These are our friends and allies?
posted by
Wally
10:03 AM
The Bush family has long maintained close ties with the Saudi royal family, and Dubya continues to call the Saudi's allies and friends despite all the evidence to the contrary. While he may never have given a backrub to any of them, he is seen often enough holding hands with them.
(click picture for larger image from the White House website)
The fact that 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 came from Saudi Arabia never phased him. Nor did the fact that the mastermind of the Cole bombing was a Saudi. Or that at least 15 of the 19 people indicted in the Khobar Towers bombing were Saudis. At least 3 of those responsible for the 1998 Embassy bombings were Saudis. In spite of all of that, Bush has never stopped holding hands with the Saudi's, even while invading their neighbors.
Meanwhile, the Bush administration has been ramping up the rhetoric about invading Iran because they are probably interested in developing nukes some time in the future and 2) they are sending fighters into Iraq to help the insurgency. While the first of those is problematic - regardless of which nation - anyone developing nukes is a legitimate concern, the latter issue only serves to highlight the Middle East hypocricy regarding the Saudis. More than 40% of the foreign fighters who entered Iraq to join the insurgency in the past year were citizens of Saudi Arabia, America's key partner in the Middle East, according to detailed information seized from a camp used by them. Documents and computers found by the US army at Sinjar, on the Iraqi-Syrian border, revealed that the other single largest group came from Libya, which is now being rehabilitated as a reliable western ally. So, the two greatest sources of foreign insurgents in Iraq come from our "allies"? And we still call them our allies why? The captured data has been described as an intelligence treasure trove that included biographical details and the hometowns of the more than 700 fighters who entered Iraq since August 2006. Of those 307, or 41%, were Saudis and 137, or 18%, Libyans, senior US military sources told the New York Times. 41%, that's higher than Bush's approval rating. Maybe that's why he likes them.The documents, found in September, showed that the third-largest source of foreign fighters was Yemen, with 68, followed by Algeria, 64, Morocco, 50, Tunisia, 38, Jordan, 14, Turkey, six, and Egypt, two. These figures seem to corroborate suggestions of a worrying increase in jihadi activity across north Africa, where armed groups from Libya, Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco have united under the banner of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb. While I don't believe that there are zero Iranians fighting against us in Iraq, I find it strange that Bush and Cheney want to invade them, but have nothing but love and kisses for the Saudis, who are number one on that, and so many other "terror" lists.
What could possibly be the motivation for this Overwhelming Insane Loyalty?
Why does Bush love terrorists?
Permalink
::
2 comments
::
|
