US Acts As Saudi Arabia's Mercenary to Implement NeoCon Regime Change in the Middle East

[amborin]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/24/world/middleeast/us-relies-heavily-on-saudi-money-to-support-syrian-rebels.html

U.S. Relies Heavily on Saudi Money to Support Syrian Rebels

....the United States has been reluctant to openly criticize Saudi Arabia for its human rights abuses, its treatment of women and its support for the extreme strain of Islam, Wahhabism, that has inspired many of the very terrorist groups the United States is fighting. The Obama administration did not publicly condemn Saudi Arabia’s beheading this month of a dissident Shiite cleric, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, who had challenged the royal family.

Although the Saudis have been public about their help arming rebel groups in Syria, the extent of their partnership with the C.I.A.’s covert action campaign and their direct financial support had not been disclosed.

WASHINGTON — When President Obama secretly authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to begin arming Syria’s embattled rebels in 2013, the spy agency knew it would have a willing partner to help pay for the covert operation. It was the same partner the C.I.A. has relied on for decades for money and discretion in far-off conflicts: the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

snip

....Saudi Arabia and the United States, an alliance that has endured through the Iran-contra scandal, support for the mujahedeen against the Soviets in Afghanistan and proxy fights in Africa. Sometimes, as in Syria, the two countries have worked in concert. In others, Saudi Arabia has simply written checks underwriting American covert activities.

snip

...the United States has been reluctant to openly criticize Saudi Arabia for its human rights abuses, its treatment of women and its support for the extreme strain of Islam, Wahhabism, that has inspired many of the very terrorist groups the United States is fighting. The Obama administration did not publicly condemn Saudi Arabia’s beheading this month of a dissident Shiite cleric, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, who had challenged the royal family.

Although the Saudis have been public about their help arming rebel groups in Syria, the extent of their partnership with the C.I.A.’s covert action campaign and their direct financial support had not been disclosed.

more at the link

Sunnni (Wahhabi) Saudi Arabia wants to topple Syria's Shiite and Alawite regime and we do their bidding.

(this is from last Sunday's paper, but just want to make sure people see this; apologies if already posted)

[Blue_Tires]

1. So in other words

the U.S. forged a partnership with an unsavory bedfellow to tackle a mutual interest?? That we joined forces with bad guys to take on much, much worse guys?

I'll save my outrage and moral indignation for what Assad has done to his own citizens the past five years, thank you very much.

[Cayenne]

3. Is not Iraq, Egypt, and Libya enough regime change?

And from my pov the head chopping moderates are much worse than Assad. They are genocidal maniacs. These salafist groups are in a contest with ISIS for brutality. Assad held together a coalition of Kurds, Christians, Druze, and other minorities and he protected womens rights and antiquities. If these so called moderate rebels win, women will become property and the country will be run like Saudi Arabia.

[Blue_Tires]

4. Assad's "coalition" holds together out of fear of retribution, not altruism...

You talk to me about genocide? is Assad's 300,000+ deaths plus 4 million fleeing in exile in 2015 alone not enough?

[Cayenne]

8. Yes, they rightly fear the salafists

Kerry's champions in peace call themselves Jaysh al-Islam and Ahrar al-Sham! Kerry is proposing these unseen, unelected, moderate, head choppering Saudi puppets should replace Assad's regime straight away. We are openly arming and supplying these rebels that are in league with ISIS, not at war. Obama, Kerry, and Carter are not really singing in tune so maybe you can explain it all better.

[Octafish]

2. Saudis helped CIA go around Jimmy Carter via Safari Club

The Deep State Plots The 1980 Defeat Of Jimmy Carter

By Peter Dale Scott
WhoWhatWhy.com on Nov 2, 2014

The Safari Club was an alliance between national intelligence agencies that wished to compensate for the CIA’s retrenchment in the wake of President Carter’s election and Senator Church’s post-Watergate reforms. As former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki bin Faisal once told Georgetown University alumni,

In 1976, after the Watergate matters took place here, your intelligence community was literally tied up by Congress. It could not do anything. It could not send spies, it could not write reports, and it could not pay money. In order to compensate for that, a group of countries got together in the hope of fighting Communism and established what was called the Safari Club. The Safari Club included France, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Iran. (1)

After Carter was elected, the Safari Club allied itself with Richard Helms and Theodore Shackley against the more restrained intelligence policies of Jimmy Carter, according to Joseph Trento. In Trento’s account, the dismissal by William Colby in 1974 of CIA counterintelligence chief James Angleton,

combined with Watergate, is what prompted the Safari Club to start working with (former DCI Richard) Helms (then U.S. Ambassador to Iran) and his most trusted operatives outside of Congressional and even Agency purview. James Angleton said before his death that “Shackley and Helms … began working with outsiders like Adham and Saudi Arabia. The traditional CIA answering to the president was an empty vessel having little more than technical capability.”(2)

Trento adds that “The Safari Club needed a network of banks to finance its intelligence operations. With the official blessing of George Bush as the head of the CIA, Adham transformed . . . the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), into a worldwide money-laundering machine.”(3) Trento claims also that the Safari Club then was able to work with some of the controversial CIA operators who had been forced out of the CIA by Turner, and that this was coordinated by Theodore Shackley:

Shackley, who still had ambitions to become DCI, believed that without his many sources and operatives like (Edwin) Wilson, the Safari Club—operating with (former DCI Richard) Helms in charge in Tehran—would be ineffective. . . . Unless Shackley took direct action to complete the privatization of intelligence operations soon, the Safari Club would not have a conduit to (CIA) resources. The solution: create a totally private intelligence network using CIA assets until President Carter could be replaced. (4)

During the 1980 election campaign each party accused the other of plotting an October Surprise to elect their candidate. Subsequently other journalists, notably Robert Parry, accused CIA veterans on the Reagan campaign, along with Shackley, of an arguably treasonable but successful plot with Iranians to delay return of the U.S. hostages until Reagan took office in January 1981. (5)

SNIP...

The oil majors’ manipulation of domestic oil prices, combined with Carter’s failure to bring the hostages home, combined to cause the first defeat for an elected president running for reelection, since that of Herbert Hoover in 1932.

CONTINUED...

http://whowhatwhy.com/2014/11/02/the-deep-state-plots-the-1980-defeat-of-jimmy-carter/

For oil, we'll do anything. "We" not being "the People."

[Octafish]

9. How do you know?

For all you know, I'm a know-nothing, authoritarian gun humper, GGJohn.

[GGJohn]

10. I'm clairvoyant, octafish. eom.

[Octafish]

11. On Duty 247 too.

I'd salute you, but, you know.

[GGJohn]

12. Nope, not any more,

retired and enjoying life on the farm.

[Octafish]

14. Great.

Thank you for your service.

[GGJohn]

15. Thank you kindly.

Apologies for the snark in this thread, you seem like a pretty decent person, I'll delete my kindred spirit comment as it was rude and really uncalled for.
Have a great Sunday.

[karynnj]

7. Ocafish, your link doesn't work

but at least the parts you excerpted are interesting.

[Octafish]

13. Got it via Waybac(k) Machine at Internet Archive...

https://web.archive.org/web/20141110075917/http://whowhatwhy.com/2014/11/02/the-deep-state-plots-the-1980-defeat-of-jimmy-carter/

Peter Dale Scott is one of the great minds fighting for Democracy, like Jimmy Carter.

[LittleBlue]

6. Is Saudi Arabia strategically important anymore?

Iran has millions of barrels coming online. Production is at record highs and oil has tumbled.

If prices get too high, we can produce our own oil with shale. Is Saudi Arabia really an important strategic ally anymore? With so many sources of production nowadays, I don't think SA should have the influence that it had.

[Octafish]

16. US support goes back a ways...

...to when the oil fields were new. Manipulating the masses via religion for royal gain goes back further.

The Bush-Saudi Connection

By Michelle Mairesse
Hermes-Press

EXCERPT...

The Saudi sheiks have been Wahhabis since they intermarried with the family of a puritanical Muslim scholar, Mohammed ibn Abd al-Wahhab, in 1774. Supported first by Britain and later by the United States, the Saudis captured the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina, easily gaining control of the entire Arabian peninsula.

Wherever they ruled, the Wahhabis imposed their medieval code on their hapless subjects, making public spectacles of stoning adulterers to death and maiming thieves, destroying decorated mosques and cemeteries, prohibiting music, sequestering women, and promoting war on infidels. The Saudi sheiks have lavished funds on anti-American and anti-Israeli terrorists-in-training while indoctrinating other Muslims through its worldwide network of religious schools, mosques, newspapers, and presses.

Jihad

The Wahhabi Taliban in Afghanistan had the blessings of the Saudi royal family and of The Big Three--the bin Laden family, the al Ahmoudi family, and the Mahfouz family--the richest clans in that medieval kingdom. (Khalid bin Mahfouz is bin Laden's brother-in-law, according to the C.I.A.). The desert oligarchs profited from world-wide investments as well as sleazy banking schemes such as the infamous Bank of Credit and Commerce International.

Salem bin Laden, Osama's brother, has conducted all his American affairs through James Bath, a Houston crony of the Bush family. Bath's former business partner Bill White testified in court that Bath had been a liaison for the C.I.A. In 1979 Bath invested $50,000 in Arbusto, George W. Bush's first business venture. Rumor had it that Bath was acting as Salem bin Laden's representative. "In conflicting statements, Bush at first denied ever knowing Bath, then acknowledged his stake in Arbusto and that he was aware Bath represented Saudi interests." (4)

In addition to doing aviation business with Saudi sheiks, Bath was part owner of a Houston bank whose chief stockholder was Ghaith Pharaon, who represented the Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI), a criminal global bank with branches in 73 countries. BCCI proceeded to defraud depositors of $10 billion during the '80s, while providing a money laundry conduit for the Medellin drug cartel, Asia's major heroin cartel, Manuel Noriega, Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A., and Islamist terrorist organizations worldwide. (5)

Big Three wheeler-dealer Khalid bin Mahfouz, one of the largest stockholders in the criminal bank, was indicted when the massive BCCI banking scandal blew apart in the early 1990s. The Saudi royal family placed him under house arrest after discovering that Mahfouz had used the royal bank to channel millions of dollars through fake charities into bin Laden's organizations, but Mahfouz was not so much punished as inconvenienced. (6)

CONTINUED w/sources...

http://www.hermes-press.com/BushSaud.htm

Money trumps a lot on earth and a lot of what earthlings believe.

[GGJohn]

17. Follow the money trail is an appropriate term, although it's

almost impossible to follow it all the way to the top these days.