US waking to Saudi threat?

Cutting off any US paid for handouts to the House of Saud seems like a good idea, considering that's where the 9/11 hijackers came from, and the likely hiding place of Osama bin Laden, if he's even still alive. The fact that it's taken this long for some people to draw the connection is really maddening, this should have been the headlines a week after 9/11 instead of coming 6 years after the fact. Bush's blind spot is right!

U.S. House votes to ban aid to Saudi Arabia

By Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON, June 22 (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives voted on Friday to prohibit any aid to Saudi Arabia as lawmakers accused the close ally of religious intolerance and bankrolling terrorist organizations.

The prohibition, reflecting persistent tensions with the kingdom after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States in 2001, was attached to a foreign aid funding bill for next year that has not yet been debated by the Senate.

It also faces a veto threat from the White House because of an unrelated provision.

A spokesman for the Saudi embassy in Washington declined to comment on the legislation.

In the past three years, Congress has passed bills to stop the relatively small amount of U.S. aid to Saudi Arabia, only to see the Bush administration circumvent the prohibitions.

Read the rest of the story here.

And then this... http://www.radarmagazine.co... US intelligence has finally figured out it's possible that Osama is in Saudi Arabia. Bush’s connections to Saudi Royalty have been well documented, what we know little about is the back channel connection between the House of Saud and senior Al-Qaeda leadership operating in Iraq. There has been evidence for some time, however you'll rarely see this mentioned in the western press, of the flow of arms and supplies coming across Iraq's southern border in support of the Sunni insurgency. Its possible there's more going on here than meets the eye. Coalition forces may in time find that the Iraqi Army they have trained actually works for Iran, we'll be pinched between these two forces and left with little options. Those Iraqi security forces we have been training could very well turn on us.

Beating Around the Bush
HIDE AND SHEIKH

Did President George W. Bush seal Osama Bin Laden’s fate with a kiss? Ever since CIA chief Porter Goss admitted to Time magazine three weeks ago that he has “an excellent idea” where the top terrorist is hiding, the chatter among Capitol Hill democrats has been that Bin Laden remains at large because he’s hiding in Bush’s blind spot—Saudi Arabia. “There is a lot of evidence from what Goss has said publicly, and our President’s relationship with the Saudi Royal family, that warrants an investigation,” one Democratic congressman tells Radar. “But the Democrats don’t want to appear too hysterical with this, so they’re taking their time to find out the facts.”

If the man responsible for killing 3,000 Americans is in Saudi Arabia it presents a unique problem for the petrol-rich president, the congressman said. “Who can forget the kiss between Bush and [Saudi Crown] Prince Abdullah two months ago when they sat down to talk about ‘oil prices?’ Well, since then, oil prices have skyrocketed to 60 bucks a barrel! The Saudis literally have the President by the balls.” Since one of Bin Laden’s stated goals is the overthrow of the House of Saud, it’s unlikely the royal family is sheltering him, but the glut of radical Wahabbists in the country who would happily take the terrorist in makes the scenario a distinct possibility, the congressman said. Moreover, Bush knows that going into Saudi Arabia for Bin Laden would most certainly spark a civil war and oil crisis. “The bottom line is any truly sovereign nation will give him up, but there aren’t many of those in the Middle East.”