Robert Scheer, TruthDig, August 1, 2007
Go figure: From the White House comes the news that self-styled anti-terrorism crusader George Bush wants to sell $20 billion in high-tech military equipment to Saudi Arabia, the source of most of the financing, and 15 of the 19 hijackers, for the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks on the United States. The justification can’t be that this is yet another boondoggle for the military-industrial complex-the big winner in the war on terror-so we are told instead that the Sunni-dominated Saudi kingdom needs this weaponry to withstand a future challenge from those dastardly Shiite fellows in Iran.
Yes, the very same extremists whose surrogates are now, as a consequence of the U.S. invasion, pretending to be the indigenous government of Iraq. Recall that the Shiite militants who rule Tehran, along with the Sunni nuts around Osama bin Laden, were both the sworn enemy of Saddam Hussein. Now both of those forces are the main players, according to the Bush administration, vying for power in “liberated” Iraq, and our president is in the inane position of playing one group of fanatics against the other in the name of securing Iraq as a democratic haven.
White House officials told The New York Times that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates intend to use the occasion of their joint visit to Saudi Arabia “to press the Saudis to do more to help Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government.” Huh? Why in the world would the Sunnis, who control Saudi Arabia and are frightened to their bones of Shiites throughout the Gulf, be party to consolidating Shiite power in Iraq?
To complete the circle of madness, White House officials tell reporters that the hope of the latest arms sale program is that the Saudis will be so thrilled with their new weapons that they will stop funding the Sunni insurgents who are currently killing Americans. The absurdity of this position is that it makes the Saudis the big winners in the war on terror and yet expects them to cut out behavior that has played so effectively to the kingdom’s advantage. The nation which was most directly responsible for spawning the original al-Qaida attacks on the U.S., and which has since helped finance the violence in Iraq, is now being rewarded with a long-sought weapons modernization package. Thus, a new generation of deadly toys finds its way into the volatile Mideast.