Nicole Gelinas in the New York Post (thanks to Jeffrey Imm) outlines what the Treasury Department should do about Saudi terror financing. I'm not holding my breath here.
Saudi Arabia, as everyone knows, promotes domestic intolerance of Christians, Jews and Shia Muslims. That would be mostly a Saudi problem — if the Saudis didn't have so much money. But their oil riches — and well-documented largesse — allow the kingdom to export a distilled version of Islamofascist hatred.Saudi money funds Islamist schools and mosques all over the Middle East and in Europe. Of more immediate concern for Americans, rich Saudis likely underwrote the 9/11 attacks — by giving money to known terrorist charities, which then piped millions of dollars to al Qaeda.
"Al Qaeda appears to have relied on a core group of financial facilitators who raised money from a variety of donors . . . particularly in Saudi Arabia," the 9/11 Commission reported. "Some individual donors surely knew, and others did not, the ultimate destination of their donations."
This easy money makes Saudi intolerance our problem. To fund the 9/11 hijackings, those Saudis — and al Qaeda — had to get some of that money from there to here. This is where the Treasury Department comes in.
Treasury Secretary John Snow (under the direction of President Bush) is responsible for damming terrorist dollars before they flow into U.S. bank accounts — so that more Saudi money won't fund more attacks on America.
After 9/11, Congress gave the department the powers to execute this urgent mandate. The Patriot Act granted Treasury officials vast new authority to review suspicious banking transactions in the United States. The new law also directed American banks to report suspicious activities to the government — like large cash withdrawals or wire transfers, or unverifiable customer identities....
Treasury has invoked its new powers nine times — but not against Saudi Arabia, or against any other major Mideast financial hub. Last month, Treasury identified banks in Cyprus and Belarus as suspected money-launderers; last year, it took action against Burma, Nauru and Ukraine.
But some common-sense financial profiling is in order here:
* Fifteen of the 19 9/11 hijackers weren't from Nauru — they were from Saudi Arabia.
* Several prominent Saudi princes and subjects, and more than a dozen prominent Saudi banks and charities, have been fingered in civil lawsuits filed in connection with the 9/11 attacks as alleged al Qaeda donors or money-launderers.
* Earlier this year, Treasury shut down the Saudi-based Al Haramain Islamic Foundation branch in Oregon. AHIF was "directly linked" to Osama bin Laden, Treasury officials said — and laundered money across borders over its seven-year history here to fund the work of al Qaeda.
* It's not just Saudi Arabia. Two of the 9/11 hijackers received $114,500 via five wire transfers to America from an al Qaeda operative in the United Arab Emirates.
But Treasury has yet to designate Saudi Arabia (or the UAE) as a swamp of terrorist financing.
I am curious to know, exactly how the Treasury or State department make their determinations? Whom do they answer to, and why hasn't President Bush directed it to be done yet?
Unless he is waiting for the outcome of the election to make these changes. One can Hope so. If it appears Kerry would be put in office, would any changes Bush made, be Kept?
But, the Saudis are our friends......Puke
So is there something to this Bush-Saudi trope the left is passing around? Not that they really care.
Here's an interesting link to Faucault and the Iranian revolution, in case no one's seen it yet.
http://www.wpunj.edu/newpol/issue37/Afary37.htm
Look, we all know that the Saudi royal family is toast. So the range of questions really facing the West are along these lines:
1. Is Saudi Arabia a sovereign state, or is it just a family with a flag? This is a serious question. Do the people living in the territory now recognized as the "nation" of Saudi Arabia consider themselves citizens of that "nation"? Having lived there for more than five years myself, I never met anyone outside of the royal family who considered themselves as "Saudis". Ask the man in the street in Jeddah about his civic identity and you'll get a response that includes his tribe and of course the ummah itself. Some may respond with the region that they live in such as the Hejaz, the Nejd, etc. But even these are mostly defined as tribal regions.
2. When the House of Sa'ud loses its grip on power, will the next tribe to assume power be entitled to property rights (i.e., mineral rights) throughout the present borders? Or, is it to be determined by their ancient tribal customs, that is, are these rights all up for grabs again?
3. If the inhabitants of the region do not themselves recognize the artificial national identity of "Tribe> Arabia", why should they be forced by the rest of the world into doing so?
The whole world will be better off if the House al-Sa'ud is allowed to implode. Let the Arabs suicide-bomb themselves into oblivion over which tribe is going to be the next "custodians of the two holy mosques" in the Hejaz, and the rest of us can just put up a barbed wire fence around the production facilities in the northeast, patrolled by two armored divisions, to secure the stability of global petroleum markets, and to hold the resource and the proceeds from their sale in trust for whoever the UN might some day decide is entitled to it.
Here's another idea: The State Department has threatened to sanction Saudi Arabia for its religious intolerance, why not ban Saudi funding of religious organizations, schools, mosques, etc. here in the United States? This would impede the funding of Islamic extremist groups in the US by their Saudi benefactors, thus improving national security. It's a golden opportunity that should be exploited to its fullest.
Mike~ quite in agreement there, and would love to see it... but just watch if it is tried. The ACLU will step in on the side of 'religous freedom'...
Very true, Mike.
I would in fact suggest something on the lines of a 'reciprocal rights' arrangement with the moslem world wherein organizations and visitors from these countries will enjoy only those rightsa nd privileges in the US that similar US org.s and citizens can enjoy in those countries. That should effectively put the lid on the sewer of jihad-funding in the name of charity and money laundering in the name of what not.
Could we not say that we (Americans) are funding terrorism simply by buying Saudi oil? It is a sickening thought but one that needs pondering.
Bailey:
Yes. Hulegu Khan has the answer to that dilemma, something about a couple of armored divisions, B
But please, no bestowing the pearls of "democracy" to another population of swine; not as much concern about "insurgent" casualties and those of "civilians" amongst whom they hide.
Bailey...sure, it's just not a perfect world;
but new developments with hybrid cars and the hydrogen fuels...things will probably get better
(er...but only after things get worse first).