[plschwartz]

Sorry AF. This may be an eastern way but it is hardly bravery.




2 Allies Aided Bin Laden, Say Panel Members
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia let terrorists flourish before 9/11, apparently in return for protection from attacks by Al Qaeda.





By Josh Meyer, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — Pakistan and Saudi Arabia helped set the stage for the Sept. 11 attacks by cutting deals with the Taliban and Osama bin Laden that allowed his Al Qaeda terrorist network to flourish, according to several senior members of the Sept. 11 commission and U.S. counter-terrorism officials.

The financial aid to the Taliban and other assistance by two of the most important allies of the United States in its war on terrorism date at least to 1996, and appear to have shielded them from Al Qaeda attacks within their own borders until long after the 2001 strikes, those commission members and officials said in interviews.







"That does appear to have been the arrangement," said one senior member of the commission staff involved in investigating those relationships.

The officials said that by not cracking down on Bin Laden, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia significantly undermined efforts to combat terrorism worldwide, giving the Saudi exile the haven he needed to train tens of thousands of soldiers. They believe that the governments' funding of his Taliban protectors enabled Bin Laden to withstand international pressure and expand his operation into a global network that could carry out the Sept. 11 attacks.

Saudi Arabia provided funds and equipment to the Taliban and probably directly to Bin Laden, and didn't interfere with Al Qaeda's efforts to raise money, recruit and train operatives, and establish cells throughout the kingdom, commission and U.S. officials said. Pakistan provided even more direct assistance, its military and intelligence agencies often coordinating efforts with the Taliban and Al Qaeda, they said.

Such efforts allowed Al Qaeda's network of cells to burrow deeply into the social and religious fabric of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, enabling the organization to survive the U.S.-led demolition of its headquarters in Afghanistan in 2001, to regroup and to launch new waves of attacks — including the kidnapping and beheading of an American engineer in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, last week.

Only after Pakistan and Saudi Arabia launched comprehensive efforts to take out their domestic Al Qaeda cells — as late as last year, in the case of Saudi Arabia — did the two nations become victims of terrorist attacks. And officials in both countries acknowledge that Al Qaeda's fundraising, recruiting and training structure is now so firmly rooted that it will be extremely difficult to eliminate.

Rumors of Collusion

For years, there have been unsubstantiated allegations that the governments of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia intentionally ignored Bin Laden's efforts in their countries or even cut deals with him, either out of sympathy with his efforts or to protect themselves from attack. That claim is made in a lawsuit by the families of Sept. 11 victims against Saudi Arabia.

Both governments have strenuously denied this, and did so again Saturday.

"President [Pervez] Musharraf has been taking serious steps against extremism from the day he took power in October of 1999," including trying to purge the government of Al Qaeda sympathizers, said Talat Waseem, a spokeswoman for the Pakistani government.

A senior Saudi official acknowledged that Sept. 11 commission investigators and members asked about such matters during two visits to Saudi Arabia and in interviews with Prince Turki al Faisal, the longtime intelligence minister who is now ambassador to Britain.

"This whole notion of us buying off Bin Laden is nonsense," said the Saudi official, who declined to be identified. "It's nuts. Do you trust a thug and a murderer like Bin Laden? You can't."

But commission investigators have come to believe that these allegations are credible, based on their exhaustive review of all of the classified intelligence data known to the U.S. government. The commission's 80 staffers also conducted thousands of interviews in the United States and abroad, and had access to the interrogations of Al Qaeda's most senior operatives in U.S. custody, including accused Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

"There's no question the Taliban was getting money from the Saudis ... and there's no question they got much more than that from the Pakistani government," said former Sen. Bob Kerrey, one of the congressionally appointed commission's 10 members. "Their motive is a secondary issue for us."

Kerrey said the commission officials believed that the Saudi government had a mutually beneficial relationship with the Taliban that bought Riyadh safety from attack.

"Whether there was quid pro quo with the Saudis, we don't know. But certainly the Pakistanis believed that there was. They benefited enormously from their relationship with the Taliban and Al Qaeda."

Kerrey said the findings were based almost entirely on information known to officials in both the Clinton and Bush administrations, most of it as early as 1997 — just months after Bin Laden moved his operations from Sudan to Afghanistan.

Now, the bipartisan commission is wrestling with how to characterize such politically sensitive information in its final report, and even whether to include it. Some commission members also believe that U.S. officials didn't do enough to force Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to sever their ties with Bin Laden and the Taliban.

"All we're doing is looking at classified documents from our own government, not from some magical source," Kerrey said. "So we knew what was going on, but we did nothing."

From 1998 through 2000, Clinton administration officials pressured Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to help force the Taliban to surrender Bin Laden, and to crack down on the growing presence of Al Qaeda in the two countries.

Both governments refused to sever diplomatic relations with the Taliban or to help investigate Al Qaeda's growing empire, officials said.

The Clinton administration also learned that Taliban efforts to extort cash from Saudi Arabia "may have paid off," a commission report states.

More recently, several commission members noted, leaders of both countries, Pakistan's Musharraf in particular, have taken steps to counter Al Qaeda at great political and physical risk.

The Saudi royal family also has declared war on Al Qaeda, although commission members noted that it did so only after it came under attack May 12, 2003, in a trio of suicide bombings in Riyadh that killed at least 34 people, including the militants.

But a second commission member argued that the Saudi and Pakistani governments played important roles in the growth of Al Qaeda. "The origins of that are very important to us," he said.

As such, the findings could renew the debate over whether Saudi Arabia has been as close an ally of the United States as the kingdom claims, or whether it has clandestinely tried for years to appease both Washington and Bin Laden. They could raise additional questions about the United States' alliances with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia in its war on terrorism, particularly because many U.S. officials believe that both governments have been slow to purge their ranks of pro-Al Qaeda, pro-Taliban elements.

The commission staff alluded to its findings, but only briefly, in a report issued last week during a hearing on the origins of Al Qaeda and the Sept. 11 plot.

That report said that it had no convincing evidence the Saudi government had directly supported the Sept. 11 attacks but that Riyadh had engaged in "very limited oversight" of the religious and charitable entities that have long been accused of being key financial backers of Al Qaeda.

Pakistan, the report said, "significantly facilitated" the Taliban's ability to provide Bin Laden a haven despite international sanctions against Al Qaeda, including the freezing of its assets and prohibitions on travel.

Report Is Tip of Iceberg

In interviews with The Times, the senior commission members said their investigation had uncovered more extensive evidence than the report suggested.

In the case of Saudi Arabia, commission investigators believe that Riyadh made overtures to Bin Laden soon after his arrival in Afghanistan in May 1996.

At the time, Saudi officials feared that Bin Laden was responsible for two recent terrorist attacks in the kingdom, including the killing of 19 U.S. servicemen at the Khobar Towers residential complex in Dhahran. The Saudi leaders were desperate to avoid further attacks and to silence Bin Laden, a vocal critic of the monarchy since it revoked his citizenship in 1994.

A formal delegation of Saudi officials met with top Taliban leaders, including Mullah Mohammed Omar, and asked that a message be conveyed to "their guest," Bin Laden.

"They said, 'Don't attack us. Make sure he's not a problem for us and recognition will follow.' And that's just what they did," according to the senior commission staff member.

Shortly afterward, Saudi Arabia became one of only three countries to formally recognize the Taliban as the rightful government in Afghanistan. The others were Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates.

More Saudi delegations followed, including several in 1998 led by Prince Turki at the request of the United States. U.S. officials wanted him to negotiate the surrender of Bin Laden. But Richard Clarke, the former Bush and Clinton counter-terrorism czar, and a second senior Clinton administration official said U.S. officials suspected that Turki merely ensured that Saudi Arabia would remain out of Al Qaeda's crosshairs.

Pakistanis, meanwhile, were in with Taliban and Al Qaeda "up to their eyeballs," said the senior commission staff member.

He said Bin Laden, for instance, negotiated his 1996 move to Afghanistan with Pakistan's powerful military-intelligence leadership, which held considerable influence over the various warlords struggling for control of Afghanistan at the time.

"He wouldn't go back there without Pakistan's approval and support, and had to comply with their rules and regulations," the official said. He said Pakistan opened its airspace to Bin Laden and his flying flotilla of operatives.

Pakistani intelligence officers also allegedly brought Bin Laden to meet Mullah Omar soon after his arrival in Afghanistan, and then helped forge an alliance between both men that enabled the Taliban to trample competing factions and take over much of Afghanistan.

Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, also was instrumental in helping Al Qaeda set up an infrastructure in its own country and in Afghanistan, and the two outfits jointly operated training camps along the border where militants were taught guerrilla warfare, the official said.

"It started day one," the official said of Pakistan's involvement. "They controlled the Taliban; they controlled the border."

Officials from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia acknowledge that there were significant interactions between their military and intelligence agencies and the Taliban while the Afghan regime provided Al Qaeda with sanctuary from 1996 through the post-Sept. 11 military campaign. But they said they consisted of routine diplomatic matters.

Bin Laden has had personal relationships with top intelligence officials from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia dating to the early 1980s, when they became involved in the decade-long war that expelled the Soviet occupying army from Afghanistan.

The U.S. and Saudi governments spent billions of dollars each on that effort, funneling the money and supplies through Pakistan's military and intelligence agencies to the Afghan mujahedin, including Bin Laden.

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[Al-Firdaus]

Originally Posted by plschwartz

Sorry AF. This may be an eastern way but it is hardly bravery.

If you are referring to the fact that saudi arabia and pakistan supported (paid off) Al-Qaeda in order that Al-Qaeda would leave their regimes alone, let me assure you, it is no 'eastern way.' Hypocricy, fear and cowardice is most of mankind throughout his history. So, no need for you to apologize. Both regimes are doomed anyway by virtue of their apostasy.

The united states also supported Al-Qaeda by paying them, arming them, and training them during the Afghanistan-Soviet Union war. They were considered 'heroes' by the west at that time. Now they are the scape goats of evil. More hypocrisy. The 'coalition' will pay for its transgression. We are watching it unfold before our eyes.

[angelize56]

More breaking news from SA: A house in Riyadh where suspected Al Quaeda members are or were is surrounded by Saudi forces.

[Wino]

Originally Posted by angelize56

More breaking news from SA: A house in Riyadh where suspected Al Quaeda members are or were is surrounded by Saudi forces.

Were is the key word when the Saudis are involved!

[angelize56]

Al Qaeda militants say they were helped by Saudi forces
Sunday, June 20, 2004 Posted: 2:57 PM EDT (1857 GMT)

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (CNN) -- Al Qaeda militants who kidnapped and killed American engineer Paul Johnson said Sunday on an Islamist Web site that sympathetic Saudi security forces aided their kidnapping operation with police uniforms and vehicles.

Johnson, an employee of Lockheed Martin, was kidnapped June 12.

After a 72-hour deadline passed without the release of all al Qaeda prisoners and the departure of all Westerners from the kingdom, photographs of Johnson's head and body were posted on the Web site.

Hours later on Friday, Saudi security forces killed cell leader Abdel Aziz al-Muqrin and three others and captured 12 other suspected members of the cell.

In a lengthy narrative about the kidnapping that was posted Sunday on the site, the kidnappers said they stopped Johnson's car at a fake checkpoint, transferred him to another car and took him to another location.

But Saudi foreign policy adviser Adel al-Jubeir told CNN it was "in the realm of fiction" that Saudi security personnel cooperated with the militants.

"It's very easy to obtain police uniforms, military uniforms," he told CNN's "Late Edition." "You go to a surplus store, and you get all you want."

The kingdom's interior ministry, the home of its internal security forces, "is on the forefront of the war against terror," al-Jubeir said.

"The notion that our security services are infiltrated by the terrorists really doesn't hold," he said. "If that were the case, they would not be going after soft targets. They would be going after government installations."

Also Sunday, the Web site announced that Saleh al-Oufi, a former prison guard who is No. 5 on Saudi Arabia's list of most-wanted terrorists, would replace al-Muqrin as cell leader.

That announcement came less than 24 hours after the Web site denied Saudi reports that al-Muqrin was dead.

The al Qaeda cell and Saudi officials identified the other three militants killed as Faisal al-Dakhil -- No. 11 on Saudi Arabia's list -- Turki al-Muteiri and Ibrahim al-Durayhim. A Saudi security officer was killed and two were wounded in the operations, al-Jubeir said.

Al-Jubeir said incidents like Johnson's killing would not weaken Saudi Arabia's commitment to "go after" terrorist elements.

"They believe that if foreigners leave Saudi Arabia, and in particular Americans and other westerners, that our economy will be crippled and our government will be weakened," he said. "It is a difficult time, but it is a manageable time. We believe that we still have control over safety in Saudi Arabia."

"We will be very vigilant in trying to ensure the safety of everybody in the kingdom," he said. "And we will be merciless when we go after the terrorists who try to wreak havoc on our society."

Critics have accused Saudi Arabia's monarchy of giving financial support to terrorists, but a report issued last week by the U.S. independent commission on the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks found no evidence of such support, a finding that al-Jubeir said "vindicated" his country.

Two members of the commission said Sunday that Saudi Arabia, along with Pakistan, had passively supported the activities of terrorists within their borders by failing to act against them, but added that that no longer appeared to be the case.

"That era is over," said former Navy Secretary John Lehman. "They now recognize the threats, and I think they are cooperating with us."

Lehman and fellow commission member Richard Ben-Veniste each noted, however, that some Islamic schools -- madrassas -- still pose a problem.

"The history of providing support for the madrassas -- in which children are taught to hate those who do not share their common beliefs and that it is acceptable to attack, in violent forms rather than in discourses, differences in philosophies, culture and religion -- has been a principle source of worldwide unrest and support of elements hostile to Western ideas and civilization," Ben-Veniste.

"We are hopeful that now that the Saudis in particular have seen the results of these years of support of this kind of a movement, that they will now move to change what has been in place for so long."

[angelize56]

Wino: I still haven't seen anything online at the news sites yet about that house in Riyahd...I guess it'll be late breaking news online!

[Wino]

Originally Posted by angelize56

Wino: I still haven't seen anything online at the news sites yet about that house in Riyahd...I guess it'll be late breaking news online!

I think I just heard on Fox they 'escaped' after/during the shootout.

[angelize56]

Wino: You think you heard??? Still eating those brownies from yesterday eh!

[angelize56]

Senate leader says Saudis can do more to stop terrorist funding
Sunday, June 20, 2004 Posted: 12:02 PM EDT (1602 GMT)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist praised Saudi Arabia for cracking down on Muslim militants but said Sunday the kingdom can do more toward stopping the flow of charitable money to terrorist groups.

"I do think that even greater pressure can be put on Saudi and Saudi officials to go after the financing mechanisms, the support of charities both there and around the world that may be funding some terrorist activity," said Frist, R-Tennessee.

The Saudi government said this month it was creating a commission to screen contributions raised inside the country to support causes abroad. Officials said the Saudi government was dissolving a large Riyadh-based Muslim charity along with other charities and folding the organization's financial assets into the new Saudi National Commission for Relief and Charity Work Abroad.

The step was welcomed by the Bush administration, which has acted after the September 11, 2001, attacks to cut off terrorist organizations' sources of finance.

Frist said he was pleased by the Saudi efforts to go after Islamic militants suspected to be responsible for the kidnapping and killing of Paul M. Johnson Jr., an American who was working in the kingdom.

Abdel Aziz al-Muqrin, head of the Saudi operations of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, was killed in a shootout Saturday in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, with security forces a few hours after the terror group posted photographs on an Internet site of Johnson's beheading.

"I think in the response that we saw two days ago and yesterday, we see a new aggressiveness," Frist said on "Fox News Sunday."

"We see a new offensive against the fundamental Islamics that, in some ways, may have been defended in the past. So I think it's a new world. I think we're getting good cooperation at this juncture, and we're going to need even better cooperation as we go forward."

Meanwhile, a bipartisan panel investigating the September 11, 2001, attacks has "vindicated" Saudi Arabia by determining that neither its government nor senior officials financed al Qaeda, Saudi foreign policy adviser Adel al-Jubeir said.

[plschwartz]

Wino:
This is to warn you not to go to Vancouver
Canadian City Vies to Become 'Vansterdam'

Wednesday, June 16, 2004

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Marijuana (search) is still illegal in Canada but there's a street in Vancouver that makes San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury (search) look G-rated.

On Vancouver's Hastings Street, a gentlemen's agreement with police allows people in that area to smoke pot, so long as no other drug dealing or use takes place.

One bar's motto is, "This is a respectable joint." Many bars even have a "munchies" menu for post pot-smoking eating binges.

It's because of this atmosphere that Vancouver has been nicknamed "Vansterdam."

Vancouver's mayor not only wants to legalize marijuana but wants the governor to grow, sell and tax it to keep it out of the hands of criminals and to raise money for drug treatment programs.

But U.S. drug czar John Walters (search) said the city's lax attitude has turned British Columbia into a drug-smuggling hot spot and noted that marijuana drug seizures have tripled along the northwest border of that province via car, truck, plane, boat and backpack for the past three years.

And Canada is flooding the United States with what Walters calls "B.C. Bud."

[Wino]

pls - saw that on the news the other day - I'm getting close to retirement - never thought I would consider giving up my US citizenship and moving to another country, but BC is looking good!!

[angelize56]

I can see your new business now:

"Wino's Wacky Weed"

[Wino]

Originally Posted by angelize56

Wino: You think you heard??? Still eating those brownies from yesterday eh!

Yeah - thought! I'm doing housework and just passing thru TV room on occasion, them computer room, then kitchen, then patio, then home office - anything to keep myself from mowing the yard - it's too damn hot and it's fathers day - but a fathers work is never done! Hmmmm...a brownie break- nice thought, thanks for promoting my day of lethargy!

[Wino]

Originally Posted by angelize56

I can see your new business now:

"Wino's Wacky Weed"

Gives a whole new meaning to the www.com!!

[angelize56]

Happy Father's Day Wino! In your honor I'm singing the following to the tune of Frank Sinatra's "Strangers in the Night".

Doobie doobie do! Do do do doobie! Doobie doobie do! Do do do doobie!