Category: Aggregated

One of Denmark’s major dailies, Jyllands-Posten, covered the Jan. 7 press conference of Rep. Walter Jones and Rep. Stephen Lynch to force President Obama to declassify the 28-page chapter of the Joint Congressional Inquiry report on the role of Saudi Arabia in financing the 9/11 hijackers, in the course of an interview in its Jan. 27 issue with Dearborn, Michigan Imam Mohammad Elahi.  Imam Elahi’s House of Wisdom mosque hosted Dearborn’s interfaith celebration of Martin Luther King’s birthday this year.

Without extremist religious ammunition and lots of money from Saudi Arabia, it would be relatively easy to defeat the Islamist terrorism, Elahi, an Iranian Shi’ite who immigrated to Michigan in 1992, told Jyllands-Posten. 

“The Wahhabi ideology of Saudi Arabia has created the roots of much of the terrorism that we see today.  Take, for example beheadings committed by groups like Islamic State and al-Nusra Front. They are clearly inspired and ideologically influenced by the traditions of Saudi Arabia… I agree that there is a great need to reform Islam. Some of the materials used in teaching in Saudi Arabia and that the Saudis are exporting to schools in Pakistan, Afghanistan and several African countries, are directly dangerous because it only spreads hatred and discord.  Of course you can’t change the text of the Koran itself, but you can reform the understanding and interpretation of it.”

He was not shy in his criticism of Washington’s collaboration with the Saudis: 

“It is a problem that the United States in the fight against IS cooperates with those who fund the Islamists. There are not that many warriors of the Islamic State, when it comes down to it, so if you stop sending money and weapons, they will be finished in a short time.  If the world really wanted to stop them, it would happen quite quickly.”

Under the subhead “Saudi Arabia’s Role in 9/11,” Jyllands-Posten describes:

“Politicians in Congress have long demanded greater pressure from the White House to stop the flow of money from the oil state to the religious extremists, and in these days a group of American politicians from both parties is trying to press President Obama to publish the 28 pages from a [2002] report on the terrorist attack against the United States on September 11, 2001.  The 28 pages are about Saudi Arabia’s role and were classified top secret by then-President George W. Bush.

“Republican Walter Jones from Georgia and Democrat Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts are among the few politicians who have read the report, describing it as shocking.  It was known that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis, but now politicians suggest that the White House is concealing the fact that the Saudi government both knew the plans and helped to finance the attack.”

If the volume of condolences for the death of Saudi King Abdullah meant anything, one could easily believe the world had lost a great leader, writes James Carden, a former member of the State Department’s U.S.-Russia Bilateral Commission, citing the fulsome praise of Secretary of State John Kerry, President Obama, UK Prime Minister David Cameron. Carden’s article was published in the Jan. 27 The American Conservative.

Carden then cuts to the chase and reports that, beyond the Saudis’ obscene brutalities,

“There is Saudi Arabia’s role in providing material support for the 9/11 atrocity that took the lives of nearly 3,000 Americans. Obama continues to protect the Saudis by refusing to release the 28 pages of the 9/11 Commission report having to do with Saudi Arabia’s funding of and complicity in the attacks. This despite his own promises to the 9/11 families that he would do so. Efforts by U.S. Congressmen Walter Jones (R-NC) and Stephen Lynch (D-MA) to force the administration to release the redacted pages are ongoing.  In addition, former Senator and Intelligence Committee chairman Bob Graham (D-FL) has also called on the administration to release the 28 redacted pages, whose content, he says, ‘points a finger in the direction of Saudi Arabia.’

“Meanwhile, the Saudis continue to fund—to the tune of billions of dollars a year—the propagation of the most sinister and violent branch of Islam throughout the world, leading to, among other things, the ritual slaughter of a staff of cartoonists in the very heart of Europe, hostage taking in Sydney, and murderous rampages in Ottawa and Brussels, to say nothing of a series of subway bombings in Madrid, London, and Moscow.

“It is by now blindingly clear that the regime in Riyadh will resort to the most medieval of measures towards anyone within or without its borders who is not in thrall to the violent tenets of Wahhabi Islam.  So the question remains: why does our own government pretend that this is not so?

“The expression of even a modicum of sorrow, even if disingenuous, by Western leaders is far more than the death of King Abdullah deserves.”

In Congress, moves to declassify the 28 pages continue. Yesterday, Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) announced that he has again requested permission to read the classified 28 pages of the Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11.  Grayson’s December 2014 request was denied by former Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Rogers, an unprecedented action.  There are currently five cosponors to Rep. Walter Jones’ H. Res. 14, demanding the declassification of the 28 pages:  Reps. John  Conyers, (D-MI), Thomas Massie (R-KY), Mark Pocan (D-WI), Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA) and Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL).

After lecturing Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the need for religious tolerance, U.S. President Obama left India a day early to rush to Saudi Arabia to pay respects to deceased Saudi King Abdullah, with an extraordinary U.S. delegation of no fewer than 27 dignitaries.        

The Obama delegation arrived just after the new Saudi King Salman had refused to intervene to stop a scheduled beheading. Four public beheadings have already occurred under his brief reign.        

The high level of Saudi such power over the Obama Administration was laid bare in a Jan. 7, 2015 press conference by former Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, U.S. Congressmen Walter Jones (D-NC), and Stephen Lynch (D-MA), with the 9/11 families. The congressmen demanded that the final chapter of the 2001 Congressional Joint Inquiry into 9/11 be declassified.  Former Sen. Graham (D-FL), Co-chair of that Inquiry, told press that the classified 28 pages reveal the Saudis as the funders of the 9/11 attacks on the U.S.  Yet although Obama has twice promised the 9/11 victims’ families that he would declassify these 28 pages, he has never done so.        

The extraordinary delegation mustered to accompany Obama and the First Lady to Saudi Arabia spotlights the importance of the U.S.-Saudi relationship.  It included: Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who was scheduled to lead a retreat of Democratic congressional members now ongoing in Philadephia; Secretary of State John Kerry; CIA Director John Brennan; Sen. John McCain (R-AZ); and General Lloyd Austin, head of Central Command in the region.  The Guardian reported that:

“To emphasize the permanence of Washington’s links to the House of Saud, Obama’s delegation also pointedly included key officials from past Administrations, such as former Secretaries of State James Baker and Condolezzaa Rice, and former National Security Advisers Brent Scowcroft and Sandy Berger.”

This delegation shows that something is indeed rotten in Washington and Saudi Arabia.