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Saudis Export Terror As A Payoff
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Re: Saudis Export Terror As A Payoff
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posterdot
Re: Saudis Export Terror As A Payoff
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10/31/01 6:11 PM
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Saudi Arabia: Friend or foe
By Wolf Blitzer
CNN Wolf Blitzer Reports
www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/...r.reports/
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The United States and Saudi Arabia have had a very close relationship for many years. Despite their very different governmental structures, religious and cultural environments, and ethnic and language barriers, the leaders of the two countries have worked closely for decades.
There is no doubt that the U.S. has vital strategic interests in that part of the world. The most significant, of course, is the huge amount of oil the U.S. and its closest allies in Europe and Japan obtain from Saudi Arabia. That dependence on Saudi oil was a key factor in leading the U.S. to come to the defense of Kuwait following the August 1990 Iraqi invasion. The first Bush administration worried that the Iraqis might simply continue their drive beyond Kuwait right into Saudi Arabia and the oil fields in the Eastern Provinces.
During Operation Desert Shield, the United States amassed more than half a million troops in Saudi Arabia and the surrounding region to drive the Iraqis out of Kuwait and protect Saudi Arabia from Saddam Hussein's possibly more ambitious goals.
The U.S.-Saudi relationship is being tested in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. There is no shortage of former government officials and commentators lashing out at the Saudis for supposedly being a fair-weather friend of the United States. They charge that the Saudis have not fully cooperated with the U.S. investigation -- insisting, for example, the Saudis have not frozen the assets of the terrorist groups implicated by the U.S. They also charge that the Saudis have not provided intelligence to the U.S. on as many as 15 of the 19 suicide hijackers who are believed to have been Saudi nationals. (The FBI still doesn't know for sure since some of the IDs could have been forged.) Finally, they note the Saudis have not allowed the U.S. to launch airstrikes against targets in Afghanistan from Saudi bases.
Saudi officials and their supporters reject these accusations. They insist the Saudis are fully on board with the U.S. in the war against terrorism even if there are some differences in the tactics. "They are cooperating in a lot of ways with our military -- as they did back in 1990-91 with Desert Storm and they're continuing that cooperation today," former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Richard Murphy, told me the other day.
The White House press secretary, Ari Fleischer, has made the same point. "The president is very satisfied with the cooperation the United States has received from Saudi Arabia in the war against terrorism," he said last Friday.
Critics disagree. At the top of the list is Richard Perle who served as the Assistant Secretary of Defense during the Reagan administration. He says the Saudis are still providing "large amounts" of money to various terrorist organizations, including Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. He says the Saudis have funded various institutions around the world, "that are propagating the most virulent form of anti-Western, anti-American sentiment." That, he adds, "is helping to create a culture in which the recruitment of terrorists against this country is easy. And it's taking place around the world and it's been going on for years."
Why would the Saudis do that? "I believe largely to keep terrorists away from their own fragile regime," Perle says.
Perle's point is that the Saudis, in effect, are paying protection money to terrorists. Murphy, who was just in Saudi Arabia, insists that's not true. "They're not interested in financing their own suicide," he says, noting that Osama bin Laden and his supporters have made clear they have targeted the Saudi monarchy as one of their main enemies.
Perle's reply: "I think no one knowingly, wittingly, finances one's own suicide. But it is possible to make serious judgmental errors and I believe the Saudis have been doing that over a long period of time."
On our 7 p.m. (EST) program tonight, we will focus on U.S.-Saudi relations. I've invited Adel Al-Jubeir, the foreign policy adviser to Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who is visiting Washington to join me in the CNN War Room tonight.
Click here to send me your questions for our guests in the CNN War Room at 7 p.m. tonight.
We will then follow up with a panel discussion. Joining me will be Seymour Hersh, who has been quite critical of the Saudis in The New Yorker magazine; Kenneth McKune, a former U.S. official in Saudi Arabia; and our CNN military analyst, U.S. Air Force Major Gen. Don Shepperd (retired).
On our 5 p.m. (EST) program, we will take a close look at the latest anthrax death. This is a huge mystery. The 61-year-old woman in New York is not known to have had any contact with the contaminated areas of the postal service or the news media -- yet she came down with the most serious form or anthrax: inhalation anthrax. No one seems to have a clue how this could have happened. The potential implications for all of us are enormous. We will check in with our reporters as well as our medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta.
Please join me twice a day -- at 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. (EST).
Thanks.
Wolf Blitzer
U.S. In my daily column for CNN.com, I will share some perspective on the day's news, including behind-the-scenes background and details of conversations I've had with newsmakers. You will be able to find it right here every Monday through Friday. I'd love to get your feedback. You can always email me at wolf@cnn.com.
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DEFEATING MARXISM/SOCIALISM---WHILE REBUILDING CONSERVATISM
TODAY'S NEWS, USA, S. AMERICA, UN, ETC.
WORLD NEWS
BORDER SECURITY and ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS
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SUPREME COURT
LIBERTARIAN OR CONSERVATIVE? OR BOTH?
AYN RAND/JOHN GALT & Ayn Rand's Ideas: An Introduction
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Saudis Export Terror As A Payoff
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