Thread: Saudi Arabia Warns of Economic Fallout if Congress Passes 9/11 Bill

Saudi Arabia and 9/11: The Kingdom May Be in for a Nasty Shock

Authority is shifting, and the current king isn't handling it well.

By Patrick Cockburn / The Independent April 27, 2016

Foreign leaders visiting King Salman of Saudi Arabia have noticed that there is a large flower display positioned just in front of where the 80-year-old monarch sits. On closer investigation, the visitors realised that the purpose of the flowers is to conceal a computer which acts as a teleprompter, enabling the King to appear capable of carrying on a coherent conversation about important issues.

One visiting U.S. delegation meeting with King Salman recently observed a different method of convincing visitors—or at least television viewers watching the encounter—that he can deal with the escalating crises facing Saudi Arabia. The king did not look at the group but at a giant television screen hanging from the ceiling of the room on which was appearing prompts. Simon Henderson, the Saudi expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, who tells the story, writes that off to one side in the room was an aide who “furiously hammered talking points into a keyboard.”

Of course, King Salman is not the only world leader past or present whose inability to cope has been artfully concealed by aides and courtiers. But eyewitness accounts of his incapacity does put in perspective the claim by the White House that President Obama’s visit to Saudi Arabia and two-hour meeting with the king on April 20 was “cordial” and cleared the air after a troubled period in Saudi-U.S. relations.

It is hardly a secret that real authority is shifting to Crown Prince Muhammad bin Nayef and his son, Deputy Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman. But the power vacuum does help explain the bizarre and self-destructive nature of present-day Saudi foreign policy that suddenly shifted from cautious use of Saudi Arabia’s vast oil wealth to further its aims, while always keeping its options open, to a militarised and confrontational pursuit of foreign policy objectives.

It is not exactly that the Saudi’s priorities have changed, but that the means being used to achieve them are far riskier than in the past. Since King Salman succeeded to the throne, Saudi Arabia has escalated its involvement in the war in Syria and engaged directly in an air war in Yemen. Both ventures have failed: greater support for armed opposition to President Bashar al-Assad in Syria early last year allowed the rebels to advance, but also provoked direct Russian military intervention, making Assad very difficult to displace.

Bombing Yemen has not forced the Houthi opposition out of the capital Sanaa and, where the Houthis have retreated, there is chaos which al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has used to set up their own mini-state on the south coast of Yemen.

The Saudi leaders are more or less openly saying that they are waiting for the departure of President Obama from the White House to resume their status of most favoured ally of the U.S. The permanently anti-Saudi bias of the present administration, though usually verbal rather than operational, came across clearly in the interviews with Mr Obama and his top officials in the Atlantic by Jeffrey Goldberg. He says that “in the White House these days, one occasionally hears Obama’s National Security Officials pointedly reminding visitors that the large majority of 9/11 hijackers were not Iranian, but Saudi.”

But the Saudis are making a mistake in imagining that hostility to them will dissipate once Mr Obama leaves office. There is renewed pressure for the release of the unpublished 28 pages in the official Congressional 9/11 report on possible Saudi official complicity in the attacks, with CBS’s influential and widely watched 60 Minutesdevoting a segment to it, thereby putting it back on the political agenda. “Saudi Arabia legitimises Islamic extremism and intolerance around the world,” states an op-ed by Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times. “”If you want to stop bombings in Brussels or San Bernardino, then turn off the spigots of incitement from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries.” Not only is there a growing anti-Saudi mood in the U.S., but it is one of the few political developments common to both parties.

In reality, the missing 28 pages in the 9/11 report on possible high level Saudi involvement may not be as categorical or as damaging to the Kingdom as the fact of their continued non-publication. The secrets that Saudi Arabia has most interest in hiding may be rather different, and relate to allegations that between 1995 and 2001, two senior Saudi princes spent hundreds of millions of state funds paying off Osama bin Laden not to make attacks within Saudi Arabia, but leaving him free to do whatever he wanted in the rest of the world.

Saudi Arabia and 9/11: The Kingdom May Be in for a Nasty Shock

This will open the U.S. to being sued by every person who has had a family member killed in any country by any U.S. military action. They will claim that everyone killed was a civilian and the U.S. owes them $10 million for each person. Every bomb dropped and every missile or drone strike will become a lawsuit.

Are you equating the military action of the United States government to the terroristic actions carried out by al-Qaida? In both cases there are casualties that are innocent civilians, but the perpetrators are clearly different. This is not the Saudi Air Force mistakingly taking down a jetliner. This is a terroristic organization operating freely within the borders of Saudi Arabia and to what extent they are allowed to train, recruit and receive the necessary paperwork to enter the US w/out even speaking English with the knowledge of the government is at the core of the problem. How much of our money that goes to imported oil ends up as obscure financial contributions to organizations that ultimately funnel the funds to these terroristic organizations designed to kill Americans and others and destabilize economies through fear?

The 9/11 Commission Report, which was published in 2004, calls Saudi Arabia a "problematic ally in combating Islamic extremism."

Originally Posted by joe s

Are you equating the military action of the United States government to the terroristic actions carried out by al-Qaida? . . .

NO. But the foreigners will.

OUR CONDOLENCES

How the U.S. Paid for Death and Damage in Afghanistan


Cora Currier
Feb. 27 2015, 6:22 a.m.


An armored vehicle ran over a six-year-old boy’s legs: $11,000. A jingle truck was “blown up by mistake”: $15,000. A controlled detonation broke eight windows in a mosque: $106. A boy drowned in an anti-tank ditch: $1,916. A 10-ton truck ran over a cucumber crop: $180. A helicopter “shot bullets hitting and killing seven cows”: $2,253. Destruction of 200 grape vines, 30 mulberry trees and one well: $1,317. A wheelbarrow full of broken mirrors: $4,057.
A child who died in a combat operation: $2,414.

These are among the payments that the United States has made to ordinary Afghans over the course of American military operations in the country, according to databases covering thousands of such transactions obtained by TheIntercept under the Freedom of Information Act. Many of the payments are for mundane incidents such as traffic accidents or property damage, while others, in flat bureaucratic language, tell of “death of his wife and 2 minor daughters,” “injuries to son’s head, arms, and legs,” “death of husband,” father, uncle, niece.

The databases are incomplete, reflecting fragmented record keeping in Afghanistan, particularly on the issue of harm to civilians. The payments The Intercept has analyzed and presented in the graphic accompanying this story are not a complete accounting, but they do offer a small window into the thousands of fractured lives and personal tragedies that take place during more than a decade of war.

The Price of Life
The data that The Intercept obtained comes from two different systems that the U.S. military uses to make amends.

The Foreign Claims Act, passed in 1942, gives foreign citizens the ability to request payment for damages caused by U.S. military personnel. But the law only covers incidents that happen outside of combat situations — meaning that civilians caught up in battles have no recourse.

Since the Korean War, however, the U.S. military has realized that it’s often in its best interest to make symbolic payments for civilian harm, even when it occurs in combat. Over the years, the Pentagon authorized “condolence payments” where the military decided it was culturally appropriate.

Such condolence payments were approved in Iraq a few months into the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, and in Afghanistan beginning in 2005. They soon became part of the “hearts and minds” approach to counterinsurgency. To put it another way, in the words of an Army handbook, this was “money as a weapons system.”

Click to view visualization.

While it might seem cynical to offer token compensation for a human life, humanitarian organizations embraced the policy as a way to acknowledge deaths and the hard economic realities of war zones.Condolence payments are meant to be symbolic gestures, and today in Afghanistan, they are generally capped at $5,000, though greater amounts can be approved.

Payments under the Foreign Claims Act take into account any negligence on the part of the claimant, as well as local law. Douglas Dribben, an attorney with the Army Claims Service in Fort Meade, Maryland, said that officers in the field do research, sometimes consulting with USAID or the State Department, to determine the cost of replacing damaged property — “What’s a chicken worth in my area versus what it’s worth in downtown Kabul?”

Claims for injuries incorporate the cost of medical care, and in the case of wrongful death, the deceased’s earning potential and circumstances. “If I have a case of a 28-year old doctor, they are going to be paid more than we’d pay for a child of four,” Dribben said. “In Afghanistan, unfortunately, a young female child would likely be much less than a young boy.”

The system is imperfect, however. Residents of remote areas often can’t access the places where the U.S. military hands out cash. The amounts given out, or whether they are paid at all, often depend on the initiative of individual soldiers — usually the judge advocates who handle claims, or commanders who can authorize condolence payments.

In 2007, the American Civil Liberties Union obtained documents detailing about 500 claims made under the Foreign Claims Act, mainly in Iraq. These were the original, often hand-written records of incidents, their investigations, and the military’s ultimate decision to pay or deny the claim. Jonathan Tracy, a former judge advocate who handled thousands of claims in Iraq and then devoted years to studying the system, analyzed the entire dataset and found that the decisions often relied on over-broad or arbitrary definitions of combat situations, and that people who were denied claims were only sometimes awarded condolence payment.

Yale law professor John Fabian Witt also noted that “relatively minor property awards for damages to automobiles and other personal property often rivaled the death payments in dollar value.”

“They present it as if it’s very black and white, as though there’s the circle of things we can pay for, and you decide if the incident is in or out of that circle, but that’s not the way it happens,” Tracy told The Intercept. “You’d have two different attorneys doing two different things and [civilians] who’d had much the same thing happen to them would get very different compensation.”

Last year the annual defense appropriations bill included a provision, championed by Senator Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., which instructs the Pentagon to set up a permanent process for administering condolence payments. The measure is intended to prevent the delay and inconsistencies that marred the system in the early years in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to improve record keeping, so that the Pentagon doesn’t start from scratch in each new conflict.

A defense official told The Intercept in an emailed statement that the Pentagon has not yet implemented the provision, but is “reviewing the processes related to ex-gratia payments to determine if there are areas where improvements can be made.”

Marla Keenan, managing director of the Center for Civilians in Conflict, believes that “as the conflict in Iraq and Syria has escalated, they are starting to see a reason for this type of policy to exist. It’s unfortunate how a new context where this could be used is the impetus.”

Finding the Data
The United Nations only began keeping track of civilian casualties in Afghanistan in 2009; using a conservative count that requires three sources for each incident, the U.N. now reports that more than 17,700 innocent Afghans have died in the past five years of fighting, the majority of them killed by the Taliban or other groups fighting the Afghan government and coalition forces.

Looking at compensation paid out under the Foreign Claims Act or in condolence payments is one way to get a window into the damage caused by the U.S. presence. Yet it’s difficult to draw conclusions from the military’s records, which are muddled and incomplete, by their own admission.


Sample Afghan claim form

Every cache of documents released comes with caveats. For example,The Nation obtained thousands of pages’ worth of records for payments for condolences and other “battle damage” in 2013. Asked for total figures, a military spokesman told the magazine, “I could wade through the numbers to the best of my ability but my numbers would be a guess and most likely inaccurate.”

The Intercept received several years’ worth of recent data on condolence payments from the military through a Freedom of Information Act request. These records come from a military database keeping track of the Commander’s Emergency Response Program, a special pot of spending money for “goodwill” projects.

The database entries are sparse, giving only the basics of who was killed or injured, with no detail on when or how the incident occurred. Location is given only at the province level. Nonetheless, the data represent the Pentagon’s clearest accounting of how much money it spends on condolence payments. (This data does not include “solatia,” which, just like condolence payments, are compensation for death and injury. But they are paid out of a unit’s operating funds, and the Pentagon has said previously it does not have overall figures for solatia.)

According to the data we received, in fiscal years 2011 through 2013, the military made 953 condolence payments totaling $2.7 million. $1.8 million of those were for deaths, and the average payment for a death was $3,426. Payments for injuries averaged $1,557.
Some payments are for multiple people harmed in one incident. For instance, the largest single payment, from 2012, offers $70,000 for “death of a mother and six children.” The largest payment for a single death occurred in 2011, when the father of “a local national” who was killed was given more than $15,000. Some family members received as little as $100 for the death of a relative.

Traffic accidents were among the most common claims under the Foreign Claims Act.

Asked about records for payments made before 2011, the Pentagon directed questions to the press office for coalition forces in Afghanistan, which did not reply to repeated inquiries from The Intercept.

Also through the Freedom of Information Act, The Intercept received Foreign Claims Act data from the Army, which handles Afghanistan for the entire U.S. military. As with the condolence payments, the database doesn’t include the documentation behind each claim. Rather, it shows a quick synopsis, date and amount for each claim filed.

In all, the Army released 5,766 claims marked for Afghanistan, filed between Feb. 2003 and Aug. 2011, of which 1,671 were paid, for a total of about $3.1 million. Of those claims, 753 were denied completely, and the rest are in various kinds of accounting limbo.

This is only a portion of the claims that were actually made and paid. Douglas Dribben, the attorney with the Army office, described the database as “G.I.G.O. — Garbage In, Garbage Out.”

Judge advocates in the field are supposed to regularly update the database with claims received and paid, but spotty Internet access and erratic schedules often made that impossible. Tracy, the former Army attorney, said that in Iraq, he had to enter all the claims he received weekly. In practice, “that never really happened,” he said.

A 2010 guidance for claims officers takes a pleading tone: “We know [claims] payments are not your only mission and the last thing you really want is another report but in all honesty the last thing any of us want is an unauthorized expenditure of funds.”

A more reliable estimate, Dribben said, comes from Army budget data, which reflects the amount of money transferred out to the field to pay claims. The Army Claims Service did not provide that information, but a training guide from 2009 states that for that fiscal year, the Army had paid $1.35 million in 516 claims in Afghanistan, with 202 denied.

The total for Iraq that year was over $18 million; overall, Afghanistan saw fewer and smaller claims than Iraq, because of remote geography and fewer U.S. troops deployed. Prices for replacement goods or lost wages were generally lower, Dribben said.

The claims synopses typically contain missing words, garbled grammar or obvious errors in the various entry fields. Most refer to a “claimant.” Some are entered in the first person. A few dozen have no synopsis at all. Many are completely enigmatic: what happened when “claimant feared soldiers would open fire and panicked?” The claimant was paid more than $3,200.

“Each one took maybe 30 seconds to enter,” Tracy said. “There wasn’t really room or time to put in a narrative.”

The database categorized just 18 payments as wrongful deaths between 2003 and 2011 — very likely an undercounting, Dribben said. The average of those payments was about $11,000; the highest was $50,000, paid to someone in eastern Afghanistan, because “coalition forces killed his father.”

Correction, March 4th, 2015: This article originally stated that “The United States and its allies do not tally civilian deaths in Afghanistan.” In fact, international forces have kept a database recording civilian casualties since 2008. That information has been only sporadically made public. According to Science Magazine, the military’s figures are generally lower than those of the U.N.

The Intercept’s Margot Williams and Josh Begley contributed research to this report. Eric Sagara, formerly of ProPublica, also contributed.

https://theintercept.com/2015/02/27/...s-afghanistan/

Yemeni ex-leader Saleh to RT: No difference between Saudi regime and ISIS, Al-Qaeda

Published time: 30 Apr, 2016 21:25

In the aftermath of thousands of Yemeni civilians’ deaths at the hands of the Saudi-led coalition, Yemen’s ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh told RT that there is no difference between the "Saudi regime" and terror groups like Islamic State and Al-Qaeda.

"A plot has been made against the Yemeni people. An unreasonable aggression against us has been prepared. Strikes at military, economic, cultural and social targets have been conducted, the whole infrastructure [has been targeted]. A total destruction of everything is taking place... I'm talking about Saudi aggression," Ali Abdullah Saleh told RT Arabic in an exclusive interview this week.

The former Yemeni president, who headed the Middle Eastern country for decades until February 2012, said that his nation has no conflict with any country in the world, but Saudi Arabia.

"They attacked us, we didn't attack them. They are killing our women, our elderly and children. Why? We've never had any religious disputes. Why have they appeared now? We have our religious views, you have yours. Why are you [Saudis] killing the Yemeni people, who are your neighbors and brothers?" Saleh said.

Saleh believes that the major terror groups are all derived from the Muslim Brotherhood organization, which itself, according to him, "is an invention of the Saudis."

"Al-Qaeda, ISIL [Islamic State, IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL] and Al-Nusra are all derivatives of the Muslim Brotherhood, which was invented and raised in Saudi Arabia. These organizations also operate in Russia and in Europe. All of them are Saudi Arabia's invention.

Later Qatar and Turkey have also started using them, and finance them to achieve their own goals. There were none of them in Yemen for a long while, and everything that then appeared came from Saudi Arabia under different names, [such as] Salafis, Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Qaeda."

The politician added that both Russia and Europe have the wrong idea about the essence of the Muslim Brotherhood movement. Being the "creation" of Saudi Arabia, "they have no concrete political program, their program is money," Saleh said.

The former president, who has a number of loyal forces allied with the Houthi rebels who control the Yemeni capital of Sana'a, told RT that the damage to his country "amounts to billions" of dollars.

"More than 8,000 people have been killed. There were a lot of children, women and elderly among them. And I'm talking only about the number of casualties among the civilian population. Furthermore, 27,000 people have been injured. All of these people are casualties of the Saudi regime," Saleh said.

The former president said that his country has been devastated, with no income from tax, very little from customs, and no money from oil or gas. The latter is only produced for domestic needs, he said.

"And if there is some oil, it's being controlled and sold by Al-Qaeda in Hadramaut [a region in Yemen on the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula] and Shabwah [a governorate in central Yemen]. They sell it on the market within the country. Al-Qaeda gets all the money from it. And this all happens in full view of the Saudi regime. They tell the world, which doesn't want to understand anything: 'We are against Al-Qaeda.' What Al-Qaeda, what ISIL? They are ISIL. They are Al-Qaeda. Everyone knows what this regime is about. It buys people's conscience by making buy and sell deals on weapons, as well as inking political deals by paying money to influential people in different countries of the world... Saudi Arabia pursues only its own interests."

Yemen's ex-leader also said that while Saudi Arabia uses claims that there are Iran's forces in Yemen "to justify its aggression," no such support is coming from Tehran.

"We would like to receive some military and other aid from Iran. But it's not helping us," Saleh said, calling Iran's presence in his country a "fiction." Saying that the US "has the most powerful intelligence services working in all countries and knowing and seeing everything," not a single Iranian military and no Iranian weapon has been discovered in Yemen. "Should they have found anything, it would long have been put on UN's agenda," the politician told RT.

Saleh believes that the exiled President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, whose forces are based in Aden and who is supported by Saudi Arabia, "has no legitimacy.” He should "render himself to the international tribunal as a war criminal," Saleh said, adding that opposition forces only support dialogue with the people of Yemen.

The future of Yemen "should not be discussed neither in Geneva, nor in Kuwait," the politician said, adding that he and his supporters only recognize the unity of the country in accordance with its constitution and people's referendum on the matter.

"A government of national unity with participation of various political forces should be formed in the first place," Saleh said, adding that new parliamentary and presidential elections should be prepared in Yemen in accordance with its constitution. "But not the constitution of Hadi, which has divided Yemen," he added.

Saying that he now heads an opposition party which is "in opposition to any power in principle," but is in coalition with other forces "to fight the aggressors," the former president told RT that he would never again agree to be in power himself.

"I've been part of the political process for 45 years. Enough for me," he said.

Yemeni ex-leader Saleh to RT: No difference between Saudi regime and ISIS, Al-Qaeda

CIA director says secret 9/11 report pages full of hearsay, inaccurate info

Published May 02, 2016 FoxNews.com

NOW PLAYINGWhy does CIA director want to keep 9/11 report pages secret?
CIA Director John Brennan said Sunday that 28 classified pages of a bipartisan commission's report on the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks contains "uncorroborated, unvetted information" that some could seize upon to claim Saudi Arabian involvement in the attacks.

Brennan, speaking on NBC's "Meet The Press," said such claims would be "very, very inaccurate."

The Obama administration may soon release at least part of the secret chapter, which some believe shows a Saudi connection to the Al Qaeda attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and Shanksville, Pa.

A groundswell to declassify the documents began last month, when former Florida Sen. Bob Graham told CBS' "60 Minutes" he believed the 19 hijackers "substantially" received support from officials in Saudi Arabia's government and prominent members of society.

"There are a lot of rocks out there that have been purposefully tamped down, that if were they turned over, would give us a more expansive view of the Saudi role," Graham said at the time.

The 28 pages were withheld from the 838-page report on the orders of then-President George W. Bush, who said the release could divulge intelligence sources and methods. In mid-April, the White House told Graham that it would decide whether to declassify the material within 60 days.

Brennan said Sunday that the pages were classified because "of concerns about sensitive methods, investigative actions, and the investigation of 9/11 was still under way in 2002."

Brennan added that he believed the pages contain "a combination of things that are accurate and inaccurate." He said the 9/11 Commission followed up on the preliminary information in the 28 pages and made "a very clear judgment" there was no evidence indicating "the Saudi government as an institution or Saudi officials individually" financially backed Al Qaeda."

Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were citizens of Saudi Arabia. The Saudi government says it has been "wrongfully and morbidly accused of complicity" in the attacks, is fighting extremists and working to clamp down on their funding channels. Still, the Saudis have long said that they would welcome declassification of the 28 pages because it would "allow us to respond to any allegations in a clear and credible manner."

Country of Origin of Hijackers Involved in 9/11 Attacks | Graphiq

Brennan's comments came as lawmakers are considering a bill that would permit terrorism victims to sue foreign states that helped fund or otherwise support attacks in the U.S. The legislation is opposed by the Obama administration and the Saudi government has threatened to sell off hundreds of billions of dollars in American assets if it passes.

http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/11/news...article_footer

ACTION ALERT
Please send an e-mail to your U.S. Senators urging them to pass JASTA

After sending out our first Action Alert on the JASTA legislation last week, Capitol Hill received thousands of e-mails from ACT for America members supporting movement, and passage, of this important legislation. If you took a few moments out of your day to take action on this matter, thank you!

The Senate is in “recess” this week — with legislators back home in their respective states. But that doesn’t mean that they should stop hearing from their constituents about the JASTA bill. We need to keep the heat on until JASTA is voted on by the full Senate. These legislators represent YOU in the U.S. Congress. They should hear from you about important matters like this one, and you should hold them accountable. It’s as simple as that.

If you missed my last e-mail about why this bill is so very important, especially to the families of the 9/11 victims, please click here and remember to take action….(and forward this e-mail to everyone you know). This email was very special to me, as I told you about a personal letter I received from ACT member Geraldine Davie, whose daughter Amy perished in the World Trade Center on September 11th.

Please help Geraldine, the other 9/11 families, and our nation by taking the easy steps below.

Click here to tell your two U.S. Senators that JASTA must be brought up for a vote – and passed – immediately.

We know you are busy, so we’ve done all of the work for you. All you have to do is add your individual information and your voice will go directly to your two U.S. Senators. You can either send the e-mail as we’ve drafted it, or modify it to respectfully state the message in your own words.

Thank you for all that you do for our great nation. Always remember: if each of us does just a little, together we can accomplish a lot.

MAY 7, 2016 6:21 PM BY ROBERT SPENCER


What could possibly go wrong? Obama assures us his nuke deal with Iran will bring peace in our time, and he couldn’t possibly be misleading us, could he?

“Former Israeli, Saudi Arabian officials talk Iran nuclear threat at DC event,” Jerusalem Post,
May 7, 2016 (thanks to Lookmann):

The old adage proclaiming that the “enemy of my enemy is my friend” was on full display Thursday evening when a retired IDF general sat down with the former intelligence chief of Saudi Arabia to discuss the current tumult facing the Middle East, according to CNN.

Maj. Gen. Yaakov Amidror (res.) along with Prince Turki al-Faisal spoke at the The Washington Institute for Near East Policy in the US capital, where the two discussed a number of security topics including the Iranian nuclear threat and America’s varying role in the region.

“We are both exes,” Faisal said, reminding the audience that the two were private citizens and no longer represented their respective governments.

The most pressing issue facing the two historic adversaries presently is arguably Iran, which both countries believe aims to develop nuclear weapons. According to foreign media reports, Israel and Saudi Arabia have quietly been cooperating with one another for “years” among shared security concerns, despite the Islamic kingdom’s refusal to acknowledge the existence of the Jewish state.

During their discussion, Faisal said that “all options” would be available to the Saudi regime concerning Iranian nuclear proliferation, including the its own “acquisition [of] nuclear weapons… to face whatever eventuality might come from Iran.”

Like Saudi Arabia, Amidror noted that Israel would also meet the threat if Iran decided to weaponize its nuclear technology.

“In principle, the Iranians can go nuclear and from the Israeli point of view, this is a threat to existence,” Amidror said. “We will not let this happen.”…


Prince Turki: Saudis will get nukes if Iranians do

We do not want any part of these countries, everything about them is so strange, so weird, so unlike US in every way. We do not want to pursue actions, we want to get the hell out of these bizarre places and leave them to their ways. We must focus on our own country without further international complications with people we do not understand.

Prince Turki: Saudis will get nukes if Iranians do

This is the hell-hole result of the Bushes, the Clintons, the Kerrys, and so many more stupid and incompetent politicians who never knew what ass to kiss. We should give them all a big MOON so they know exactly what butts to kiss in the future, and yes, that's ours and no others. Trump is the only one who understands this. Why is that? Somehow we've been conned and deceived into electing people who are totally unfit to serve in their capacities.

We must bring that to an end in November. Another Clinton isn't it. Wake up fellow Americans.

It doesn't matter what you really want. Most Americans want cheap oil regardless of the political math. There is a price to pay for everything and if this part of the world isn't important to you, other countries like Russia and China will move closer every time we back away. The US economy does not and will not work without an endless supply of crude oil accompanied by prices at or below market value.