The President’s New Dilemma
Does it seem like things are falling faster now, like those last autumn leaves unable to cling any longer to their mother source? The fast-paced flurry of news these days is enough to make one dizzy, confused, or transfixed like a zombie who goes about with no thought to think for himself.
Yet, it is summer. The last week of July; the first day of August. The heat of these summer days has made itself manifest, like it always does. For the president, he seems to be treading from one hot landscape to the next.
The 9/11 report was released last week, minus twenty-eight pages that seemed to suggest that the White House was covering up evidence against Saudi Arabia, the homeland of fifteen of the nineteen hijackers.
Suddenly, without an official invite, the Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal of Saudi Arabia flew in on Monday under the guise that he was in Washington to discuss Mideast peace prospects. But with the heat increasing over the undisclosed sections of the report, he was more likely in town to say Saudi Arabia has "nothing to hide." But do they?
Suddenly, President Bush, in his smug, trying not to appear non-committal way, says he takes responsibility for the false Niger uranium claim in his State of the Union Address– "I take personal responsibility for everything I say, absolutely."
We should be writing about that; we should be scrutinizing his moral character; after all, thousands have died over those sixteen words. But the release of the 9/11 report opens another hot issue that needs analyzing, demands answers. And Bush, again, is not budging. He has refused to disclose the content of the 28 pages.
Some say that he is with-holding the information so as not to "disturb the relationship between the United States and some foreign countries." But knowing that Saudi Arabia (SA) has funded terrorist groups in the past, knowing that the majority of the hijackers were from SA, knowing that SA is named in the report, and knowing the relationship the Bush family has with the Royal family of SA, one cannot help but wonder what "some foreign countries" actually means.
Robert Scheer, a syndicated columnist, wrote on July 30th, in The Classified Truth, that "the bipartisan report, long delayed by an embarrassed White House, makes clear that the U.S. should have focused on Saudi Arabia, and not Iraq, in the aftermath of 9/11."
Leaks from the censored portions of the report indicate that at least some of those Saudi terrorists were in close contact with --- and financed by---members of the Saudi elite, extending into the ranks of the royal family.
The report finds no such connections between Iraq and al-Qaida terrorists. It is now quite clear that the president --- unwilling to deal with the ties between Saudi Arabia and Osama bin Laden --- pursued Saddam as a politically convenient scapegoat. By drawing attention away from the Muslim fanatic networks centered in Saudi Arabia, Bush diverted the war against terror. That seems to be the implication of the 28 pages, which the White House demanded be kept from the American people when the full report was released....
Newsweek, relying on anonymous government sources, reported Monday that the "connections between high-level Saudi princes and associates of the hijackers" included helping al-Qaida operatives enter the U.S. and financing their residence in San Diego, where they plotted their infamous attacks.
Remember too that it was well known that Saudi charities with ties to the royal House of Saud were bankrolling the al-Qaida operation in Afghanistan---even as George H.W. Bush visited the kingdom shortly after his son was elected, eager to secure contracts for his then-employer, the Carlyle Group....
Even after Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush administration immediately protected Saudis in the United States, including allowing members of the large bin Laden family who were in this country to be spirited home on their government's aircraft before they could be questioned. This at a time when many immigrants from all over the world were being detained arbitrarily.
And then, as if by cue, on the evening of the 31st, John S. Pistole, deputy assistant director of the FBI's counterterrorism division, declares that investigators have "traced the origin of the funding of 9/11 back to financial accounts in Pakistan, where high-major role in moving the money forward, eventually into the hands of the hijackers located in the U.S." Pistole did not specify who was funding the accounts.
There’s something behind all the activity going on in the periphery of the mysterious core. The truth needs to be found. Scheer states why it is important to know the truth:
Bush has used 9/11 as an excuse to turn this country upside down, making a hash of civil liberties and bankrupting our federal government with unprecedented deficit spending on war and its materiel. Before we do any more irrevocable damage in the name of an open-ended "war against evil," we have a right and a responsibility to confront the uncensored truth of what happened that black day --- no matter what powerful people are brought to account .
The summer heat has the strangest effects on things left out too long in the elements. Hamlet referred to one such effect best when he exclaimed to those wanting to retrieve the body of the Polonius: "But indeed, if you find him not within this month, you shall nose him as you go up the stairs into the lobby."
9:11:05 PM  | | [Macro error: Can't evaluate the expression because the name "trackbackLink" hasn't been defined.]
|
|
