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Congress rejects Obama veto of 9/11 bill, in first override of presidency

September 28, 2016

Congress rejects Obama veto of 9/11 bill, in first override of presidency, Fox News, September 28, 2016

(House 348 to 77 for override. — DM)

Congress on Wednesday overwhelmingly rejected President Obama’s veto of a bipartisan bill letting families of Sept. 11 victims sue the Saudi Arabian government, in the first successful veto override of Obama’s presidency.

Marking a significant defeat for the White House, the House ensured the bill will become law after voting 348-77 to override Wednesday afternoon. This followed a 97-1 vote hours earlier in the Senate.

Despite last-ditch warnings from the Obama administration that the legislation could hurt national security and was “badly misguided,” lawmakers dismissed the concerns.

“This bill is about respecting the voices and rights of American victims,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., speaking on the Senate floor moments before Wednesday’s vote in that chamber, pushed back hard on Saudi government objections to the legislation.

“It’s very simple. If the Saudis were culpable, they should be held accountable. If they had nothing to do with 9/11, they have nothing to fear,” Schumer said.

Lawmakers in both chambers needed to muster a two-thirds majority to override, and did so easily. The lone “no” vote in the Senate was Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

With elections just over a month away, many lawmakers were reluctant to oppose a measure backed by 9/11 families who say they are still seeking justice 15 years after the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. A group of senators pledged to find ways to improve the measure during a post-election, lame-duck session of Congress.

Despite an expectation that Congress would override, the White House made a last-ditch attempt to fight it. In a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Reid, Obama warned the bill could cause chaos in U.S. foreign affairs, as other countries would use the measure to justify the creation of ways to target “U.S. policies and activities that they oppose.”

“As a result, our nation and its armed forces, State Department, intelligence officials and others may find themselves subject to lawsuits in foreign courts.” Obama wrote in a letter delivered Tuesday.

But Cornyn, one of the bill’s leading proponents, dismissed Obama’s concerns as “unpersuasive.” Cornyn, the Senate’s No. 2 Republican, and other supporters said the bill is narrowly tailored and applies only to acts of terrorism that occur on U.S. soil.

The Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, or JASTA, moved to the floor of the Senate in May and passed by voice vote. The bill cleared the House earlier this month, also by voice vote.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter, in a letter Monday to a senior member of Congress, said he’s sympathetic to the intent of the measure. But the legislation could lead to the public disclosure of American secrets and even undercut counterterrorism efforts by sowing mistrust among U.S. partners and allies, according to Carter.

With the override, the bill will now become law. During his nearly two full terms in office, Obama had never had a veto overridden by Congress.

The legislation gives victims’ families the right to sue in U.S. court for any role that elements of the Saudi government may have played in the 2001 attacks. Fifteen of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers were Saudi nationals.

Courts would be permitted to waive a claim of foreign sovereign immunity when an act of terrorism occurs inside U.S. borders, according to the terms of the bill. Saudi Arabia has objected vehemently to the legislation.

Obama vetoed the measure last week, telling lawmakers the bill would make the U.S. vulnerable to retaliatory litigation in foreign courts that could put U.S. troops in legal jeopardy.

But the bill’s proponents have disputed Obama’s rationale as “unconvincing and unsupportable,” saying the measure is narrowly tailored and applies only to acts of terrorism that occur on U.S. soil.

Kristen Breitweiser, a 9/11 widow and co-chair of September 11th Advocates, criticized Carter’s assessment, saying that the defense secretary had testified before Congress last week that he wasn’t an expert on the bill.

Categories: Obama and Congress, Obama and Saudi Arabia, U.S. Congress, Veto override
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Senate votes to override Obama veto on 9/11 bill

September 28, 2016

Senate votes to override Obama veto on 9/11 bill, Fox News, September 28, 2016

(97 to 1 — DM)

senveto

The Senate voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to overturn President Obama’s veto of a bill letting families of Sept. 11 victims sue the Saudi Arabian government, bringing Congress within reach of completing the first successful veto override of Obama’s presidency.

The Senate voted 97-1 to reject the veto. The measure heads next to the House, where lawmakers will need to muster a two-thirds majority, as in the Senate, to override. 

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., speaking on the Senate floor moments before Wednesday’s vote, pushed back hard on Saudi government objections to the legislation, which has broad bipartisan support on Capitol Hill.

“It’s very simple. If the Saudis were culpable, they should be held accountable. If they had nothing to do with 9/11, they have nothing to fear,” Schumer said.

An override now appears all but certain and would mark a blow to the president in the final months of his term.

A group of senators pledged to find ways to improve the measure during a postelection, lame-duck session of Congress. With elections just over a month away, many lawmakers are reluctant to oppose a measure backed by 9/11 families who say they are still seeking justice 15 years after the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.

The White House was still fighting the override attempt in the final stages.

In a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, Obama warned the bill could cause chaos in U.S. foreign affairs, as other countries would use the measure to justify the creation of ways to target “U.S. policies and activities that they oppose.”

“As a result, our nation and its armed forces, State Department, intelligence officials and others may find themselves subject to lawsuits in foreign courts.” Obama wrote in a letter delivered Tuesday.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter, in a letter Monday to a senior member of Congress, said he’s sympathetic to the intent of the measure. But the legislation could lead to the public disclosure of American secrets and even undercut counterterrorism efforts by sowing mistrust among U.S. partners and allies, according to Carter.

If the House also overrides, the bill would become law. During his nearly two full terms in office, Obama has never had a veto overridden by Congress.

The legislation gives victims’ families the right to sue in U.S. court for any role that elements of the Saudi government may have played in the 2001 attacks. Fifteen of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers were Saudi nationals.

Courts would be permitted to waive a claim of foreign sovereign immunity when an act of terrorism occurs inside U.S. borders, according to the terms of the bill. Saudi Arabia has objected vehemently to the legislation.

Obama vetoed the measure last week, telling lawmakers the bill would make the U.S. vulnerable to retaliatory litigation in foreign courts that could put U.S. troops in legal jeopardy.

But the bill’s proponents have disputed Obama’s rationale as “unconvincing and unsupportable,” saying the measure is narrowly tailored and applies only to acts of terrorism that occur on U.S. soil.

Kristen Breitweiser, a 9/11 widow and co-chair of September 11th Advocates, criticized Carter’s assessment, saying that the defense secretary had testified before Congress last week that he wasn’t an expert on the bill.

Categories: 9/11, Obama and Saudi Arabia, U.S. Senate, Veto override
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Not Just the Saudis: Iran’s Huge Role in 9/11 Also Covered Up

July 19, 2016

Not Just the Saudis: Iran’s Huge Role in 9/11 Also Covered Up, PJ Media, Robert Spencer, July 19, 2016

Iran and Saudi

“Satan in Flames” was the Iranian’s elaborate plot to hijack three passenger jets, each packed full of people, and crash them into American landmarks: the World Trade Center, which jihadis took to be the center of American commerce; the Pentagon, the center of America’s military apparatus; and the White House.

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The 28-page section of the 9/11 report detailing Saudi involvement in the terror attack has finally been released (although with substantial portions still redacted). We now know why one president who held hands with the Saudi King and another president who bowed to him worked so hard all these years to keep these pages secret. The 28 pages confirm that the 9/11 jihad murderers received significant help from people at the highest levels of the Saudi government.

However, Saudi involvement in 9/11 was not the only subject of a cover-up: Iran’s little-noted role in 9/11 has been covered up as well.

As I detail in my new book The Complete Infidel’s Guide to Iran, on December 22, 2011, U.S. District Judge George B. Daniels ruled in Havlish, et al. v. bin Laden, et al., that Iran and Hizballah were liable for damages to be paid to relatives of the victims of the September 11, 2001 jihad attacks in New York and Washington.

Judge Daniels found that both the Islamic Republic and its Lebanese proxy had actively aided al-Qaeda in planning and executing those attacks. He found that Iran and Hizballah had cooperated and collaborated with al-Qaeda before 9/11, and continued to do so after the attacks.

Before 9/11, Iran and Hizballah were implicated in efforts to train al-Qaeda members to blow up large buildings. This training resulted in the bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996, the bombing of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, and the attack on the USS Cole in 2000.

Shortly after the Cole attack, the 9/11 jihad plot began to come together — and Iran was involved.

Former MOIS operative Abolghasem Mesbahi, a defector from Iran, testified that during the summer of 2001 he received messages from Iranian government officials regarding a plan for unconventional warfare against the United States. The plot was entitled Shaitan dar Atash (“Satan in Flames”).

“Satan in Flames” was the Iranian’s elaborate plot to hijack three passenger jets, each packed full of people, and crash them into American landmarks: the World Trade Center, which jihadis took to be the center of American commerce; the Pentagon, the center of America’s military apparatus; and the White House.

A classified National Security Agency analysis referred to in the 9/11 Commission report reveals that eight to 10 of the 9/11 hijackers traveled to Iran repeatedly in late 2000 and early 2001.

The 9/11 Commission called for a U.S. government investigation into Iran’s role in 9/11 — but none was ever undertaken.

So Kenneth R. Timmerman of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran was, in his words, “engaged by the Havlish attorneys in 2004 to carry out the investigation the 9/11 Commission report called on the U.S. government to handle.”

Timmerman noted that during the 9/11 hijackers’ trips to Iran, they were “accompanied by ‘senior Hezbollah operatives’ who were in fact agents of the Iranian regime.” Iranian border agents did not stamp their passports so that their having been inside the Islamic Republic would not arouse suspicion when they entered the United States. The CIA, embarrassed by its failure to recognize the import of these trips, tried to suppress this revelation.

However, Timmerman contends that even the available evidence is explosive enough. In his words, he reveals that the Islamic Republic of Iran:

  • Helped design the 9/11 plot
  • Provided intelligence support to identify and train the operatives who carried it out
  • Allowed the future hijackers to evade U.S. and Pakistani surveillance on key trips to Afghanistan — where they received the final order of mission from Osama bin Laden — by escorting them through Iranian borders without passport stamps
  • Evacuated hundreds of top al-Qaeda operatives from Afghanistan to Iran after 9/11 just as U.S. forces launched their offensive
  • Provided safe haven and continued financial support to al-Qaeda cadres for years after 9/11
  • Allowed al-Qaeda to use Iran as an operational base for additional terror attacks, in particular the May 2003 bombings in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

The Ayatollah Khamenei knew about the plot. During the summer of 2001, he instructed Iranian agents to be careful to conceal their tracks. He told them to communicate only with al-Qaeda’s second-in-command — Ayman al-Zawahiri — and Imad Mughniyah of Hizballah.

Mughniyah was Iran’s key player in the 9/11 “Satan in Flames” plot. During the Havlish trial, former CIA agents Clare M. Lopez and Bruce D. Tefft submitted an affidavit stating:

Imad Mughniyah, the most notable and notorious world terrorist of his time, an agent of Iran and a senior operative of Hizballah, facilitated the international travel of certain 9/11 hijackers to and from Iran, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan, and perhaps various other locations for the purpose of executing the events of September 11, 2001.This support enabled two vital aspects of the September 11, 2001 plot to succeed: (1) the continued training of the hijackers in Afghanistan and Iran after securing their United States visas in Saudi Arabia, and (2) entry into the United States.

The Obama-era CIA went to great pains to try to ensure that information about Iran’s role in 9/11 did not come out in the Havlish case.

In August 2010, a CIA official pressured a Havlish witness to withdraw his testimony in exchange for a new identity, new passport, and new job.

In December of that year, another CIA operative approached a different Havlish witness, showed him documents stolen from the case, and took him to a U.S. embassy where he was subjected to five hours of interrogation. He was finally offered cash if he recanted his testimony. Says Timmerman:

After I reported those attempts at witness tampering to a Congressional oversight committee, they ceased.

Judge Daniels determined that Iran, Hizballah, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security, and other Iranian government departments — as well as the Ayatollah Khamenei himself and former Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani — were all directly implicated in Iranian efforts to aid al-Qaeda in its 9/11 plot.

Daniels awarded the plaintiffs in the Havlish case $394,277,884 for economic damages, $94,000,000 for pain and suffering, $874,000,000 for mental anguish and grief, $4,686,235,921 in punitive damages, and $968,000,000 in pre-judgment interest for a total of $7,016,513,805.

The Havlish plaintiffs will not receive a check for that amount from the Islamic Republic of Iran neatly signed by the Ayatollah Khamenei. Still, the judgment provided a small bit of solace for the loss of life and years of trauma these families suffered as a result of the Islamic Republic’s war against the United States.

Most importantly, the judgment stands as an acknowledgment of Iran’s role in the 9/11 attacks.

Clearly, Iran is and has been at war with the United States, Over a period of many years, Iran has conducted that war on numerous unconventional fronts while threatening conventional attacks if its agenda is thwarted in any way.

For the Islamic Republic this war is very real, a principal focus of its energy and expenditures. But it appears that only one side is fighting.

This was underscored in March 2016, when it came to light that Iranian hackers who were accused of being tied to the Islamic Republic had attempted to hack into the operating system of the Bowman Avenue Dam north of New York City, as well as into financial conglomerates Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Citibank, and HSBC – and the New York Stock Exchange.

Said Attorney General Loretta Lynch:

These attacks were relentless, they were systematic, and they were widespread.

Such attacks, if they had been successful, could have caused catastrophic damage to New York City and the American economy. Yet true to form, the Obama administration only indicted the accused (none of whom it had in custody). He took no measures against the Iranian government.

After 9/11, the U.S. declared war on terror and entered Afghanistan and Iraq. But if Bush had really been serious about attacking jihad terror at its root, he would have invaded Saudi Arabia and Iran instead. Under Obama, the denial and willful ignorance have only gotten exponentially worse.

Categories: 9/11, Contempt for America, Cover-up, Foreign policy, Hezbollah, Iran and 9/11, Iran and terror, Iran scam, Khamenei, National secuity, Obama and 9/11, Obama and Iran, Obama and Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia - 9/11
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White House: No evidence of Saudi role in 9/11

July 16, 2016

White House: No evidence of Saudi role in 9/11, Al Arabia News, July 16, 2016

(Please see also, Yes, the Saudi government helped the 9/11 terrorists  — DM)

FILE - In this Sept. 11, 2001 file photo the twin towers of the World Trade Center burn behind the Empire State Building in New York after terrorists crashed two planes into the towers causing both to collapse. The government is preparing to release a once-classified chapter of a congressional report about the attacks of Sept. 11, that questions whether Saudi nationals who helped the hijackers with things like finding apartments and opening bank accounts knew what they were planning. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Friday July 15, 2016, that the release of the 28-page chapter is "imminent.” (AP Photo/Marty Lederhandler)

FILE – In this Sept. 11, 2001 file photo the twin towers of the World Trade Center burn behind the Empire State Building in New York after terrorists crashed two planes into the towers causing both to collapse.

US intelligence officials have finished reviewing 28 classified pages of the official report on the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States and they show no evidence of Saudi complicity, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on Friday.

“It will confirm what we have been saying for quite some time,” Earnest told reporter during a daily White House briefing.

The 28 pages that will be sent to the U.S. Congress on Friday contain no new evidence that Saudi Arabia played a role in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Earnest said.

Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States, Abdullah al-Saud, said in a statement: “We hope the release of these pages will clear up, once and for all, any lingering questions or suspicions about Saudi Arabia’s actions, intentions, or long-term friendship with the United States.”

Last Update: Saturday, 16 July 2016 KSA 02:03 – GMT 23:03

 

Categories: 9/11, Cover-up, Obama and Saudi Arabia
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The Mr. Rogers Doctrine

April 27, 2016

The Mr. Rogers Doctrine, Israel Hayom, Clifford D. May, April 27, 2016

U.S. President Barack Obama last week visited Saudi Arabia, an unusual nation with which the United States has had a relationship that can be accurately characterized as both strategic and strange — and one that is now severely strained. To understand how we got to this juncture requires at least a smattering of modern history.

It’s polite to say that Ibn Saud, in the first third of the 20th century, united most of the tribes living on the Arabian Peninsula. It’s more accurate to say he defeated those tribes, conquering their lands, along with a source of enormous future wealth that lay under some of them.

Ibn Saud allied with the British against the Ottoman Empire whose sultan, based in Istanbul, also had been proclaimed caliph — ruler of all the world’s Muslims. That would have undercut the legitimacy of the House of Saud had a deal not been struck with the Wahhabis, until then a tiny, fundamentalist sect. The Wahhabis blessed the Saudis and granted them governing authority. In exchange, they would be well-funded and their reading of Islam would become the state religion.

In 1932, Ibn Saud gave his dominions a name: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. After World War II, a time when the sun was setting on the British Empire, the Saudis turned to the United States. The oil the Saudis had appropriated would now be extracted and sold to those in the West who had developed productive uses for it. In exchange, the United States would serve as Saudi Arabia’s defender and protector.

For a few decades, this arrangement worked reasonably well. Then, in 1979, two pivotal events occurred. The first was the overthrow of the Shah of Iran, an uprising that, under the leadership of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, became an Islamic Revolution. That meant that the first modern state committed to waging global jihad was majority Shia and Persian — a shock and a humiliation to many in the Sunni and Arab worlds.

Then, in November of that year, around the same time as students loyal to the Aytollah were taking over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, the Grand Mosque in Mecca was seized by what might be called ultra-Wahhabis. Putting down this rebellion was a bloody affair. But because of a Saudi information blockade, most of the world heard only vague and often incorrect details.

The full story would be told in 2007 by Yaroslav Trofimov in his indispensable book, “The Siege of Mecca.” In the aftermath of the 9/11/01 attacks, he recognized the episode as “the first large-scale operation by an international jihadi movement in modern times.”

In response to the 1979 upheavals, the Saudis might have been expected to oppose if not suppress fundamentalists eager to fight holy wars. Instead, they attempted to demonstrate their jihadi bona fides by installing Wahhabi clerics in mosques around the world, establishing madrasas that prepared young people to kill and die to defend and/or spread the “true” Islam, and funding mujahedeen in Afghanistan.

From these seeds would grow al-Qaida, and the fruits of al-Qaida — the Islamic State group among them. Such jihadis despise the Saudis and other Muslims who, they believe, are shirking their duty to smite infidels, apostates and heretics.

At least some Saudis were later to recognize their error. Trofimov quotes Prince Khaled al Faisal saying in 2004 that while those who seized the Grand Mosque were eliminated, “we have overlooked the ideology that was behind the crime. We’ve let it spread in the country, ignoring it as if it did not exist.” Nevertheless, Saudi-appointed clerics continue to this day to preach hate and incite violence.

As for Iran’s rulers, they have two large axes to grind with the Saudis. One traces back to the 7th century when a dispute arose within the newly created Muslim community over who was to succeed the Prophet Muhammad. Since then, the theological schism has only widened. The Shia mullahs of Iran believe no Sunnis should be custodians of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina — least of all the descendants of a warrior tribe who drink and gamble in Europe while insisting that royal blood flows through their veins.

A less ancient Iranian grievance: Most of Arabia’s oil lies in the Eastern Province where the majority of the population is Shia. These Arabians are hardly “Saudis,” having been conquered by them in 1913 and suffering discrimination and persecution at their hands ever since. In January, Nimr al-Nimr, a Shia cleric from the Eastern Province who had been critical of the Saudi government, was executed.

President Obama’s policy response to this complicated and fraught reality: He recently told a reporter that Saudis and Iranians need to “share the neighborhood.” It’s tempting to call that the “Mr. Rogers Doctrine” and imagine what was said about it within the palaces of Riyadh — and those of Tehran. Also worth pondering: the message that phrase sends to the neighborhood’s minorities — the Christians now under genocidal assault, the Kurds, the Druze and, of course, the Israelis.

The Saudis have never been America’s friends in the sense of having common values or mutual affection. But they have been America’s allies in the sense of having common enemies and some common — and vital — interests. Now the Saudis face what they see as an existential threat from Iranian theocrats who proudly proclaim their abhorrence of America.

Yet, the American president is enriching those Iranian theocrats, strengthening them and making concession after concession without demanding reciprocity. It’s reasonable to guess that the Saudis are feeling puzzled and perhaps betrayed. If so, they are not alone.

Categories: Obama and Iran, Obama and Islam, Obama and Saudi Arabia
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Saudi Influence in Washington Must End

April 22, 2016

Saudi Influence in Washington Must End, Front Page Magazine, Robert Spencer, April 22, 2016

buddies

The 28 pages of a Congressional report detailing where the 9/11 hijackers got their financing have been classified for years, but what they contain is an open secret. Former Senator Bob Graham explained: “The 28 pages primarily relate to who financed 9/11, and they point a very strong finger at Saudi Arabia as being the principal financier.” So why keep this information secret? Because the Saudis wield undue influence in Washington, among both parties – an influence that has deformed our response to the global jihad threat, and continues to do so.

Responding to a bill that would allow 9/11 victims’ families to sue governments linked to terror attacks inside the U.S., the Saudis have acted like neither an ally nor an innocent party: they’ve threatened to sell $750 billion in U.S. asserts, vividly demonstrating why their influence in Washington is so detrimental.

Nonetheless, they still have a friend in Barack Obama, a man who has never hesitated to reach out in friendship to those who threaten the United States. Obama is trying to get Congress to reject the bill, and his solicitude for the Saudis is drawing criticism even from members of his own party. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) called on him to release the 28 pages: “If the president is going to meet with the Saudi Arabian leadership and the royal family, they think it would be appropriate that this document be released before the president makes that trip, so that they can talk about whatever issues are in that document.”

The New York Daily News, normally a reliable Democratic Party organ, fumed: “If the President allows himself to get pushed around this way in front of the world, then he earns every bit of the anger being directed at him by the extended family of September 11.”

Of course, all too many Republicans are just as much in the tank for the Saudis as the Democrats. CBS News reported on September 30, 2001, on George W. Bush’s watch, that “two dozen members of Osama bin Laden’s family were urgently evacuated from the United States in the first days following the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, according to the Saudi ambassador to Washington.” If Hitler had had twenty-four relatives on U.S. soil on December 8, 1941, would FDR have urgently evacuated them to Berlin?

The FBI under both Bush and Obama has likewise been an apparently willing servant of the Saudis. The Miami Herald reported on July 1, 2014 that “freshly released but heavily censored FBI documents include tantalizing new information about events connected to the Sarasota Saudis who moved suddenly out of their home about two weeks before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, leaving behind clothing, jewelry and cars….This release suggests that the FBI has covered up information that is vitally important to public safety.” These “Sarasota Saudis” were a family that abruptly fled the country shortly before 9/11, “leaving behind three vehicles, food in the refrigerator and toys in the swimming pool.” Mohammed Atta may have visited their home. Yet for years, the FBI insisted that they had nothing to do with the 9/11 jihad plot, and has been extremely reticent about sharing information about their investigation. Whom is the FBI protecting, and why?

Meanwhile, the Saudis have spent untold billions of dollars spreading their Wahhabi ideology, including material such as “Jihad: The Forgotten Obligation,” in areas of the Islamic world where jihad had indeed been forgotten, largely if not completely. The Saudis have, in reawakening Muslims to this obligation, set the world on fire: al-Qaeda was a product of the Wahhabi ideology, and the Islamic State, with its unquenchable desire to commit as many jihad mass murder attacks as possible on American soil, despises the House of Saud and is determined to overthrow it but is nevertheless its demon child. The Saudis remain one of the world’s chief financiers of jihad terror.

This is an ally of the United States? No. The Saudis are not an ally of the U.S. and have not been since 9/11 and before. A presidential candidate who really wants to strike a blow against the global jihad would vow to release the 28 pages and to stand up to the Saudis’ threats, and to break the Saudis’ economic hold on the U.S. by putting the full weight of the U.S. government behind offshore drilling, oil pipelines, fracking, and the development of alternative energy sources.

In 1942, Franklin Delano Roosevelt not only wasn’t making sure that Hitler’s relatives were safely back home; he also wasn’t meeting with the Führer to discuss a German-U.S. alliance. It is long past time that the United States stop behaving like a weak client state of the House of Saud.

 

Categories: 9/11, Foreign policy, Funding terrorism, Islam and terrorism, Islamic indoctrination, Islamic jihad, Obama and Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia, Supporting Islamic terrorism, Wahhabi
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Saudi Arabia Threatens To Sell Off $750 Billion In U.S. Assets If Congress Allows 9-11 Families To Sue

April 18, 2016

Saudi Arabia Threatens To Sell Off $750 Billion In U.S. Assets If Congress Allows 9-11 Families To Sue, Jonathan Turley’s Blog, Jonathan Turley, April 18, 2016

abdullah_of_saudi_arabia
president_barack_obama1

The Obama Administration is shrugging off the insult to our legal system by a country that violates every core principle of due process and civil liberties in their own country.

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While the level of protection afforded Saudi Arabia in Washington is hardly a secret, the level of that support was on display this month when officials pushed the Obama Administration to release long-withheld pages from the 9-11 report, as we previously discussed. Those pages reportedly implicate Saudi Arabia in the 9-11 attacks. Saudi Arabia response with an express threat to sell off hundreds of billions of dollars of assets if Congress were to pass a bill allowing the Kingdom to be held liable for the attacks. One would think that the response would be outrage at the threat. After all, the bill would only allow citizens to sue and a bipartisan group of Senators have joined to support the 9-11 families. Saudi Arabia could still defend itself (and according to its government, vindicate itself) in a court of law. Of course, the United States has a real court system as opposed to the government controlled, Sharia “courts” used in the Kingdom to mete out medieval justice.

The Administration not only is staying silent about this insulting threat but is doing precisely what the Saudis are demanding in trying to block the bill. When push comes to shove between the victims or 9-11 and the Saudis, the choice appears clear.

So that there would be no mistake about the threat, Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi foreign minister, delivered the kingdom’s message personally last month — threatening a sudden sell-off of $750 billion in treasury securities and other assets to cripple the economy. The rationale is to avoid the assets from being frozen by American courts. Interestingly, this assumes that you are likely to be found guilty of complicity in the worst terrorist attack in United States history. What is interesting is that the use of al-Jubeir seemed calculated to maximize the threat. The same message could have been delivered through leaks that the Saudis were preparing such a selloff for strategic reasons. The open threat was a serious miscalculation by the Saudis in my view. Few Americans would take the threat as anything short of a slap in the face of the victims of 9-11 and the country as a whole.

The Obama Administration is shrugging off the insult to our legal system by a country that violates every core principle of due process and civil liberties in their own country. Instead, it is suggesting that holding Saudi Arabia liable for American deaths could put Americans at legal risk overseas. Whatever the merits of the argument against the access to the courts for these citizens (and I would be very interesting to hear them), the Administration should have delivered a clear message that we do not respond to such threats, particularly when another country is balancing American lives against foreign investments.

What do you think?

Categories: 9/11, Foreign policy, Obama and Islam, Obama and Saudi Arabia, Obama's weakness, Saudi Arabia, U.S. Congress, U.S. courts
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