Report says Saudis are major financers of Sunni Insurgents

[Charlie Brown]

http://news.bostonherald.com/international/view.bg?articleid=170957

CAIRO, Egypt - Private Saudi citizens are giving millions of dollars to Sunni insurgents in Iraq and much of the money is used to buy weapons, including shoulder fired anti-aircraft missiles, according to key Iraqi officials and others familiar with the flow of cash.

Saudi government officials deny that any money from their country is being sent to Iraqis fighting the government and the U.S.-led coalition.

But the U.S. Iraq Study Group report said Saudis are a source of funding for Sunni Arab insurgents. Several truck drivers interviewed by The Associated Press described carrying boxes of cash from Saudi Arabia into Iraq, money they said was headed for insurgents.

Some Saudis appear to know the money is headed to Iraq’s insurgents, but others merely give it to clerics who channel it to anti-coalition forces, the officials said.

In one recent case, an Iraqi official said $25 million in Saudi money went to a top Iraqi Sunni cleric and was used to buy weapons, including Strela, a Russian shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missile. The missiles were purchased from someone in Romania, apparently through the black market, he said.

[maddezmom]

1. Can this situation get any more confuggled?

:scared: Everyone has the fingers out pointing to one another. :banghead:

[roamer65]

2. Dump Al-Anbar province and the Sunni areas of Iraq...

off onto the Saudis shoulders and let them deal with it. Iran can have the Shi'a partition. We'll withdraw to Iraqi Kurdistan with about 1/4 of the troops presently over there to stop Turkey from getting involved. We are going to have to partition Iraq now, just like the British had to partition India and Pakistan.

[nealmhughes]

8. Unfortunately, I pragmatically agree. I think we owe it to the Kurds --

a breath of self-governance in a quagmire of a British Colonial Office drawn map of a state.

Why not 3 cantons and Baghdad as a Neutral Zone?

When government doesn't function, then people take matters into their own hands -- and they are not always vigilantes or committees of public safety, but marauders as well.

Is there anyone in the world to offer a pragmatic solution to the Iraqi Question? Anyone with near-universal moral authority and respect, that is?

When is the last time that anyone asked the population of Iraq what they wanted? I would bet that it would be the basics: education for the kids, jobs, elecricity and clean water, security in person and property, you know, the basics! Can the people there afford to debate such things as "shock therapy" for denationalization or "privitization"? I think they want the troops out, and Arabic speaking police who aren't corrupt in and the death squads and IEDs and mortar rounds GONE. Then they can worry about forming a true unity government.

We don't even have an answer as to why the power isn't on all day in a huge city that had been fully electrified ages ago. We still don't have an answer when people are reduced to purified water by heat and clorine by hand from the Tigris when Nebucanazzar had flowing water in Babylon...

The world's largest horde of incompotent boobs ever assembled in one place: the Corporate Party planning war in Iraq...with all mention of "so what happens now?" being ignored or stopped.

[Botany]

3. That is it horse whip 'em and then impeach him

No way that the C.I.A. & bush & company did not know about this.

[KansDem]

4. Saudis have financed terrorists for years. They were behind 9/11.

15 of the 19 attackers on 9/11 carried Saudi passports. They are also business partners of the Bush Family.

Why can't Americans see the connection?

[jazzjunkysue]

25. Because ABC News doesn't explain it 6 hours a day with cartoon

graphics, and it doesn't fit on a bumper sticker.

Oh, yeah, and it could be that little thing about Fascism where the media is complicit with the Business takeover of the political controls.

[Magleetis]

5. The gates of hell

are wide ass open thanks to the worlds biggest FU.

[tanyev]

6. Our very good friends the Saudis? Oopsie.

Who approved printing that story?

[Pierre.Suave]

7. Seriously,

is this really a surprise to anyone?

[SquireJons]

9. Release the RAND Corporation report on Saudi Arabia

Back in 2001, before the 911 attacks, the White House was briefed on a study and report that the RAND Corporation did on U.S. and Saudi relations. The White House immediately classified the report and said that the conclusions did not reflect the thinking within the administration. This after leaks indicating that the report advocated changing our relationship from one of friends and allies to competing and hostile states. Basically, the study said that Saudi Arabia consistently acted against U.S. interests and policies, while materially supporting our enemies.

Given all that has happened in the last six years, I think one of the first things that the Senate and House Intelligence Committee's should do is take a long look at that report and consider releasing at least a redacted version of it.

It kills me how much countries like Saudi Arabia and Israel have us by the short hairs. They can fuck us royally for years and we just take it. All in the name of profits for energy companies, to whom we have become a mercenary army. All it would take is a serious 1000 hour battery and the entire Middle East could drop off the face of the earth and we'd never bat an eye. But nooooooo. A couple million dollars for renewable energy research is un-affordable, but 400 billion for an oil war is no problem.

"One day you're gonna rise up from your habitual feast, and find yourself staring down the throat of the beast, they call the revolution"
-Bruce Cockburn

[Raster]

14. Amen, Brother!!

"A couple million dollars for renewable energy research is un-affordable, but 400 billion for an oil war is no problem." No truer words....

[warrens]

10. Duh. See bin Laden, Osama

Pakistan and SA are the biggest problems in the region. Those are two eeeeeevil countries.

[robinlynne]

11. oh yeah, and we finance the saudis...... nice arrangement.

[ContraBass Black]

12. Did anyone here not see this coming?

[stevedeshazer]

13. This is why CHENEY was ORDERED to Saudi Arabia

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/11/28/cheney-saudi/

[antiimperialist]

15. Invade Saudi Arabia?

or North Korea?
ha! Keep dreaming...
Bush has his priorities all mixed up.

[eridani]

17. The only reason for not doing that--

--is that it would make things hundreds of times worse, just like in Iraq. Is it a huge surprise to anybody that Sunni Saudi Arabia would back Sunnis in Iraq, just as Shi'ite Iran is backing Shi'ites in Iraq?

[Nickster]

16. You know what that means.....time to invade Malaysia! n/t

[Phrogman]

18. With friends like Saudi Arabia and Israel...

who needs enemies?

[DoYouEverWonder]

19. In the meantime, Jim Baker's firm

still represents the Saudis and the families of the 9-11 victims continue to get screwed.

[Ganja Ninja]

20. Wouldn't you just know it.

Perhaps the House of Saud has designs of their own for Iraq's oil.

[SpiralHawk]

21. Cammander AWOL's Kissing Krony Kuties?

I am shocked, shocked, shocked that Commander AWOL's Kissing Kronies, his beloved bin Laden Buddies, would do this...

[Tesha]

22. Wot a shock! Who'd've guessed??? Who could have anticipated *THAT*? (NT)

[anotherdrew]

23. we should have attacked Saudi Arabia if anywhere, fuck those worthless royal assholes n/t

[BluePatriot]

24. To put it bluntly (and I hope someone in the MSM does)

Home country of majority of 9/11 hijackers now financing insurgent movement that kills/maims our troops...

And Bush is still buddy-buddy with the Saudis...

What. the. hell.