posted on August 27, 2003 06:55:26 PM new
I dont see how they could be good people or our friends when they fund their Wohabi schools and they have such an evil opressive regime.
Theres like 2 people in that kingdom that Osama hates.
[ edited by bigcitycollectables on Aug 27, 2003 07:00 PM ]
posted on August 27, 2003 07:05:34 PM new
And you are going to base those sanctions on "indications"? Good lord, even rapists are held to a higher standad of proof than that. There is a big difference between giving money to a charity and knowingly giving money to a charity that is actually funnelling money to terrorists. Do you know how every penny of your charitble donations are spent? Then thread they have found traced Saudi donations to a group that donated to a group that turned out to be a supporter. Considering that the Saudi Royal Family contributes millions every year it's not surprising. The most damning contribution was one made by the wife of an ambassador, who believed she was contributing to an educational charity.
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Men Are Like Grapes. If You Stomp on Them and Keep Them in the Dark Long Enough, They Might Turn Into Something That You Would Take to Dinner
posted on August 27, 2003 07:13:40 PM new
The information is there. To knowingly retreat in the face of Saudi terrorism is a victory for all terrorists and only encourages them to commit further acts against us. To leave their main source of funds extant enables then to carry out their nefarious deeds and threatens our way of life. We cannot allow the world to view us as cowards we must take our retribution on these despicable denizens of the desert before they invade our shores yet again.
To not do so would make us seem like a nation of weenies in the eyes of the world, the laughingstock of the international community.
Friends don't let friends vote Republican!
[ edited by davebraun on Aug 27, 2003 07:14 PM ]
posted on August 27, 2003 07:19:51 PM new
If you a truly interested in the relationships between Bin Lauden, The Fahds, and the Saudi people - read this. It is an interesting piece that describes the differnce of opinions between the people, the ideologies and their goals and how in reality, US and Western boycotting/sanctions would only serve to further bin Laudens goals.
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Bin Laden's secret goal is to overthrow the House of Saud (From London Daily telegraph)
Contrary to much of the conventional wisdom about Osama bin Laden, the Saudi fugitive is hardly a madman. In fact, he has developed a stunningly deceptive regional war calculus that stands a reasonable chance of success.
Despite the massive build-up of allied forces, bin Laden's strategy depends on a set of well-conceived geopolitical assumptions that he fervently believes can turn Western military capability to his strategic advantage.
His strongest belief is that Saudi Arabia can be brought to its knees, the House of Saud deposed and a new theocracy, based on his version of a pure and uncontaminated Islam, can rise to power in the Arabian peninsula. Hoping to seize state power as Ayatollah Khomeini did in Iran in 1979, bin Laden plans to use Afghanistan as a staging ground for self-declared leadership in exile. The overriding goal is to return to Saudi Arabia in triumph and put an end to the existing regime.
Such an accomplishment would dramatically tilt the Middle Eastern balance of power in favour of radical forces led by Iraq, Iran, Syria and, of course, the global terrorist network. Even before the attacks on New York and Washington, bin Laden's power was felt at the highest level of the Saudi regime. Several days before the September 11 attacks, the Saudi chief of intelligence, who held
that post for 25 years, Prince Turki, brother of the Saudi foreign minister, was abruptly fired from his post.
Turki was hardly a man to be dismissed in such fashion; he was responsible for Saudi affairs with Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the Saudi liaison with American intelligence services. It seems that Turki was the first high-ranking victim of a power struggle between two competing factions in the Saudi royal family over how to deal with American requests to neutralise bin Laden. Turki's removal from authority portended further upheaval within the ruling elite of the House of Saud. Only two weeks later, and a week after the attack on America, reliable reports strongly suggest that the ailing King Fahd flew to Geneva with a massive entourage and now remains secluded behind the heavily protected walls of private estates registered in the name of his European business partners.
To bin Laden, King Fahd's departure can only be considered a victory in his campaign to rid Saudi Arabia of the contamination of American rule through their surrogates in the House of Saud. With King Fahd's health maintained on a 24-hour medical watch, and the Saudi royal family divided between the conservative, religious faction of Crown Prince Abdullah and that of the defence minister, King Fahd's full brother, Prince Sultan, Saudi Arabia's future political course and, with it, the stability of the Gulf is about to be decided.
Bin Laden has waited for this since 1991, when he was cast aside by the Saudis for offering his fighting forces in defence of the kingdom against Saddam Hussein. Bin Laden is intimately aware of
the fragility of the Saudi power structure.
He is the scion of a family, led by his father, Mohamed, that, in the mid-1960s, engineered the transfer of the Saudi throne away from the corrupt King Saud to the pious King Faisal. In effect, Mohamed bin Laden was a king-maker and his son grew up with an intimate knowledge of the personal proclivities and weaknesses of the senior members of the ruling elite.
He came to despise what he saw as a corrupt and malignant power structure indistinguishable from the American political system. Undeterred by deference and loyalty, he understood that the legitimacy of the Saudi royal family could be undermined by championing an alternative, indigenous religious ideology. Large numbers of young disaffected Saudis felt increasingly alienated by a regime that could neither defend itself by its own means nor maintain a standard of living that has dropped from $18,000 per capita in the 1980s to $6,000 in 2000.
With a deteriorating economic and political environment, bin Laden may decide that the time is approaching to activate the thousands of Saudi dissidents in the kingdom who form the core of his
support, and thereby exploit the schism between Abdullah and Sultan to launch the destabilisation of the Saudi monarchy. Militant protests and even subversive military action targeting oil terminals and pipelines, as well as attacks on civilian and military American assets in Saudi Arabia, could disrupt American war plans and force them to think again about targeting bin Laden, the Taliban and regional terrorist networks.
It is this scenario of internal Saudi confusion and political instability that bin Laden considers the soft underbelly of American strategy. The more it is seen that the Saudi royal family can no longer maintain internal cohesion and consensus within the royal family, the greater the probability that Saudi religious dissidents will heed the call of bin Laden and rise up against the regime.
Such a scenario provides a clear escape route for bin Laden from the closing ring of fire around Afghanistan. Should he be able to escape and seek refuge among the thousands of supporters in Saudi Arabia, he will no doubt be greeted as a Mahdi, whose arrival on the sacred soil of Saudi Arabia will mark a dramatically new geopolitical landscape.
The radicalisation of Iran by the ayatollahs pales by comparison. Possibilities of widespread regional conflict may emerge as the latest military equipment and the vast reserves of Saudi oil become available to facilitate bin Laden's strategic goal - to destabilise and undermine the Western economic system.
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Men Are Like Grapes. If You Stomp on Them and Keep Them in the Dark Long Enough, They Might Turn Into Something That You Would Take to Dinner
posted on August 27, 2003 07:35:43 PM new
Anyways my point is this war on terror is a sham. These wars we are about to be forced into have nothing to do with terroism.
Its all about the Neoconservatives Project For The New American Century.
posted on August 28, 2003 08:48:07 AM new
A very interesting history and probably one of the most complete timelines of events relative to 9/11 can be found here.
"This update adds something I've been meaning to add for a long time: a new color thread relating to the erosion of civil liberties and the erection of a police state. It is becoming increasingly obvious that one major and far from necessary effect of 9/11 has been these dramatic changes inside the US, so they're a necessary part of this timeline. Unfortunately, the many new entries on this theme are but a small part of the entries I have material to do, so look for more of these entries in the next update. This new theme now has its own page. There's quite a lot of material on the theme of US global domination as well, which seems especially appropriate as the war on Iraq continues. Thanks again to Melissa Kavonic for proofreading."
posted on August 28, 2003 07:21:54 PM new
BCC - Enemies of the American people.....not according to Wesley Clark...he said nice things about three of them you have pictured [in the link I provided]. LOL
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And then there's Helen...our most staunch 'don't hurt the innocent people' with our bombs, anti-war poster......furthering the cause of a 4 Star General. No he'd NEVER think of bombing anyone. LOL That really takes the cake. Never thought I'd live to see this day. ROFLMHO Good for you Helen.
[ edited by Linda_K on Aug 28, 2003 07:23 PM ]
[ edited by bigcitycollectables on Aug 28, 2003 03:00 PM ]
[ edited by Linda_K on Aug 28, 2003 07:23 PM ]