Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald discusses some important questions that are not being asked in regard to the dead Dubai deal:
A larger question in the now-dead Dubai deal revolves around the large number of people who received large sums of money, as always happens when the Arabs and petro-dollars are involved, to push for the deal. Madeleine Albright, of “the Albright Group,” seems to have been in on it. Bill Clinton, he of the “Clinton World Initiative,” also. I don’t know if Kissinger of “Kissinger Associates” was in on it, but possibly Brent Scowcroft of that same “Kissinger Associates” was. Nor do I know about William Cohen of “The Cohen Group.”
The scandal is that any high officials were paid anything to push for that Dubai port deal.
Clinton is hardly alone in accepting money from the U.A.E., although his fantastic greed and willingness to be so cavalier in this as in so many other areas causes him to stand out. A long line of Democrats and Republicans is involved, including the former Kennedy apparatchik Fred Dutton (hired by the Saudis when the Democrats were still running things), as well as those who were hired not as full-time employees but were put on retainers as “consultants” or called in for “special missions” — such as the Dubai Ports deal. Then there are the huge sums for lectures. American soldiers freed Kuwait from the Iraqi invaders during the Gulf War. But it was not any of those soldiers, individually or collectively, but rather the ex-president, George Bush, supposedly full of Yankee rectitude, who personally cleaned up. He delivered a single lecture in Kuwait, which was so eager to “express its gratitude” that it paid Bush $1 million.
Such sums have had, and are having, a direct and damaging influence on the formation of American policy. For decades Arab money has been distributed to former officials in Washington and London and Paris. Some are former diplomats, from ambassadors to lesser fry, keenly aware what opportunities might come their way later on if, while they were still supposedly in the service of the American government, they promoted and parroted Arab views and interests. One suspects that a careful student of the post-government careers and clients of such former diplomats as James Akins, Charles Freeman, John C. West, Andrew Kilgore, Eugene Bird would find ample evidence of this phenomenon.
How much has Bill Clinton received in lecture fees — at Tufts, in the richly-endowed-by-an-Arab businessman Faris lecture? In Qatar a few weeks ago? And in “consultant’s fees” for such things as the Dubai project? How much has Madeleine Albright of “The Albright Group” received for her lobbying on behalf of the Arabs of Dubai? How much money have all kinds of people received, in payment for their usefulness in ensuring the continuation of the global Jihad?
These are traitors. They deserve to be named and exposed. They include a great many people in official Washington. So what? They deserve to be named and exposed — with Democrats in Congress not trying to protect Democrats, and Republicans not trying to protect Republicans. Since OPEC oil wealth will continue to gush, we need to know the ways in which it is used to penetrate and influence our government, our media, our universities. It is not merely what has happened in the past. That army of apologists for and promoters of Saudi Arabia prevented, for more than 30 years, the putting into place of an energy policy that, instead of relying idiotically on our “staunch ally” Saudi Arabia for its supposed “moderation” in oil pricing, would have sensibly been based on a steady rise in gasoline taxes, and on other uses of oil, and on allocation of all such taxes to subsidies for mass transit, the building of newer, and safer, nuclear power plants, and the widespread introduction of solar and wind energy.
Those who have made out like bandits — those government officials, those corporations — from “recycling petrodollars” — have made, for themselves, perhaps some hundreds of millions, and a few billions for their corporations. Very well. But in doing the Saudi bidding, they prevented the implementation of an energy policy that could have saved a trillion dollars in the recapture of oligopolistic rents, over the past 33 years. We, the many, have had to pay an extra trillion. They, the well-connected and very greedy few, in earning their millions for themselves and their relatives and friends, prevented the policies that, had they been put in place in 1973, might have saved that trillion.
Their behavior, which continues, disgusts. Was it worth it? One wants to ask all those receiving Saudi and other Arab oil dollars: Are you proud of yourselves?