🚀 go-pugleaf

On 2007-06-27 18:41:05 -0400, leroyblue@pillinor.net said:

> On Mon, 25 Jun 2007 16:23:14 -0400, Slim <slim@pickins.com> wrote:
> 
>> "Naturally the common people don't want war: Neither in Russia, nor in 
>> England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after 
>> all, IT IS THE LEADERS of the country who determine the policy and it 
>> is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a 
>> democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist 
>> dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to 
>> the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is TELL 
>> THEM THEY ARE BEING ATTACKED, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of 
>> patriotism and exposing the country to danger. IT WORKS THE SAME IN ANY 
>> COUNTRY."
>>  
>> --Goering at the Nuremberg Trials
> 
> 
> Your hero!
> 
> WAR!! WAR!! DEMOCRATS AND WAAAAR!!!!
>                 (the DRAFT included!!)
> 
> World War I   -  1917 -  116,708  KIA - Woodrow Wilson - Democrat
> World War II  - 1941 -  408,306 -KIA  Franklin D. Roosevelt - Democrat
> Korean War   -  1950 -    54,246 KIA - Harry S. Truman - Democrat
> Vietnam War -  1965 -    58,159 KIA - Lyndon B. Johnson - Democrat

With the exception of Vietnam, these wars were fought against a direct threat.

19 of the 21 9/11ers were Saudi.

Financed by Saudis.

The Bush-Saudi Connection
By Michelle Mairesse

Ancestral Voices

In 1920, under a League of Nations mandate, officials from France and 
Great Britain carved up vast tracts of warlord-dominated territories in 
Arabia into what they imagined would be nation states devoid of the 
complex historical, cultural, and tribal realities of the Mideast.

Instead of establishing European-style nation states, the strongest 
warlords quickly entrenched themselves with the aid of standing armies 
and spy networks. In much of the Mideast, fealty is often accorded to 
tribal overlords and the Islamic sects they favor rather than to the 
territory and people within the boundaries of the nation state. 
Jonathan Rabin succinctly defines the reality, past and present, of the 
desert sheikdoms: "The systems of government that have evolved in 
Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia are paranoid family dictatorships with 
ancestral roots in a single city or village." (1)

Islamic fundamentalists like Osama bin Laden make their appeals to the 
nation or community of believers, not to any particular nation state, 
although the rich and powerful among the Muslims have founded 
Western-style businesses and formed corporations both inside and 
outside the boundaries of their native countries. Because Osama himself 
is a scion of a rich Saudi family with wide-ranging business interests 
throughout the world, the split Saudi personality is most evident in 
him and the bin Laden clan. Osama, who calls America "The Great Satan," 
has done business with the infidel Americans whenever it suited him.

Throughout the eighties, when the United States assisted the Saudis in 
a giant military buildup of airfields, ports, and bases throughout the 
kingdom, many of the contracts were awarded to the largest construction 
company in Saudi Arabia, the Saudi Binladen Group, founded by Osama bin 
Laden’s father.

At the same time, the United States trained and armed troops in 
Afghanistan to fight the Soviets. The United States and Saudi Arabia 
spent about $40 billion on the war in Afghanistan, recruiting, 
supplying, and training nearly 100,000 radical mujahideen from forty 
Muslim countries, including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Algeria, and 
Afghanistan itself. Among the recruits were Osama bin Laden and his 
followers. (2)

With C.I.A. funding, Osama bin Laden imported engineers and equipment 
from his father’s Saudi construction company to build tunnels for 
guerrilla training centers and hospitals, and for arms dumps near the 
Pakistan border. After the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, the 
C.I.A. and the Pakistani intelligence agency sponsored the Taliban 
organization, a government composed of the fanatic Wahhabi Islamic 
sect, the same sect that is the state religion in Saudi Arabia. 
Although followers of the Wahhabi sect do not refer to themselves as 
Wahhabis, the label is useful because it applies to a single Muslim 
group with a set of beliefs peculiar to them alone: Wahhabis maintain 
that Shi'ites and Sufis are not Muslims, and that Muslims should not 
visit shrines or celebrate Mohammed’s birthday. (3)

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)

Members of the Wahhabist Saudi oligarchy are driven by the sometimes 
conflicting emotions of power lust and religious fervor. Their support 
of radical Islamists follows from their ambition to dominate the Muslim 
world, but their fear that radical Islamists might overthrow the Saudi 
regime at home motivates them to fund and encourage holy warriors in 
countries other than their own.

As Daniel Pipes points out, jihad (holy war) is a central tenet of 
Muslim belief . "According to one calculation, Muhammad himself engaged 
in 78 battles, of which just one (the Battle of the Ditch) was 
defensive. Within a century after the prophet's death in 632, Muslim 
armies had reached as far as India in the east and Spain in the west. " 
(7)

Pipes traces the bloody advance of fundamentalist jihadists against 
their twentieth century co-religionists. "Islamists, besides adhering 
to the primary conception of jihad as armed warfare against infidels, 
have also adopted as their own Ibn Taymiya's call to target impious 
Muslims. This approach acquired increased salience through the 20th 
century as Islamist thinkers . . . promoted jihad against putatively 
Muslim rulers who failed to live up to or apply the laws of Islam. The 
revolutionaries who overthrew the Shah of Iran in 1979 and the 
assassins who gunned down President Anwar Sadat of Egypt two years 
later overtly held to this doctrine. So does Osama bin Laden."

In 1989, bin Laden established al Qaeda (the Base) in Afghanistan to 
organize extremist Wahhabis and disperse their networks throughout the 
country. A year later, he returned to Saudi Arabia and founded a 
welfare agency for Arab-Afghan veterans. Bin Laden hoped to mobilize 
the veterans as a kind of religious-military army, but King Faud 
discouraged the venture. When King Faud invited 540,000 American troops 
to the kingdom to fight in the Gulf War, bin Laden lambasted the royal 
family and urged religious authorities to issue fatwahs (religious 
rulings) condemning the American infidels.

In 1991, Osama bin Laden and a band of Afghan veterans agitated in 
Sudan for a holy war against the enemies of Islam. In 1992, he claimed 
responsibility for the attack on American soldiers in Yemen, and again 
for attacks in Somalia in 1993. He was mum about the terrorist truck 
bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, the explosion that killed 
six people and injured more than a thousand, but investigators knew bin 
Laden had donated heavily to the religious "charity" that financed the 
bombing operation.

Spiked Investigations
In February 1995, when he was appointed chief of the F.B.I.'s 
counter-terrorism section in Washington, John O’Neill immediately 
assembled and coordinated a team to capture Ramzi Yousef, who was en 
route from Pakistan to Afghanistan. Yousef was strongly suspected of 
planning and directing the World Trade Center bombing in 1993.

In three days, the kingpin of the World Trade Center bombing was in 
custody, and O’Neill went on to accumulate damning evidence against the 
1993 World Trade bombers that led to their conviction in American 
courts. For the next six years, John O’Neill tirelessly investigated 
terrorist strikes against Americans and American interests in Saudi 
Arabia, East Africa, and Yemen, often encountering American officials’ 
roadblocks on the way. Even in 1996, after Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl turned 
himself in at the American Embassy in Eritrea and divulged details of 
bin Laden’s and al Qaeda’s organization and operations, the State 
Department refused to list al Qaeda as a terrorist organization.

In February 1998, bin Laden assembled a number of terrorist groups, 
including Islamic Jihad, and issued a fierce fatwa calling for the 
deaths of all Americans. On August 7, 1998, 226 people died in the 
simultaneous bombing of American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. 
Investigators blamed bin Laden for the attacks. On August 20, 1998, 
President Clinton amended Executive Order 12947 to add Osama bin Laden 
and his key associates to the list of terrorists, thus blocking their 
US assets--including property and bank accounts--and prohibiting all 
U.S. financial transactions with them. The United States conducted a 
missile attack against bin Laden's facilities in Afghanistan.


On October 12, 2000, two suicide bombers ignited their boatload of 
explosives next to the USS Cole, an American destroyer refueling in 
Aden, off the coast of Yemen. The blast killed seventeen sailors and 
wounded thirty-nine others. O’Neill and his crack investigating team 
were dispatched to Yemen and hit a stone wall. He had hoped satellite 
intercepts of phone calls between an al Qaeda operative in Aden and 
Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan would lead him to the mastermind of the 
Cole attack, but the American ambassador and the Yemeni officials 
blocked the investigation at every turn.

O’Neill resigned from the F.B.I. in July 2001 and signed on as security 
chief for the World Trade Center in September. He died in the WTC 
attack on September 11, 2001.

Oil Diplomacy
In Forbidden Truth: U.S.-Taliban Secret Oil Diplomacy and the Failed 
Hunt for bin Laden, two French intelligence analysts, Jean-Charles 
Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, claim that the Clinton and Bush 
administrations impeded investigations of bin Laden and his al Qaeda 
terrorist group in order to maintain good relations with Saudi Arabia 
and to maintain the stability of the oil market. "As the late John 
O’Neill told one of the authors [Brisard] of this book, ‘All of the 
answers, all of the clues allowing us to dismantle Osama bin Laden’s 
organization, can be found in Saudi Arabia.'" (8)

In articles and interviews, Brisard has expanded on this statement, 
pronouncing the official story about bin Laden’s exile from his native 
Saudi Arabia in 1994 and his frozen assets to be a canard. Not only did 
O’Neill and the F.B.I. have extensive information concerning the 
finances of bin Laden and al Qaeda, but the business connections 
between the bin Ladens, the Mahfouzes, the al Ahmoudis, the Saudi royal 
family, and the Bush family kept turning up in their investigations.

Mahfouz, who owns Nimir Petroleum, has conducted joint ventures with 
the al Amoudi family, which owns Delta Oil. Delta Oil and Unocal 
planned to build a pipeline through Afghanistan before the Taliban 
backed away. These Saudi companies are still partnered with bigger oil 
companies (such as Texaco and Unocal) in developing Central Asian oil 
projects.

Although Brisard’s interpretation of events has been disputed, the 
documentation of Forbidden Truth is impeccable. Clearly, the finances 
and fortunes of the Saudi oligarchs and the Bush family have been 
intertwined for many years, and oil has been the lubricant of choice, 
even non-existent oil.

In The Conspirators, Al Martin describes an instance of the latter. He 
says that the Gulf Oil Drilling Supply, of New York, Miami, and 
Bahrain, was Jeb Bush’s favorite artifice for oil and gas frauds:

"The fraud was rather simple. Richard Secord arranged through then Vice 
President George Bush Sr.’s old friend, Ghaith Pharaon, the then 
retired head of Saudi intelligence, for Gulf Oil and Drilling to 
purchase from the Saudi government oil and gas leases in the Gulf which 
were effectively worthless."
The leases would be embellished to appear extremely valuable and then 
used as loan collateral. Great American Bank and Trust of West Palm 
Beach subsequently failed under the weight of unpaid Iran-Contra loans.

"Also, in the case of Gulf Oil Drilling Supply, there was some 
moderately large international lending to that company. As you would 
suspect, it was principally out of the old George Bush friendly 
banks--Credit Lyonnais and Banque Paribas, which, combined lent $60 
million dollars to Gulf Oil Drilling Supply, which, of course, was 
defaulted on later." (9)

Special Saudis
Michael Springmann, formerly chief of the visa section at the US 
Embassy in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, claims that he rejected hundreds of 
suspicious visa applications, but the C.I.A. officer overruled him and 
ordered the visas to be issued. Springmann protested to the State 
Department, the Office of Diplomatic Security, the F.B.I., the Justice 
Department and congressional committees, but in vain. (10)

Springmann observed that 15 of the 19 people who allegedly flew 
airplanes into buildings in the United States got their visas from the 
same CIA-dominated consulate in Jeddah. As a special favor to residents 
of Saudi Arabia (including non-Saudi citizens), applicants for 
non-immigrant visas can apply at private travel agencies and receive 
their visa through the mail. During the months following the 9-11 
attack, 102 applicants received their visas by mail, 2 more were 
interviewed, and none were rejected.

The Saudis always got special treatment. In a November 6, 2001 BBC 
broadcast Greg Palast revealed just how special that treatment was. 
Even after Pakistan expelled the World Association of Muslim Youth 
(WAMY) and India claimed that the organization was linked to terrorist 
bombings in Kashmir and the Philippines military accused WAMY of 
funding Muslim insurgency, the F.B.I. got orders to leave the 
"charitable association" alone.

     After 9/11, investigators of the Islamic charities discovered 
overwhelming evidence that Saudis at all levels worked in tandem with 
the terrorists. David Kaplin reports, “At the Saudi High Commission in 
Bosnia, which coordinated local aid among Saudi charities, police found 
before-and-after photos of the World Trade Center, files on pesticides 
and crop dusters, and information on how to counterfeit State 
Department badges. At Manila's international airport, authorities 
stopped Agus Dwikarna, an al Haramain representative based in 
Indonesia. In his suitcase were C4 explosives.” The interlocking 
charities make it difficult to follow the money trail. “Many share 
directors, office space, and cash flow. For two years, investigators 
have followed the money to offshore trusts and obscure charities which, 
according to court records, they believe are tied to Hamas, al Qaeda, 
and other terrorist groups.” (US News and World Report, December 15, 
2003).

"The White House official line is that the Bin Ladens are above 
suspicion --apart from Osama, the black sheep, who they say hijacked 
the family name. That's fortunate for the Bush family and the Saudi 
royal household, whose links with the Bin Ladens could otherwise prove 
embarrassing. But Newsnight has obtained evidence that the FBI was on 
the trail of other members of the Bin Laden family for links to 
terrorist organisations before and after September 11th." (11)

     In the Boston Globe, March 11, 20004, Carl Unger, author of House 
of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World’s Two 
Most Powerful Dynasties, states that the 9/11 commission should ask who 
authorized the evacuation of 140 Saudi nationals on at least 8 aircraft 
making stops in 12 cities immediately following the attacks. “Many of 
the passengers were high-ranking members of the royal House of Saud. 
About 24 of them were members of the bin Laden family, which owned the 
Saudi Binladin Group, a multibillion-dollar construction conglomerate.” 
Unger obtained passenger lists for 4 of the flights, which are posted 
on his website: www.houseofbush.com and includes the name of Prince 
Ahmed bin Salman.

     “As reported last year by Gerald Posner in 'Why America Slept,' 
Prince Ahmed not only had alleged ties to Al Qaeda, but may also have 
known in advance that there would be attacks on 9/11. According to 
Posner, Abu Zubaydah, an Al Qaeda operative who was part of Osama bin 
Laden's inner circle and was captured in 2002, made these assertions 
when he was interrogated by the CIA. The commission should ask Mueller 
about Zubaydah's interrogation. They should also ask whether the FBI 
interrogated Prince Ahmed before his departure.

     "But Prince Ahmed will never be able to answer any questions 
because not long after the CIA interrogation, he died of a heart attack 
at the age of 43. Yet we do know that he was on one of the flights.”

     Unger believes that this episode “raises particularly sensitive 
questions for the administration. Never before in history has a 
president of the United States had such a close relationship with 
another foreign power as President Bush and his father have had with 
the Saudi royal family, the House of Saud. I have traced more than $1.4 
billion in investments and contracts that went from the House of Saud 
over the past 20 years to companies in which the Bushes and their 
allies have had prominent positions -- Harken Energy, Halliburton, and 
the Carlyle Group among them. Is it possible that President Bush 
himself played a role in authorizing the evacuation of the Saudis after 
9/11? What did he know and when did he know it?”

www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2004/04/11/unasked_questions?mode=PF

In October 2001, the Treasury Department identified the Muwafaq 
Foundation, largely endowed by Khalid bin Mahfouz, as an al Qaeda front 
that had funneled millions of dollars to bin Laden. Some families of 
the 9/11 victims have named Mahfouz and dozens of prominent Saudis, 
including members of the royal family, in a lawsuit that accuses the 
Saudis of funding the 9/11 terrorists. Bush administration officials 
stated that they would seek to have the suit dismissed or delayed. (12)

Senators Bob Graham and Richard C. Shelby, leaders of the congressional 
panel ending an investigation of the 9/11 attacks, said the 
administration should declassify information concerning Saudi funding 
of terrorists.

"Citing ‘their people and a lot of their leaders and probably even the 
royal family,’ Shelby said: ‘I believe [the Saudis] cannot support 
so-called charities that support terrorism on a big scale, and then 
pretend that they're our friends or our allies.

"‘As we get into the money trail, it might be embarrassing, but the 
American people need to know; the victims and their families need to 
know,’ he added. Shelby and Graham said avoiding embarrassment and 
maintaining good relations with Saudi Arabia are not legitimate reasons 
to withhold information from the public.

"‘The question is,’ Graham said after the news conference, ‘will we get 
[the information declassified] in 30 years when the archives are open, 
or will we get it in time, before the next attack?’" (13)

Doubtless one of the connections the senators referred to was the 
Princess Haifa, the wife of Prince Bandar, Saudi ambassador to the 
United States for the last twenty years, the longest serving ambassador 
in Washington. Princess Haifa had been making monthly transfers, 
$130,000 in all, from her Washington bank account to a needy woman who 
relayed some of the checks to her husband and another man who assisted 
and funded the two hijackers who were based in San Diego. (14)

"The money moved into the family’s bank account beginning in early 
2000, just a few months after hijackers Khalid Almidhar and Nawaf 
Alhazmi arrived in Los Angeles from an Al Qaeda planning summit in 
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, according to the sources. Within days of the 
terrorists’ arrival in the United States, Al Bayoumi befriended the two 
men who would eventually hijack American Flight 77, throwing them a 
welcoming party in San Diego and guaranteeing their lease on an 
apartment next door to his own. Al Bayoumi also paid $1,500 to cover 
the first two months of rent for Al Midhar and Alhazmi, although 
officials said it is possible that the hijackers later repaid the 
money." (15)

Prince Bandar and Princess Haifa professed their ignorance of the whole affair.

Mark Stein speculates about the recent visit Prince Bandar and Princess 
Haifa paid to George and Laura at the Crawford ranch, where they were 
received with the accolades usually reserved for heads of state. Bush 
must have known about the money transfers and Bandar must have known 
Bush knew, but apparently a good time was had by all.

"Meanwhile, Majeda Ibrahin, the woman the princess was sending all that 
money to, turns out to be married to Osama Basnan, another buddy of the 
al-Qa’eda duo, and one who subsequently celebrated 11 September as a 
‘wonderful, glorious day’. But here’s an odd little thing: Mr Basnan is 
known to have been in Texas in April when Crown Prince Abdullah and his 
entourage flew in to the state to see Bush at the ranch. Just another 
coincidence? Well, sorta: he’s supposed to have had a meeting in 
Houston with some big-time Saudi prince who deals with ‘intelligence 
matters.’ This seems an unusual degree of access for some schlub from 
San Diego who’s in the US illegally, as it transpires. He is variously 
described as a Saudi government agent and al-Qa’eda sympathiser, as if 
these positions are mutually exclusive. The Saudi embassy say they’ve 
only received queries about this matter from the media, not from the 
FBI. Odd that. The federal government claims it needs vast new powers 
to track every single credit-card transaction and every single email of 
every single American, yet a prima facie link between the terrorists 
and Prince Bandar’s wife isn’t worth going over to the embassy to have 
a little chat about." (16)

Apparently it is not only the Saudis’ oil riches that insulates them 
from criticism, but also their calculated distribution of largesse. The 
Saudis have contributed to every presidential library in recent 
decades. Not surprisingly, former ambassadors to Saudi Arabia from the 
United States end up being apologists for the corrupt, despotic Saudi 
regime. The Saudis have arranged that American ambassadors to their 
country not speak Arabic. The American embassy in Saudi Arabia gets all 
its information about the reactionary regime from the rulers.


Some of the Washington politicians who found the Saudi connection 
lucrative include Spiro Agnew, Frank Carlucci, Jimmy Carter, Clark 
Clifford, John Connally, James Baker, George H. W. Bush, William Simon 
and Caspar Weinberger. (17)

Profits before Patriotism
The Bush dynasty has always been comfortable putting profits before 
patriotism. Prescott Bush, Bush Senior’s father, extended credit to 
Adolph Hitler and supplied him with raw materials during Word War II. 
The U. S. seized his assets under the Trading with the Enemy Act, but 
grandfather Bush found other ways to replenish the family coffers.

Bush Senior struck it rich in oil and in the defense industry. Mahfouz 
(yes, that Mahfouz), Prince Bandar and Prince Sultan (Bandar’s father) 
were also heavily invested in the defense industry through their 
holdings in the Carlyle Group, where Bush Senior served on the board of 
directors. Founded in 1987 as a private investment group with strong 
connections to the Republican Party establishment, Carlyle increased 
its original investment of $130 million to $900 million when it went 
public in 2001.

"In recent years, Carlyle has been successful both at raising and 
making money. It has raised $14 billion in the last five years or so, 
and its annual rate of return has been 36 percent. Its 550 investors 
consist of institutions and wealthy individuals from around the world 
including, until shortly after September 2001, members of the bin Laden 
family of Saudi Arabia. The family — which has publicly disavowed links 
with Osama bin Laden — had been an investor since 1995." (18)

"As the eleventh largest US defence contractor, Carlyle is involved in 
nearly every aspect of military production, including making the big 
guns used on US naval destroyers, the Bradley Fighting Vehicle used by 
US forces during the Gulf War and parts used in most commercial and 
military aircraft. United Defense has joint ventures in Saudi Arabia 
and Turkey, two of the United States’ closest military allies in the 
Middle East." (19)

It’s passing strange that even as the hijacked planes smashed into the 
World Trade Center, the Carlyle Group was holding its annual investor 
conference. Shafig Bin Laden, brother of Osama Bin Laden, attended.

Bush Junior once served as an executive with Caterair, one of hundreds 
of companies Carlyle has bought and sold over the past 15 years, but he 
removed the record of this period from his resume.

In 1986, Bush Junior, to date a flop as a businessman, joined Harken 
Energy Corporation as a director and was awarded 212,000 shares of 
stock and other plums.

In 1987, Khalid bin Mahfouz arranged for BCCI investor Abdullah Bakhsh 
to purchase 17% of Harken. A Harken official acknowledged that Bush’s 
White House connections had everything to do with the appointment. 
Somehow, the inexperienced, obscure firm was awarded a prime drilling 
contract by Bahrain, and Harken’s stock price soared.

In June 1990, Bush Junior sold his Harken stock for a juicy $848,000, 
enabling him to pay off the loan he had assumed on buying shares in the 
Texas Rangers. Never mind that the Harken stock promptly tanked when 
Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, for Abdullah Bakhsh, a major Harken 
shareholder and an investor in BCCI, who had purchased 17% of Harken 
Energy in 1987, got his money’s worth. By 1990, Bakhsh’s representative 
on Harken’s board, Talet Othman, began attending Middle East policy 
discussions with President Bush Senior.


Now that Bush Junior occupies the White House, Bush Senior receives 
frequent CIA briefings (his prerogative as a former president). "In 
July 2001, Bush personally contacted Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah to 
‘clarify’ his son's Middle East policies. Also during the summer of 
2001, Bush forwarded his son a North Korea policy plan penned by ‘Asia 
expert’ and former ambassador to Korea, Donald Gregg. Gregg is a 
31-year CIA veteran and the elder Bush's former national security 
adviser whose expertise involved participation in the Vietnam-era 
Phoenix Program (death squads), Air America heroin smuggling, 
‘pacification’ efforts in El Salvador and Guatemala, the ‘October 
Surprise,’ and the Iran-Contra operation (for which Gregg received a 
Bush pardon in 1992)." (20)


Bush Junior has received more than advice from his father. He has taken 
on the team of hustlers and criminals that worked with George Herbert 
Walker Bush when he was Vice President and President of the United 
States of America.

Just as his father did, he invokes executive privilege to hide all 
evidence of collusion with the petroleum pashas who have enriched the 
Bushes and intimidated the rest of us.

Sandy Tolan, an I.F. Stone Fellow at the Graduate School of Journalism 
at UC Berkeley, asserts that what the Bush administration really wants 
in Iraq is a remapping of the Mideast. "The plan is, in its way, as 
ambitious as the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement between the empires of 
Britain and France, which carved up the region at the fall of the 
Ottoman Empire. The neo-imperial vision, which can be ascertained from 
the writings of key administration figures and their co-visionaries in 
influential conservative think tanks, includes not only regime change 
in Iraq but control of Iraqi oil, a possible end to the Organization of 
the Petroleum Exporting Countries and newly compliant governments in 
Syria and Iran -- either by force or internal rebellion."

The Bushes are carriers of the deny-destroy-and-be-damned virus. 
Prescott Bush never apologized for trading with the Nazis. George Bush 
Senior professed to know nothing of the drug and arms dealing that 
funded the bloody, illegal Iran-Contra operations, although it was 
common knowledge that he directed them. He and his sons enriched 
themselves through shady real estate deals and financial manipulations 
that brought down entire banking and savings and loan institutions. 
They are all consummate inside traders, looting and leaving ruin in 
their wake.

President-Select George Bush is no exception. He has no scruples about 
exploiting his office for personal and family gain. The Texas governor 
who could joke about frying prisoners in the electric chair will not, 
as president, agonize over the decision to send young men and women 
into battle--or over denying them medical care when they are injured.

There is irrefutable evidence that highly-placed Saudis aided and 
supported the terrorists who murdered over 3000 American citizens on 
September 11, 2001. Yet George Bush persists in protecting and 
colluding with those who sponsor terrorists. Is this not an an act of 
treason?

George Bush should be impeached.

Notes:
(1) Jonathan Raban, "Western conceit of nation-building ignores culture 
and history of Arabia," Seattle Times, November 24, 2002
(2) Michael Parenti, 9-11 Terrorism Trap: September 11 and Beyond 
(2000) City Lights Books, San Francisco
(3) Laura Secor, "Which Islam?," Boston Daily Globe, December 15, 2002
(4) Wayne Madsen, "Questionable Ties: Tracking bin Laden's money flow 
leads back to Midland, Texas,"
(5) "The Press on the BCCI-bin Mahfouz-bin Laden Intelligence Nexus, " 
Boston Herald , December 11, 2001
(6) Jonathan Beaty & S. C. Gwynne, The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride Into 
the Secret Heart of BCCI, (1993) Random House, New York
(7) Daniel Pipes, "Jihad: How Academics Have Camouflaged Its Real 
Meaning," December 2, 2002
(8) Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, Forbidden Truth: 
U.S.-Taliban Secret Oil Diplomacy and the Failed Hunt for bin Laden 
(2002) Thunder's Mouth Press/Nation Books, New York
(9) Al Martin, The Conspirators: Secrets of an Iran-Contra Insider 
(2002) National Liberty Press, LLC
(10) Center for Cooperative Research, "Hijackers who were under 
surveillance before 9/11"
(11) Greg Palast and David Pallister, "FBI and US Spy Agents Say Bush 
Spiked Bin Laden Probes Before 11 September," The Guardian, November 7, 
2001
(12) Jeff Gerth and Judith Miller, "Saudis Called Slow to Help Stem 
Terror Finances," New York Times, November 28, 2002
(13) Dana Priest and Susan Schmidt, "9/11 Panel Criticizes Secrecy on 
Saudi Links," Washington Post, December 12 2002
(14) Greg Miller, Greg Krikorian and H.G. Reza, "FBI Looks at Saudi's 
Links to 9/11," Los Angeles Times, November 23, 2002
(15) Michael Isikoff, Newsweek, November 22, 2002
(16) Mark Steyn, "Bush and the Saudi Princess"
(17) Daniel Golden, James Bandler and Marcus Walker, Wall Street 
Journal, September 27, 2001 Posted at globalresearch.ca 5 October 2001
(18) James Hatfield, "Why would Osama bin Laden want to kill Dubya, his 
former business partner?" Online Journal, July 13, 2001
(19) Steve Lohr, "Gerstner to Be Chairman of Carlyle Group," New York 
Times, November 22, 2002
(20) Tim Shorrock uncovers the Bush connection to US defence giant the 
Carlyle Group, New Internationalist 347, July 2002

-- 
"Naturally the common people don't want war: Neither in Russia, nor in 
England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after 
all, IT IS THE LEADERS of the country who determine the policy and it 
is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a 
democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist 
dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to 
the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is TELL 
THEM THEY ARE BEING ATTACKED, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of 
patriotism and exposing the country to danger. IT WORKS THE SAME IN ANY 
COUNTRY."
 
--Goering at the Nuremberg Trials