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Blackmail: Obama Under Pressure To Declassify Secret 9/11 Report (cbsnews.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Families of Sept. 11, 2001 terror attack victims are pressuring Obama to support legislation allowing them to sue the Saudi government. A recent "60 Minutes" investigation has stirred up some controversy by looking at possible links between Saudi officials and the 9/11 hijackers, which revealed that new information may be hiding in a classified section of a Congressional report. The Saudis said in a report in the New York Times that they might sell "up to $750 billion in treasury securities and other assets in the United States" if the bill passes. The bill in question is being considered by Congress and it would permit lawsuits against countries that "contribute material support or resources" for "acts of terrorism." Van Auken, who is among those convinced that the 9/11 hijackers were helped by Saudi agents, said, "It feels like blackmail. The government, the president is siding with Saudi Arabia over the 9/11 families. If someone you loved was murdered and the person was just able to go away Scott free, would you be okay with that? I don't think anybody would." Last week the royal embassy of Saudi Arabia said, "The 9/11 commission confirmed that there is no evidence that the government of Saudi Arabia supported or funded Al Qaeda."
Let the regime posture and threaten all it wants. They're in enough trouble already with gas prices in the toilet, a state budget about to collapse, and a discontent/unemployed population that is chomping at the bit for reform of the ruling classes....
It is that lawsuits could be brought against them in the US that they would then have to defend in US courts or face the possibility of their US assets being frozen. I don't think they would want to risk that.
Ultimately what is the goal of these lawsuits? Even if they get to a point at which it is discovered and comprehensively proven that the Saudi government did have some involvement in it what happens then? Is the US going to mount an incursion into a sovereign nation to arrest Saudi nationals on the basis of a US court ruling? Are the families just wanting an admission of guilt from somebody? Or are they chasing a financial payout?
Sure they want the guilty parties held responsible but even assuming that is some senior Saudi government official and it is proven in a US court, how will justice be served?
What difference does it make. The writing is on the wall for Arabia and the shite House of Saud and it's fundamentalists autocratic religious ways. They will be selling those assets to pay the bill for the civil suits. Basically the tip is on, that as revenues falls and those insane egotist continue to make huge egoistic demands of their economy will end up bankrupting the place added into this a violent revolution bursting force after decades of oppression. So the idea is to, let loose with civil suits to snare those Saudi assets, before they are wasted propping up that autocracy. You can bet not only will that information be released but as the court cases kick off, so will other secrets be leaked to ensure their success (NATO has a direct wire into Arabia's communications infrastructure via member nations corporations efforts). There is not a country the Saudi's have left untouched with their promotion of what is called 'Wahhabist Death Cult' and the resulting conflicts it has produced, this will be a global mass pile on and Obama might make some noises (to ensure as many assets as possible remain accessible for a long as possible) but his backers are demanding the right to strip mine offshore Saudi family assets. Arabia will be paying the price for those Saud egoists who choose to name the country after themselves, talk about massively bloated egos. Time to pay the piper and don't they deserve it.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
While is no argument over the weak and incompetent leadership for America, I would argue that the so-called 'leadership' of many foreign countries (not all, many) are as weak, as stupid, as incompetent as Obama
Take Angela Merkel, of Germany, for rexample --- that broad single-headedly opened the floodgate allowing the flood of millions of moslem migrants into the European continent
Take Xi Jin Pin of China, for example --- that guy tried to flex his muscle in South China Sea, only to be met with shit on his own face
Take David Cameron of England, for example -- that guy went to China with hat in hand hoping for handouts, only to have the so-called 'nuclear power plant' halting its construction for an indefinite time
Yes, our so-called 'leader' is weak, stupid, incompetent, but what makes America great is not only the person in the White House, but the FUNDAMENTALS of America
I am an immigrant of China, and I do business all over the world. I get to compare different characteristics of different countries, and I can tell you, so far, not even Japan, an island nation with millions of patents issued to them, can compete against America in terms of fundamentals
True, our education system is in shit
True, our young generations are mostly ignorant brats
True, there are a lot of things in America which has broken down
But still, fundamtnatlly America is still the strongest --- not even China, the so-called 'new power house' can match the United States (and I am from China, I know China very very well)
This ain't a 'three bag full' theory', btw
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Obama has made it a habit of failing to live up to his campaign promise...
To be fair, it isn't only Obama. By now, Americans ought to have caught on to the fact that all politicians promise way more than they can realistically achieve. and as a consequence, they will without fail disappoint people. Perhaps enough people are now tired of this situation and want to change it, but will inevitably take much more effort and cost everybody much more than they imagine. All of the part of the establishment will have to be dismantled in some way to allow something better to grow up and replace it; and the danger is that you either end up with the same old crap with a fresh layer of paint, or something worse - a dictatorship, maybe.
We see much the same in Europe - in UK, people are listening to a guy like Jeremy Corbyn - not a hugely charismatic fellow, and his support for EU is clearly lukewarm at best, but I think that very fact rings true with people, because they feel the same way: nobody likes EU a lot, but staying is still better than leaving. I don't get to vote in the American election, but if I may offer a bit of advice, it would be this: whatever you do, think carefully and realistically about it first. Breaking things in a fit of anger is easy, building them up again afterwards is most definitely not. And who knows, after thinking carefully, perhaps you still find that you need to break things - but then you will know why and how, and what to do after that.
To get back to the topic: how much of a chance does one man have against an establishment that most certainly doesn't want him to succeed? I don't really know another country where big business can steer the public opinion to such a degree that even those who would benefit from a new initiative like public healthcare, are turned against it. In a climate like that, how much could Obama actually achieve? I'm not the least surprised that he is now trying to ram as many executive orders down the establishment's throat as humanly possible; at least it will take whoever comes next a while to unravel, and who knows, maybe some of it will survive.
Article you linked explains the families are upset Obama lied to them and is continuing to lie to them about their family member deaths.
Perhaps you should READ the article you link before lying about it while you post. I wasn't going to read article, but remembered by liberal argument tactic. If they post something that can be factually checked, check it out. They usually lie every singe time, and you did.
Well, I think you forgot about the rest of the world. Every person who flies WORLDWIDE pays for it. I work in Brussels and due to these stupidities (Iraq), we have now soldiers on the streets. :00 and not later.
At this moment I am STILL more afraid of the traffic. I do not feel more or less safe, yet I have the Metro drive still 22
I have my backpack searched at random.
So yes, we all pay. Each and everyone pays. Thanks Bush. Let's see what the next lunatic will do that people vote for.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
>Plenty of freedom fighters around the world and throughout history refrain from inciting terror among civilians.
There's probably nobody in the world who strikes more terror into the hearts of civilians than the US Military. There's a reason Noam Chomsky keeps pointing out that the unwritten part of the FBI's definition of "terrorism" must be "unless it's us doing it".
The Iraq civilian death toll is well over a hundred thousand. Nobody even knows exactly how many people have been killed by drones in Pakistan but we do know that a lot of them were civilians - often civilians who just happened to park next to a target that may or may not be a legitimate target (we can't really tell if they are because we don't get to know who they are).
How many civilians got killed in Libya ? What about Afghanistan ? And all that is before we even consider the impact of having neighbourhoods flattened - everything you built up over a lifetime of labour blasted to smithereens in seconds along with your neighbors...
In a grand irony - there may be no more effective way to create terrorists than the war on terror. Look what Americans have done over the most little of imagined slights by the US government. McVeigh - the recent invasion of Vanilla ISIS in Oregon - and that's over such stupid things as "having to pay to let your cattle graze on federal land". Now imagine what it does to a community when the neighbourhood gets flattened by a bombing raid, children and grandmothers killed, homes destroyed, food and income lost. It is just about a statistical impossibility for ANY of those bombing raids to have NOT made SOMEBODY angry enough to want to blow Americans up at any cost.
Odd... I remember saying that in 2001. I remember saying that the dumbest idea in history is the Bush suggestion that you can rid the world of terrorists by killing all the terrorists. It was always going to lead to there being more terrorists than before he started... I wish I had been wrong.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *