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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."
The government, the president is siding with Saudi Arabia over the 9/11 families.
Is anybody really shocked by this? Obama has made it a habit of failing to live up to his campaign promise to "run the most transparent administration in American history."
I remember when he first ran and got elected. I thought, "I don't agree with a lot of his policy ideas, but if he lives up to his word on just that one point by making things transparent, I would be impressed and he will have proved that he's not a politician's politician." I don't think that promise even made it to the end of his inauguration speech. Oh well.
The bigger problem is, this is a ridiculous bill - you can't let all of your citizens individually pick fights with foreign countries. Laws and lawsuits are too inflexible to allow for real diplomacy. Some politicians are going to recognize that, see that this bill has no chance of passing, and vocally support it - saying that those politicians who oppose it are corrupt and selling out American citizens to foreign interests. There's no risk to these opportunist politicians, since the bill is never going to get passed / signed anyway, so they're free to grandstand to their hearts' content.
'Need them desperately' for what?
For funding more ultra-conservative Sunni Salafist/Wahhabist madrassas and mosques around the world to provide the cannon fodder for Al Qaeda and ISIS?
For bombing Yemeni Shiites, and further destabilising/arming Sunni fundamentalists (Taliban and ISIS/AQIR) in Iraq and Afghanistan?
For providing the majority of the hijackers in the World trade centre bombing?
For trying to trash the US shale oil industry (which has made it energy independent, and for the first time in 70 years a net exporter of oil) through pricing that only it can afford and still make a profit off, as well as renewable energy sources?
For enlisting the US to defend Saudi interests (in Iraq, in Kuwait, in the Gulf States, in Yemen) and expend its blood and treasure whilst the Saudis sit pretty?
The Saudis have been bleeding the US for years ... why are they so 'desperately needed'? Seems to me that the 'approved enemies' ... Iran and the like haven't been taking single uS life, or funding any terror against US citizens, but 'our friends the Saudis' have been mixed up one way or the other in ALL the grief that has come the US's way from the Middle East.
I'm guessing US diplomats can probably give us a really good reason for the unflinching support of the Kingdom ... but I sure as hell can't think of one.
"The US ally Saudi Arabia"
I have never understood this term.
If there is need to preface every mention of "Saudi Arabia" with "our ally", then your BS alarm should go off.
How often do we hear: ..." ..." ..." ..."
"Today our ally Iceland
"Today our ally France
"Today our ally Germany
"Today our ally Spain
The answer is never
You need to get a Calendar and some history books, because the US Politicians have been in bed with the Saudis since I was a kid in the 70s. Oddly we have a "travel at your own risk" warning for anyone going there, they are one of the most oppressive tyrannies on Earth, have a worse human rights record than China and close to the DPRK, and have a history of undercutting US businesses attempting to compete in the Oil business.
Did we know about the Saudis and 9/11? Well the Government gave people a fairy tale and the public eats it up. Nobody wants to believe that their own government would fuck them over, so the delusion is incredible. The brain washing around the event is still very strong, with the populace having an irrationally strong emotional reaction to any mention of 9/11, FDNY, or the Twin Towers.
Be prepared for nothing to happen and nothing to change. Remember, if you question anything the Government tells you about anything related to 9/11 you are a "Conspiracy theorist". (queue the *dun dun dun* music).
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
>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 *