I doubt that Ill be able to keep it up, but I was thinking that it would be cool if every night I could suggest one article for you to print out and take to bed. It would be kind of like Oprahs book club, only every day and less expensive So, todays article is from US News and World Report. Its about the Saudi government and their financing of terrorist operations worldwide. While I think we all know that now, this article does a good job of tracking back the history and identifying points in time when red flags should have been raised. Sadly, red flags often were raised, only to be ignored.
Here are a few of the claims that are substantiated in the report.
The charities were part of an extraordinary $70 billion Saudi campaign to spread their fundamentalist Wahhabi sect worldwide. The money helped lay the foundation for hundreds of radical mosques, schools, and Islamic centers that have acted as support networks for the jihad movement, officials say.
U.S. intelligence officials knew about Saudi Arabia’s role in funding terrorism by 1996, yet for years Washington did almost nothing to stop it. Examining the Saudi role in terrorism, a senior intelligence analyst says, was “virtually taboo.” Even after the embassy bombings in Africa, moves by counterterrorism officials to act against the Saudis were repeatedly rebuffed by senior staff at the State Department and elsewhere who felt that other foreign policy interests outweighed fighting terrorism.
Saudi largess encouraged U.S. officials to look the other way, some veteran intelligence officers say. Billions of dollars in contracts, grants, and salaries have gone to a broad range of former U.S. officials who had dealt with the Saudis: ambassadors, CIA station chiefs, even cabinet secretaries.
On second thought, maybe this won’t make the best bedtime reading. I should probably leave this kind of stuff to Oprah. There’s too much pressure.
