Obama Knows 9/11 Was Linked to Saudi Arabia – but It Has Oil

President Barack Obama shakes hands with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman at the start of a bilateral meeting at Erga Palace in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in 2015. (photo: Reuters)

 

Robert Fisk | The Independent | Reader Supported News | April 20, 2016

Saudi Arabia’s million barrel a day output, plus its strategic location in the Middle East, means the West must pay obeisance to the regional head-choppers

 

oor old Barack. Off he goes to Riyadh to talk to his so-called ally, Saudi Arabia. The Sunni Wahhabi kingdom long ago run out of patience with the US president, who befriended Shiite Iran and who failed to destroy the Alawite (read: Shiite) regime in Syria. So why is Obama even bothering coming to the Gulf? Does he have any friends left among the kings, emirs and princes of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the Emirates and Oman?

Obama won’t be entering the Saudi lions’ den. The Saudis were never as brave as lions – which is why they let the decidedly unprincely Osama bin Laden lead the Arab legion in Afghanistan – but the little cubs now trying to run the country are very angry.

The ambitious, ruthless deputy crown prince and defence minister, Mohamed bin Salman, launched the kingdom’s crazed war against the Houthi rebels in Yemen last year, convinced (without evidence) that Iran was arming them. The young Saudi foreign minister Adel al-Jubair – brilliant former Washington ambassador, a man with a silken, dangerously eloquent tongue – has no hesitation in denouncing Western weakness.

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Congressional Republicans Deliver Early Christmas Gift to Big Oil, Exxon and Koch Brothers

Charles and David Koch. (photo: Fox News)

 

Michael Brune | EcoWatch | Reader Supported News | December 18, 2015

oday the U.S. Congress approved a trillion dollar omnibus spending bill alongside a major tax overhaul.

The centerpiece of this bill, lifting the crude-oil export ban, is an outrage. At the same time, Democrats successfully secured a number of important victories for clean energy, public lands and our climate during hard fought negotiations.

This early Christmas gift to Big Oil, ExxonMobil and the Koch brothers from Congressional Republicans will send American jobs overseas, rip up more iconic American landscapes to pump oil that nobody needs, and increase the carbon pollution that’s driving the climate crisis.

Unfortunately, Congressional Republicans have yet to recognize that the entire world, including even the biggest oil producing states like Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, and Russia just agreed to set an expiration date on fossil fuels and power the world with clean energy.

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Dear Media: Stop Using the Term ‘Radicalized’ Unless You Apply It to White Christian Extremists, Too

Michelangelo Signorile | Huffington Post | December 11, 2015

The double standard can’t be more jarring: For days television networks and media outlets have been parroting the FBI in telling us how the San Bernadino shooters were “radicalized” at this or that time, or speculating on their “radicalization” and how it occurred. This terminology, when applied exclusively to terrorism inspired by a distortion of Islam, is discriminatory, and furthers the very anti-Muslim bigotry that Donald Trump and much of the GOP presidential field promote. The implication is that there are two kinds of Muslim: Radicalized – even if there’s an acknowledgement that they represent a small minority, though often there’s no such acknowledgment — and non-radicalized.

The further implication is that any Muslim can become radicalized if x, y, and z happens — a trip to Saudi Arabia, a text message with this or that individual, engaging with certain people on a Facebook page, etc. And yet, for several weeks not only have many in the media been reluctant to label Robert Dear, who carried out the Planned Parenthood attack in Colorado Springs, as a terrorist, but there’s no discussion of him being “radicalized” by extremist Christianity. He expressed support for the Army of God, a Christian extremist terrorist group that has taken responsibility for the killings of doctors who provide abortions and whose members have killed others in the name of stopping abortion, such as Atlanta Olympic bomber Eric Rudolph, who also bombed a lesbian bar in that city. Dear declared in court yesterday that he is a “warrior for the babies.” How much more radicalized can you get?

Dylan Roof became immersed in the deep cult of white supremacy that has been nurtured by groups like the Ku Klux Klan — which also describes itself as a Christian group — and many other groups for decades in this country, and surely he was radicalized to the point of carrying out a massacre in a South Carolina church. And yet, no one in the media has used the word radicalized to describe him.

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VIDEO: Manufacturing Terror: How Saudi Arabia Helped Create Islamic State

Truthdig | November 16, 2915

In light of the latest terrorist attacks in Paris, we take a look back at an interview with CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou, who singled out Saudi Arabia for its role in creating radical extremism in the Middle East.

During the September interview with Mint Press News, Kiriakou—the 2015 winner of the PEN Center’s “First Amendment Award”—explains that the United States’ relationship with the House of Saud started with Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1943, who declared at the time that the defense of Saudi Arabia was vital for the defense of the United States. A deal was struck in which Saudi Arabia gave the U.S. control of its airspace and access to its oil fields. In return, the Saudi government gained control over the oil market and access to U.S. military hardware, Kiriakou explains.

Since the deal was made, Saudi Arabia has been behind the rise of radical groups such as Islamic State, Kiriakou says.

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Rogue States and Nuclear Dangers

Noam Chomsky. (photo: Va Shiva)

 

Noam Chomsky | Noam Chomsky’s Website | Reader Supported News | October 2, 2015

hroughout the world there is great relief and optimism about the nuclear deal reached in Vienna between Iran and the P5+1 nations, the five veto-holding members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany. Most of the world apparently shares the assessment of the U.S. Arms Control Association that “the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action establishes a strong and effective formula for blocking all of the pathways by which Iran could acquire material for nuclear weapons for more than a generation and a verification system to promptly detect and deter possible efforts by Iran to covertly pursue nuclear weapons that will last indefinitely.”

There are, however, striking exceptions to the general enthusiasm: the United States and its closest regional allies, Israel and Saudi Arabia. One consequence of this is that U.S. corporations, much to their chagrin, are prevented from flocking to Tehran along with their European counterparts. Prominent sectors of U.S. power and opinion share the stand of the two regional allies and so are in a state of virtual hysteria over “the Iranian threat.” Sober commentary in the United States, pretty much across the spectrum, declares that country to be “the gravest threat to world peace.” Even supporters of the agreement here are wary, given the exceptional gravity of that threat. After all, how can we trust the Iranians with their terrible record of aggression, violence, disruption, and deceit?

Opposition within the political class is so strong that public opinion has shifted quickly from significant support for the deal to an even split. Republicans are almost unanimously opposed to the agreement. The current Republican primaries illustrate the proclaimed reasons. Senator Ted Cruz, considered one of the intellectuals among the crowded field of presidential candidates, warns that Iran may still be able to produce nuclear weapons and could someday use one to set off an Electro Magnetic Pulse that “would take down the electrical grid of the entire eastern seaboard” of the United States, killing “tens of millions of Americans.”

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Obama’s Fateful Indecision

Barack Obama. (photo: Pete Souza/White House)

Robert Parry | Consortium News | Reader Supported News | April 7, 2015

With Israel and Saudi Arabia siding with the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda versus Iran and its allies, President Obama faces a critical decision – whether to repudiate those old allies and cooperate with Iran or watch as Sunni terrorist groups possibly take control of a major country in the Mideast, writes Robert Parry.

he foreign policy quandary facing President Barack Obama is that America’s traditional allies in the Middle East – Israel and Saudi Arabia – along with Official Washington’s powerful neocons have effectively sided with Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State out of a belief that Iran represents a greater threat to Israeli and Saudi interests.

But what that means for U.S. interests is potentially catastrophic. If the Islamic State continues its penetration toward Damascus in league with Al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front and topples the Syrian government, the resulting slaughter of Christians, Shiites and other religious minorities – as well as the risk of a major new terrorist base in the heart of the Middle East – could force the United States into a hopeless new war that could drain the U.S. Treasury and drive the nation into a chaotic and dangerous decline.

To avoid this calamity, Obama would have to throw U.S. support fully behind the embattled regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, precipitate a break with Israel and Saudi Arabia, and withstand a chorus of condemnations from influential neocon pundits, Republican politicians and hawkish Democrats. Influenced by Israeli propaganda, all have pushed for ousting Assad in a “regime change.”

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Saudis Said to Aid Israeli Plan to Bomb Iran

Saudi prince Bandar bin Sultan (left) and Saudi king Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud (right). (photo: Press TV)

Robert Parry | Consortium News | Reader Supported News | February 26, 2015

As the Obama administration is rushing to complete a nuclear agreement with Iran and reduce regional tensions, the Israeli media is reporting on a deal with Saudi Arabia to let Israeli warplanes transit Saudi airspace en route to bombing Iran, reports Robert Parry.

ccording to an Israeli media report, Saudi Arabia has agreed to let Israeli warplanes fly over Saudi territory to save fuel while attacking Iranian nuclear sites, the latest indication of how the two former enemies have developed a behind-the-scenes alliance that is reshaping geopolitics in the Middle East.

“The Saudi authorities are completely coordinated with Israel on all matters related to Iran,” a European official in Brussels told Israel’s Channel 2 in a report broadcast on Tuesday and described in other Israeli media outlets.

Riyadh’s only condition was that Israel make some progress in peace talks with the Palestinians, a stipulation that may be mostly cosmetic so the Saudis can save face with other Arab states without really interfering with an Israeli flyover to strike Iran.

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Saudi Arabia’s Tyrant King Misremembered as Man of Peace

American presidents have long fostered close relations with Saudi leaders, like King Abdullah (pictured). (photo: Wikimedia Commons)

ALSO SEE: Saudi King Abdullah Was Not a Benevolent Dictator, He Was a Dictator

 

ALSO SEE: Americans Volunteer Themselves to Take 100 Lashes Each for Saudi Blogger

Murtaza Hussain | The Intercept | Reader Supported News | January 23, 2015

fter nearly 20 years as de facto ruler of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah ibn-Abdulaziz al-Saud died last night at the age of 90. Abdullah, who took power after his predecessor King Fahd suffered a stroke in 1995, ruled as absolute monarch of a country which protected American interests but also sowed strife and extremism throughout the Middle East and the world.

In a statement last night Senator John McCain eulogized Abdullah as “a vocal advocate for peace, speaking out against violence in the Middle East”. John Kerry described the late monarch as “a brave partner in fighting violent extremism” and “a proponent of peace”. Not to be outdone, Vice President Joe Biden released a statement mourning Abdullah and announced that he would be personally leading a presidential delegation to offer condolences on his passing.

It’s not often that the unelected leader of a country which publicly flogs dissidents and beheads people for sorcery wins such glowing praise from American officials. Even more perplexing, perhaps, have been the fawning obituaries in the mainstream press which have faithfully echoed this characterization of Abdullah as a benign and well-intentioned man of peace.

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Bipartisan Effort to Obtain Report on Saudi Role in 9/11 Attacks

George W. Bush with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. (photo: AP)

CBS News | Reader Supported News | January 9, 2015

awmakers and some family members of those killed in the 9/11 attacks are pushing for a joint congressional report issued in the aftermath of the attacks to be declassified.

Congressmen Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) and Walter Jones (R-N.C.) spoke to CBSN about their mission to declassify the 28-page report which raises questions about the relationship Saudi Arabia may have had with the 9/11 hijackers. The pages are part of the larger 9/11 report released a decade ago.

“There is no security reason in declassifying this information,” said Rep. Jones. “The 9/11 families and the American people have a right to see the 28-pages and then make the decision for themselves.”

The administrations of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama refuse to declassify the report for national security reasons

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Who Profits From Our New War? Inside NSA and Private Contractors’ Secret Plans

Northrop Grumman test pilots prepare to taxi the Navy X-47B drone, to be launched off the USS George H.W. Bush. (photo: Steve Helber/AP)

Tim Shorrock| Salon | Reader Supported News |September 24 2014

A massive war operation is being waged to track and kill ISIS — and it’s a lot more than cruise missiles

massive, $7.2 billion Army intelligence contract signed just 10 days ago underscores the central role to be played by the National Security Agency and its army of private contractors in the unfolding air war being carried out by the United States and its Gulf States allies against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

That war was greatly expanded Monday night when U.S. forces launched a “mix of fighter, bomber, remotely-piloted aircraft and Tomahawk” cruise missiles against ISIS targets in Syria. The Central Command said the strikes were led by the United States with support from Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

INSCOM’s “global intelligence support” contract will place the contractors at the center of this fight. It was unveiled on Sept. 12 by the U.S. Army’s Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM), one of the largest military units that collects signals intelligence for the NSA.

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