in the land which Is home to Islam's two holiest shrines, Mecca and Medina.
It was not by chance that the bombs exploded in Kenya and Tanzania on the eighth anniversary, the very day of the arrival of the first US troops In Saudi Arabia following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. US forces were Invited into the Kingdom by the now-ailing King Fahd, who insisted that the Americans withdraw all their military forces once the threat of Iraqi aggression had ended.
The Americans did not keep. their promise; today, thousands of US military personnel are still based In Saudi Arabia with key operatives inside the Saudi ministries of defence and interior - just as they were in Iran before the fall of the Shah.
One of the latest claims of responsibility - from the so-called 'Liberation Army of the Islamic Sanctuaries' - itself suggests a Saudi source. Egyptian security services have long believed that, while Sudan may be springboard for military operations against them, it is the Saudis who have been the principal financial backers of the Gemaa Islamiya (Island Group), which has attacked police, tourists, Christian villagers and even President Moubarak himself. Saudi money funds the ferociously antifeminist Taliban militia - just as Saudi money was originally poured into Algeria to support the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), whose banning led to the country's savage Internal war."
Fisk discusses the Saudi outcast, Osama bin Laden, now guest of the Taliban in Afghanistan, who has been touted here as a prime suspect. Fiske comments that "what the so-called terrorist experts routinely fail to discuss are the reasons for Muslim frustration: Palestinian dispossession, American domination of the Arab world, Washington's blind sup,port for Israel, the U.S. stranglehold on the Gulf oil market-and the vicious intelligence conflict being played out between America and Muslim groups in the Middle East.
Egyptian 'Islamists' now claim that American Intelligence operatives taught the Egyptian police their increasingly sophisticated torture techniques, just as they once taught the Shah's SAVAK secret police how to torture women (after the revolution, the Iranians found CIA film of these lessons). And 'Islamist' groups have been enraged by America's snatch squads who have, In effect, abducted wanted men from Muslim countries - in past years, from Malaysia, Pakistan, Lebanon and now Albania.
So who In Saudi Arabia leads the resistance to the American presence? Certainly not the three Shia Muslim Saudi& beheaded for bombing the US barracks In Dhahran In 1996, killing 19 Americans. The CIA [was] refused permission to Interview the men before their execution - even the Americans suspect they may have been 'set up' by powerful figures in the Kingdom.
Certainly not bin Laden. Among the more vociferous critics of the US presence is none other than Crown Prince Abdullah. No, he doesn't lead 'Terror I Inc.' Nor does the Saudi government. They don't need to. For Saudi Arabia is metamorphosing Into an anti-American nation in front of our eyes. <endquote>