10 Questions for Adel al-Jubeir - Taking on the Saudi spin king.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Adel Al-Jubeir, foreign-policy adviser to Saudi’s Crown Prince Abdullah and Kingdom spin doctor, has saturated U.S. media in recent days defending the Kingdom against accusations of collaboration with or funding of the 9/11 attacks on the United States and other terrorist activities, as he often does. Here, Stephen Schwartz, a critic of the Saudis, proposes ten questions al-Jubeir should be asked, but hasn't been, during his press tour.
1. Prince Nayef, the Saudi minister of the interior, recently repeated the claim that 9/11 was a product of a Zionist conspiracy. Does Adel al-Jubeir agree or disagree with this charge?
2. If as Adel al-Jubeir claims, the Saudis have "pursued terrorists relentlessly and punished them harshly," when will the current suspects' names be released to the American media? Al-Jubeir makes the ridiculous argument that they cannot be identified for fear of harming the innocent. Thus, he wishes us to believe that a legal system without real provision for defense representation and that beheads those found guilty, has more concern for the rights of the accused than ours. This is a grotesque insult, of a piece with his despicable complaints about the investigations and reproaches emanating from our media and elected officials. Adel al-Jubeir should stop lecturing us as if the Saudi royals were our ruling family.
3. Regarding these suspects, will there be a public trial of the Saudis involved in 9/11?
4. Will it include all of the perpetrators, no matter how high their influence may extend? Why have only two names, those of Wael al-Julaidan and Yasin al-Qadi, been disclosed?
5. If as Adel al-Jubeir claims, the Saudi regime is the target of al Qaeda, where have any Saudi institutions or personalities been attacked by al Qaeda? Al-Jubeir yesterday repeated common Saudi claims about the Riyadh bombing of 1995. In that incident, five Americans and an Indian were killed. The bomb was aimed at foreigners, not Saudis. One such incident inside the kingdom hardly compares with the attacks suffered by the U.S. and other countries. And U.S. investigators were impeded from examining the case.
6. Where has bin Laden ever denounced, by name, the Saudi regime or anybody in it?
7. Where has bin Laden ever called directly for the overthrow of the Saudi state?
8. If, as Adel al-Jubeir claims, "we have not found a direct link between charity groups and terrorism," why is it that the Muslim government of Bosnia-Herzegovina, with much smaller resources, found such links and completely shut down the Saudi-based charities so involved? Al-Jubeir has the nerve to claim that Bosnian branches of Islamoterrorist charities had nothing to do with their Saudi home offices, as if the Bosnians started this activity on their own. The Bosnians are poor and have no charity to dispense. They never supported Wahhabism. The attempt to divorce Saudi-Wahhabi charities in Bosnia from their Saudi origin is absurd. So is the claim al-Jubeir has made that the Bosnian charities were busted thanks to the Saudis. It was the Bosnians who busted the Saudi terror charities, not vice versa.
9. Why does Adel al-Jubeir argue, in effect, that 9/11 was the product of an accounting glitch?
10. When will the Saudi state take action as dramatic as 9/11 was, to stop the support of terrorism from within the kingdom and to restore trust with the American people?
The problem is not one of poor regulation of charities. The problem is that of Wahhabism.
The Saudi state is founded on Wahhabism, the most extreme, violent, puristic, fundamentalist, and rigid form of Islam in the history of the religion. It attacks non-Wahhabi Muslims, it calls for genocide of Shias, it preaches contempt and hatred of Christians, Jews, and Hindus.
The Saudi state has only one option: to fully investigate its subjects' involvement in 9/11, followed by full disclosure to the American people, arrests, and trials, and a final, irrevocable break of the Saudi monarchy with the Wahhabi ideology and its international network.
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