Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (98221)	5/14/2003 1:46:03 AM
From: kumar	Respond to of 281500

A nice start would be for Arab countries to acknowledge the simple existence of Israel, not as some huge bargaining chip, but simply as every other country is recognized. It is my understanding that the GCC Council is considering lifting what was called the "Israel Boycott Policy". Under that policy, no carrier that even transited thru Israel, could unload at a GCC facility. Progress thru trade ?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (98221)	5/14/2003 4:03:56 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

House of Terror - There's a reason those bombings took place in Saudi Arabia. WALL STREET JOURNAL Am I the only one here raising an eyebrow at the Saudi story about, "19 Terrorists escaped during gun battle?" Give me a break! The toll of dead and wounded from Monday night's coordinated attacks in Riyadh isn't yet known, but the bombings bear the hallmarks of al Qaeda, as Colin Powell noted on his arrival in Saudi Arabia yesterday. They also fit another pattern, one that neither the Saudis nor the State Department is comfortable acknowledging. "Terrorism strikes everywhere and everyone," Mr. Powell observed. Prince Saud, Saudi Arabia's foreign minister, added that "these things happen everywhere." This is true, after a fashion. But it is also true that the involvement of Saudis in terrorist attacks against the U.S. and U.S. interests, and in particular the country's role as a haven and breeding ground for al Qaeda terrorists, has become a truth too large to ignore. Monday's attacks didn't happen "everywhere." They occurred in the heart of Wahhabist Islam, the land that gave the world 15 of the 19 September 11 hijackers; the land from which, according to the U.N. Security Council, some $500 million has been transferred to al Qaeda over the past decade. And the land that is the erstwhile home of Osama bin Laden. Saudi Arabia was also the location of the Khobar Towers bombing, in which 19 American airmen died and after which the Saudi government obstructed U.S. attempts to roll up the terrorist network presumed to be responsible. Seventy FBI agents were dispatched to the Kingdom to investigate, but the Saudi government refused to let them interview witnesses or see evidence. Despite the urging of then-FBI Director Louis Freeh, the Clinton Administration would not pressure the Saudis into cooperating more. Fourteen members of an Iranian-backed terrorist group were eventually indicted in the U.S., but none has been brought to the U.S. to stand trial. We trust that such obstruction will not be tolerated in the wake of Monday's murders. The House of Saud owes its dominance of the Arabian peninsula to a 200-year-old bargain with Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab, the founder of the fundamentalist Wahhabi sect that now flourishes in Saudi Arabia. From there it exports Islamic extremism around the world. This uneasy partnership has helped keep the Sauds in power, but at the price of a willful blindness to the activities of the country's extremists. That blindness has in turn too often been shared by the royal family's patrons in the State Department, which, determined to view the Saud family as a source of stability in the region, has often been forced to overlook the instability that the Wahhabists foment both inside and outside of Saudi Arabia. Thus far, the Kingdom's ruling princes have found it more urgent to protect their own cushy status quo than to look too closely at what is preached in the country's mosques and religious schools. And successive U.S. Administrations have in turn been content to look the other way in the name of "stability" and access to Saudi oil. Monday's murderous attacks provide an opportunity--the latest, but by no means the first--for the U.S. to signal that the status quo is unacceptably dangerous. It seems inevitable that someone in the blame-America-first crowd will declaim that this is the fruit of the recently concluded Iraq war, and that we'd been warned all along that invading a Middle Eastern state would provoke radicalism elsewhere in the region. Anyone who believes this has to explain why al Qaeda didn't restrain itself before Iraq was liberated. One week ago, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Saudi soil, an advisable move for several reasons as well as an early dividend from the Iraq war itself. Those troops had been compelled to stay on in Saudi Arabia after the Gulf War precisely because its outcome left Saddam Hussein in power. His removal now allows the troops to leave, but even this did nothing to prevent Monday's terrorism. Also last week, the Saudis themselves uncovered a huge store of arms, which some now suspect was only part of the cache destined to be used Monday night. If so, we can be grateful the assaults were not twice as large or deadly. But of the 19 people sought by the Saudis in connection with that seizure, 18 remained at large prior to the attacks, and some may well have participated in them. Saudi fundamentalism continues to pose a grave threat both to the West and to Saudi Arabia itself. We can hope that the terrible excavation of Monday's victims makes that truth impossible to ignore, but the early words from Mr. Powell and the Saudi Prince are not encouraging. opinionjournal.com