U.S. Says Saudis Refuse To Freeze Bin Laden Assets

Minneapolis Star Tribune ^ | October 11, 2001 | Unknown

[GreatOne]

Saudi Arabia has so far refused to freeze the assets of Osama bin Laden and his associates, and has proved unwilling to cooperate fully in the investigation of the hijacking suspects in the Sept. 11 terror attacks, U.S. officials said Wednesday.

[hoot2]

"Some friends..."

yeah; but don't you "smile", knowing we have two good "oil boys" in the white house...

[Lewite]

I wish we had that pride of power we have forsaken back. Bombing the islamaic ragheads out of existance would be a great start. Who would dare mess with us them. France, sure!!!

[TKEman]

I'm beginning to think that the surprise of this war might be the fall of the House of Saud. They're turning out to be pretty fragile. Looks to me like they've fed this bin Laden beast to the point that they can't stop feeding it, or it'll eat them alive.

[monocle]

Is there something about Islam that fosters dictatorial govennments? Most predominantly muslim nations have dictorial or corrupt governments. The only two that I can think are Indonesia and Malaysia and even these two leave a lot to be desired. Is this somewhat the mirror image of so many Jewish people embracing highly socialistic beliefs? I raise this question not to be xenophobic but see how someone more religious than myself would respond.

[StriperSniper]

As for the IRA, haven't they bombed locations in London and eslewhere? Haven't their leaders been here on US soil to raise funds for their cause?

I think of this situation as the internal problem of Great Britton, I'm sure we will help on the law enforcement and financial side.

Further, what do we do about the terrorists in Israel?

We just give Israel the green light and watch their backs. If they do it themselves, it may not explode as quick as if we actively joined in.

[Andrew Byler]

A threatened Nuclear Strike against Mecca says they would.

[Ross Amann]

We need to take steps to wake up the Saudis:

1. Pointing out that allowing their nationals to attack (or fund attacks on) the US's sacred places (like WTC, Capitol, Pentagon) is inconsistent with their role as "the defender of Islam's sacred places."

2. Denying entry to people traveling on Saudi visas.

3. Deporting aliens here on Saudi visas.

with steps 2 and 3 preferably in unison with all NATO countries.

[tallhappy]

See The Real Bin Laden for a long article that puts this in perspective.

[riri]

I agree, the house of saud is living on borrowed time

I figure it this way-probably going to have to rebuild America anyway, in many ways before this is said and done. Let´s cut the ties with the Saudi´s now.

[savedbygrace]

CNN just said that they don't even want tony Blair to come

Blair does dress nattily, but I'd hardly classify him as tony. ;-)

[t4texas]

With the exception of Turkey and Egypt, most middle east countries are actually monarchies. They know that if they get the masses riled they may go into the dust bin (laden) of history as have most other monarchies around the world. The strongest of all instincts is, of course, survival.

Remember when Quwait was going to have elections?

[Republic of Texas]

No we couldn't, so we just make 'em part of Texas. We have some success with taking a God-forsaken peice of land and making something of it.

[independentmind]

bttt

[isthisnickcool]

This site might help answer some questions. The Religion of Islam

I put Islam right up there with Santeria as far as the mechanics one must follow. Except Islam has more of a pissed off Moonie bent to it. A cult that condones murder..

[scooby321]

Can the Saudi's live without "selling their own to the West"

[t4texas]

We have some success with taking a God-forsaken peice of land and making something of it.

I assume you are referring to West Texas.

[VoodooEconomist]

Pay no attention to the man behind the turban.

[Republic of Texas]

Yep.

[ffrancone]

to some extent we probably could replace the middle eastern oil, I imagine it would come at an economic loss of some note. It's mostly the time lag deal, there ain't no instant energy in an emergency.

Thanks for the interesting info about home insulation. I do think that it is not really an issue of replacing Saudi oil with a more local source. The real problem is that if the Saudi's turn down production, the price of oil, worldwide soars. So even if we replace the Saudi oil with US and Canadian and Mexican oil, it is still much higher cost oil. When a key input to our economy doubles or triples in price, our economy tanks and inflation soars. Its like a huge tax increase on an essential cost item to almost every good and service produced in the economy. So do economies worldwide--so we lose all of our overseas customers.

The Saudi's don't turn off the spigot today because, last time they did (in the 70's), they caused a worldwide recession (remember stagflation, 18% home mortgages etc) that drastically lowered their take from oil sales (price went up but sales went down more). The Saudi's (and to a lesser extent, OPEC) act today like a classic monopolist maximizing profits. Somewhere in the $20 per barrel range, their profits, long term, are highest.

So even if we don't like their politics, their economic behavior is rational and we can predict it. Markets like that.

The real issue (and the main focus of this post) is if there is a fundamentalist takeover in Saudi Arabia, would they use the oil weapon: (1) to hurt our economy; or (2) To fund WMD's and a military that could actually challenge the west? My answer is that for several reasons, it probably would not be nearly as bad as our first reflexive reaction.

It seems to me that long term, the extremists are as constrained by greed and economics as are the Saud family. So the real danger is number 2. But in a real sense, making the extremists the leaders of Saudi Arabia also constrains their agressive behavior in a way they are not currently constrained. Today, the Sauds are not subject to, say, nuclear retaliation because they are not the terrorists. If the extremists are in power, we now have hostages for another WTC bombing, and things look a lot more like the cold war, with a containment policy likely to succeed.

Containment would succeed for the same reason it did against the Soviets. Islamic countries suck at building wealth. They would especially suck if they turned off the oil spigot and lost most of their revenues.

In 20 years, our economy will be four times as large as it is now (somewhat less than that if oil prices soared). Economies run on Islamic principles will probably shrink (and shrink even more if oil prices soared). It would be an ugly 20 years, but in the end, Islam will either adopt Western modes of organization (which will geld their budding Saladins) or they will perish on the dustbin of history like their predecessors, the Nazis and the Communists. Either way, we win so long as our left does not succeed in breaking our containment policy.

This post is too long; but the point is that at some point, we may have to tell the Saudi's to get with the program or face consequences. If the effect of that is an extremist takeover, so be it. We have handled extremists before and we can do it again.