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

The New York Times ^ | 23 Jan 2016 | Mark Mazzetti And Matt Apuzzo

[DesertRhino]

Sickening to hear you actually say you are glad America is a Saudi employee.

[LucyT]

[DesertRhino]

It isn’t neocon to say America shouldn’t enable and assist the spread of evil. Neocons like us to run around aggressively shaping the world. I just said if you prop up a dictator, don’t be surprised when his hostages don’t like you.

You do know colonel Flagg on mash was supposed to be disliked don’t you?

[Zhang Fei]

My definition of oppression is cities I cannot visit, women who cannot travel or go on a date and have no right to vote except -barely- this year. Public beatings nearly to death if you blog that maybe people should have some say in their lives. Massive Internet censorship. Death for witchcraft still. Slavery.

But these are rules favored by Muslims in Saudi Arabia. DesertRhino the Great White Father might want to impose his notions of freedom in Saudi Arabia, but I expect the benighted denizens of that desert waste will likely demur.

[Zhang Fei]

I just said if you prop up a dictator, don’t be surprised when his hostages don’t like you.

But we're not propping them up. Do you really think that if we cut off diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia, that the monarchy would collapse? Or do you think we should take this a step further - invade, depose the Saudi royals and hand the keys over to ISIS?

[dfwgator]

Christians under Saddam Hussein had it much better than a Christian in Saudi Arabia.

[DesertRhino]

A Jew and a Christian can live and go to church in Iran. Saudi sunnis are behind most of the spreading terror here. ISIS is sunni. Women can operate a car and vote. Most people there like America.

And the Saudi government hasn’t just not repudiated Islam. They nurture the most radical branch, wahabhism.

[Zhang Fei]

Sickening to hear you actually say you are glad America is a Saudi employee.

It is always better to be an employee than a slave, which is what we are to our military dependents in NATO and the Far East under "mutual" defense pacts. Besides, we're not employees of the Saudis - they gave us money to do things we would have done anyway. The usual word for that is ally.

[DesertRhino]

We don’t prop them up huh? Lol. ...

[Zhang Fei]

Christians under Saddam Hussein had it much better than a Christian in Saudi Arabia.

Saddam was a Sunni Arab who ruled a hostile population that was 60% Shiite Arab and 20% Kurd. He needed all the Christian allies he could get. It's also true that even Saddam was gradually Islamizing Iraq in order to appease his people. It was Saddam who added "Allahu Akbar" (Allah is the Greatest) to the Iraqi flag.

A 1991 bloody suppression of a Shi'i revolt further drove the two communities away from each other. The regime's elite was weaned of their Baathi secularism, which was replaced by Shari'ah, Qur'an and Hadith studies. Even those Baathis who remained secular at the core identified the great political advantage provided by the "Islamization" and faked Islamic piety. But which Islam? The regime's official Islam was of the soft Sunni version, but Sunni it was.

Unofficially, very radical Sunni trends, anti-Shi'i Wahhabi as well as Sufi ones, were encouraged as long as they did not turn against the regime. The result was a growing sense of discrimination and oppression on the part of the Shi'ah. "Caliph" Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of ISIS/Daesh, is the result of Saddam's education, except that he performed a quantum leap in terms of radicalizing Saddam's Islam, and he abandoned Saddam's ambivalence toward the Shi'ah in favor of coherent anti-Shi'i revulsion.

Note that Iraq's population was only 20% Sunni Arab, and yet he felt the need to fall in line with the radicalism of his Sunni Arab supporters and coreligionists. It's fairly self-explanatory why the Saudi royals would fall in line with the beliefs of the 90% Wahhabist subjects. Back in the day, even the ruthless Mongols in conquered Muslim areas converted to Islam, in order to forestall rebellion among their Muslim subjects. In addition, Saddam was an enemy of ours who wanted to bring the region's oil resources under his rule, which is why he invaded Iran and then Kuwait (on his way to taking Saudi Arabia's oil fields).

[Zhang Fei]

We don’t prop them up huh? Lol. ...

How exactly do we prop them up?

[maggief]

FLASHBACK:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/syria-the-saudi-connection-the-prince-with-close-ties-to-washington-at-the-heart-of-the-push-for-war-8785049.html

It was Prince Bandar’s intelligence agency that first alerted Western allies to the alleged use of sarin gas by the Syrian regime in February.

While a trip earlier this month to the Kremlin to try to cajole President Vladimir Putin into withdrawing his support for President Assad reportedly failed, Prince Bandar automatically has greater leverage in Western capitals, not least because of friendships forged during his time in Washington. His most recent travels, rarely advertised, have taken him to both London and Paris for discussions with senior officials.

As ambassador, Prince Bandar left an imprint that still has not quite faded. His voice was one of the loudest urging the United States to invade Iraq in 2003. In the 1980s, Prince Bandar became mired in the Iran-Contra scandal in Nicaragua.

Months of applying pressure on the White House and Congress over Syria have slowly born fruit. The CIA is believed to have been working with Prince Bandar directly since last year in training rebels at base in Jordan close to the Syrian border.

The Saudis are “indispensable partners on Syria” and have considerable influence on American thinking, a senior US official told The Wall Street Journal yesterday. He added: “No one wants to do anything alone”.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323423804579024452583045962.html

The Saudi ambassador, Mr. Jubeir, has long been courting members of Congress who could pressure the administration to get more involved in Syria. He found early support from Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

(snip)

Mr. Petraeus in mid-2012 won White House approval to provide intelligence and limited training to Syrian rebels at the base, including in the use of arms provided by others. Saudi and Jordanian agents began vetting the fighters to be trained, said Arab diplomats and a former U.S. military official.

Prince Bandar has largely stayed out of Washington but held meetings with U.S. officials in the region. One was in September 2012. Sens. McCain and Graham, who were in Istanbul, met him in an opulent hotel suite on the banks of the Bosporus.

Mr. McCain said he made the case to Prince Bandar that the rebels weren’t getting the kinds of weapons they needed, and the prince, in turn, described the kingdom’s plans. The senator said that in succeeding months he saw “a dramatic increase in Saudi involvement, hands-on, by Bandar.”

(snip)

That winter, the Saudis also started trying to convince Western governments that Mr. Assad had crossed what President Barack Obama a year ago called a “red line”: the use of chemical weapons. Arab diplomats say Saudi agents flew an injured Syrian to Britain, where tests showed sarin gas exposure. Prince Bandar’s spy service, which concluded in February that Mr. Assad was using chemical weapons, relayed evidence to the U.S., which reached a similar conclusion four months later. The Assad regime denies using such weapons.

After Mr. Petraeus’s November resignation over an affair, his job was handled by his deputy, Michael Morell, who privately voiced skepticism the agency could make sure any arms supplied by the U.S. wouldn’t end up with hard-line Islamists, said congressional officials.

Ultimately, the new CIA chief was John Brennan, whose closest Saudi confidant when he was White House counterterrorism adviser was also focused on the risk of inadvertently strengthening al Qaeda. Since moving to the CIA, Mr. Brennan has been in periodic contact by phone with Prince Bandar, officials said.

+++++++++++++++++

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10/25/was-syrian-weapons-shipment-factor-in-ambassadors-benghazi-visit/

Was Syrian weapons shipment factor in ambassador’s Benghazi visit?

By Catherine Herridge, Pamela Browne
Published October 25, 2012

A mysterious Libyan ship — reportedly carrying weapons and bound for Syrian rebels — may have some link to the Sept. 11 terror attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Fox News has learned.

Through shipping records, Fox News has confirmed that the Libyan-flagged vessel Al Entisar, which means “The Victory,” was received in the Turkish port of Iskenderun — 35 miles from the Syrian border — on Sept. 6, just five days before Ambassador Chris Stevens, information management officer Sean Smith and former Navy Seals Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty were killed during an extended assault by more than 100 Islamist militants.

On the night of Sept. 11, in what would become his last known public meeting, Stevens met with the Turkish Consul General Ali Sait Akin, and escorted him out of the consulate front gate one hour before the assault began at approximately 9:35 p.m. local time.

Although what was discussed at the meeting is not public, a source told Fox News that Stevens was in Benghazi to negotiate a weapons transfer, an effort to get SA-7 missiles out of the hands of Libya-based extremists. And although the negotiation said to have taken place may have had nothing to do with the attack on the consulate later that night or the Libyan mystery ship, it could explain why Stevens was travelling in such a volatile region on the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

(snip)

[Nachum]

The list, Ping

Let me know if you would like to be on or off the ping list

http://www.nachumlist.com/

[LucyT]

.

Back to the thread.

Check out # 30 and # 32 .

[Candor7]

That money is also used to fund the current demographic warfare on America...massive Islamic immigration to the West.