Apart from the fact that FBI Chief Mueller has said that they absolutely no proof re who hijeked the planes and that the names of the hijackers were all fake identities (as one might expect), information in the public record actually supports the case that without the negligence if not complicity of the US national security apparatus, there is no 9/11. Any group pulling off an operation like that would need to at least heavily infiltrate or be abbeted by critical elements of the national security apparatus. This is not speculation or 'conspiracism' it is the common sense of intelligence experts that is backed up by statements from FBI whistleblowers. I think the Bush-Saud connection is a red herring that seeks to distract from the larger scope of countries and networks involved. Also for Unger to say that the Lewinsky scandal hamstrung the Clinton adminsitration flies in the face of the facts. In fact, the Lewinsky scandal if anything seemed to compel the Clinton administration to 'Wag the Dog' and supposedly go after Al Qeada by boming a pharmeceutical plant in Sudan, bombing alleged Al Qaeda bases in Afghanistan and give Sadaam Hussein a bloody nose. This business about the Saudis and the Bushes is designed muddy the waters, make the Bush's look bad while blaming the Saudis. It is also superficial and avoids taking a harder look at the wider network of people and countries involved in 9-11 that extends past the Saudis.
Joe W.
>From: snit snat <snitilicious at tampabay.rr.com>
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>To: Lame Brained Onanists <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org>
>Subject: [lbo-talk] An interview with Craig Unger Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2004
>02:08:50 -0400
>
>An interview with Craig Unger
>
>
>LO: How would you summarize the relationship between the Bush family and
>the Saudi royal family?
>
>Craig Unger: It's unique. Never before in history has a president of the
>United States -- and I'm really referring to both President Bushes -- has
>had such a close relationship with another foreign power.
>
>Never have they had personal and financial relationships and their public
>policies so deeply tied to another foreign power.
>
>And the Saudis, of course, are not a Western democracy. It's an Islamic
>theocracy. And they've played a huge role in the development of terror.
>
>So, I think there's a piece of logic that has been missing from the
>American conversation about this…I think a strong case can be made that
>without the Saudis, there is no 9/11.
>
>It's not just that 15 out of 19 hijackers were Saudi. The infrastructure of
>Al Qaeda, it's funding, was developed in many ways by Saudis.
>
>That raises the question of: if you're in bed with the Saudis, how can you
>fight a real war on terrorism?
>
>LO: Is it fair and accurate to treat the Saudi royal family as a singular
>entity, or is it more of a dysfunctional family, with one faction
>sympathetic to radical Islamic terror and another faction that's more
>sympathetic to the West?
>
>CU: There are many divisions within the royal family. At the same time, it
>has to accommodate militant clerics.
>
>Certain factions of it -- for example, that led by Prince Nayef, the
>interior minister -- are overtly anti-West, and really lean much more
>towards the militant clerics.
>
>There's no question there are many members of the family who seem to be
>pro-West. Obviously Prince Bandar and Crown Prince Abdullah do.
>
>But the Western face we see that is so much, "these are our allies, they're
>trying to fight terrorism," is very different from the face you see within
>Saudi Arabia.
>
>LO: If the Saudis are this complicit, why is it that Osama Bin Laden wants
>to overthrow them?
>
>CU: Well, he feels they betrayed them.
>
>And I think, by the way, if they were overthrown, it would not be like the
>Shah of Iran being overthrown in 1979.
>
>It would be more likely that someone within the family, like Prince
>Nayef…would take over, who was more accommodating to him.
>
>[Bin Laden] feels very much that the whole jihad against the United States
>and the House of Saud… started…after American troops occupied Saudi Arabia
>during the Gulf War.
>
>And he thought that was a real betrayal and he has felt they're hypocrites
>and obviously he does want to overthrow them.
>
>At the same time, elements of the royal family and the Saudi government
>have been supportive.
>
>And I think things changed enormously in the last year.
>
>In May 2003, you finally saw bombings that really did strike at the royal
>family itself. Before that, most of Al Qaeda's violence was directed at
>Western targets.
>
>LO: So where does the relationship between Bush and Saudis stand now?
>
>CU: It's very volatile and it could be getting towards the breaking point.
>
>[But] what I focus on in my book, is what happened more immediately after
>9/11 and was Bush giving the Saudis a break then.
>
>In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, rather than wage a real war on
>terrorism, he was very accommodating to the Saudis.
>
>And I focus specifically on what I call "The Great Escape", this massive
>operation in which eight airplanes stop in 12 American cities and took 140
>Saudis out of the United States, when I believe we should have been
>interrogating them and seeing what role they would have played…
>
>…You have a time in which no one in the United States can fly. Our skies
>are completely shut down.
>
>You have Prince Bandar meeting with President Bush on the Truman Balcony in
>the White House on September 13. And then suddenly all these planes start
>flying…
>
>…And on the passenger lists, I think the most important name I found was
>Prince Ahmed bin Salman who…is alleged to have ties to Al Qaeda and advance
>knowledge of 9/11.
>
>…I'd love to see the 9/11 Commission investigate why and how…those planes
>left the country. How did they get White House authorization?
>
>LO: What do you think was the Bush Administration's motive to do that?
>
>CU: The Bush Administration denies that these flights took place.
>
>I got the passenger list. I got photos of the interiors. I believe they
>did.
>
>I don't like to speculate as a rule, but all I can suggest is that…Prince
>Bandar's been a friend of the family for 30 years. It doesn't seem to occur
>to them that they could be complicit, even inadvertently, with terrorism.
>
>The Saudis clearly made this request and they acceded without thinking
>about it.
>
>LO: Is there any responsibility that the Clinton Administration holds, in
>not holding the Saudis accountable in his tenure?
>
>CU: Well they were more aggressive against the Saudis.
>
>Certainly there is blame to be laid at the Clinton Administration.
>
>But it really grows mostly out of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, which
>crippled them so much that it…took away the political capital necessary to
>have a really strong response.
>
>They did crack down on the Saudi banking system…
>
>… the National Commercial Bank, which was the biggest bank in Saudi Arabia,
>was removed from the hands of Khalid bin Mahfouz and was nationalized, and
>it had been the target of Clinton Administration attempts to investigate it
>for allegedly funneling money to terrorist groups.
>
>So they had some success there.
>
>[But] when there were bombings in '95 and '96… suspects were often beheaded
>[by the Saudis] before the FBI could interview them.
>
>So the Clinton Administration found the Saudis terribly uncooperative.
>
>LO: There seems to be a neoconservative component of the Bush
>Administration that is virulently anti-Saudi. How does their presence
>square with the Bush Family's close ties with the Saudis?
>
>CU: I think a lot of them, privately, are very critical of the Bushes,
>whether they'll go public with that or not.
>
>I convey a problem, in the sense that, if they're so anti-Saudi, how is
>that their patrons are in bed with Saudis?
>
>I think this has been a continuing debate within the Bush Administration,
>and it's going to be very interesting to see how it will play out…it is
>potentially a real split within the Right.
>
>LO: Are the neoconservatives right in that we should be agitating for some
>sort of regime change in Saudi Arabia?
>
>CU: I don't think it's that simple, and that could be very dangerous.
>
>As deeply, deeply flawed as the House of Saud is, whoever replaces it is
>likely to be far more anti-American.
>
>And we have a very, very delicate problem at hand.
>
>The question I raise is, can we maintain any sort of real relationship that
>serves American interests, in terms of serving our strategic needs for oil,
>but still crack down on them in terms of terrorism?
>
>LO: So what is the solution?
>
>CU: It's a very tough line to walk.
>
>But we had a pact with Saudi Arabia in a relationship that's gone back 40
>years… we get oil, we sell them weapons, and part of the pact was we didn't
>look too closely at what was really going on in Saudi Arabia.
>
>I think that part of the pact -- that we turn a blind eye -- …should have
>come to an end long before 9/11.
>
>And the question is, why the Bush Administration didn't do that if they
>were really against terror?
>
>That's the question I raise in the book.
>
>I found…over a thirty year period, how much money went from the House of
>Saud to companies through contracts and investments…in which the Bushes and
>their allies had a major position.
>
>I found a total of 1.4 billion dollars.
>
>What I'm really suggesting is this is not a conspiracy so much as business,
>1.4 billion dollars worth of business.
>
>And when you're in business, one of the first rules of thumb is you don't
>bite the hand that feeds you.
>
>So I believe the Bushes really turned a blind eye to what was going on in
>Saudi Arabia.
>
>At a certain point, you start saying well wait a minute, this terrorism is
>coming out of your country and you're killing Americans and we've got to do
>something about it, that's absolutely not acceptable.
>
>Instead, what I think happened is, while the war on terror had really begun
>in the 90s, the Bushes were in the private sector and they were doing
>investments after investments through the Carlyle Group in Saudi Arabia.
>
>They were raising money from the Saudis. They were getting arms contracts
>from the Saudis, while Osama bin Laden was growing in power.
>
>And they were doing business with people who, indirectly at least, at the
>very least through sins of omission, were allowing the rise of terrorism.
>
>http://www.liberaloasis.com/unger
>
>"We're in a fucking stagmire."
>
> --Little Carmine, 'The Sopranos'
>
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