Yep, I got a good look at the skull behind that mask... and I won't ever forget, nor forgive.
Posted on 08/31/2002 3:09:37 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
Official reaction in Saudi Arabian media to a lawsuit accusing the kingdom of complicity in the Sept. 11 attacks has been sharp, with one paper claiming the United States should be held liable for "killing millions."
The lawsuit, filed against Saudi Arabia and various Arab officials and organizations by families of the 9-11 victims, has managed to "arouse the ire" of Saudi media, according to translations of those accounts by the Middle East Media Research Institute.
"If America wants to open up the issue of compensation for those who died in the two towers, it must agree to the establishment of an international court that will examine [its own] war crimes, plundering, coups, what American intelligence did with the drug barons, the policy of abductions and murder, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, the claims still pending regarding the black slave trade, and the deliberate annihilation of the Indians – and apply all this to all countries, without statute of limitations, so that we feel we live on one planet that functions according to the same moral principles," claimed an editorial in the Saudi daily Al-Riyadh.
In a separate op-ed filed for the daily Al Watan, columnist Saleh Al-Shihi accused the U.S. of gaining power through the suppression and death of others while implying that American goals were all-important.
"According to American concepts," he wrote, "it is not important what the world loses; what is important is what America gains."
"This is American logic and American language. This is America, the civilization that arose on the skulls of others," Al-Shihi said.
He added that the U.S. carried out "massacres" in Hiroshima (one of two cities leveled by American atomic bombs to end World War II) and Vietnam while inciting "South Korea against North Korea and Taiwan against China."
Al-Shihi said Washington has "tried to assassinate many of the world's leaders," including "(Cuban dictator Fidel) Castro, who alone was subject to 30 assassination attempts," one allegedly by "mixing deadly plutonium poison in the cigars he smokes."
"I still remember the story of the Indian leader who returned from battle with the American colonist and found that other American soldiers had, in his absence, raided his home and killed his children and wife," the Al Watan columnist wrote. "All he could do was shout, 'I fought long, but I never killed a child or a woman. These [Americans] are not human.' This is America, gentlemen – do you want us to trust it?"
Meanwhile, Muhammad Ahmad Al-Hassani, a columnist for the daily Okaz, took a different tack. In a column titled "Washington and the Birds' Milk," he relayed a fable:
In old times, when people wanted to discourage a man in love who wanted to lay with the girl who had stolen his heart ... they would ask the poor enamored fellow for a skin of birds' milk for a dowry. He would head out toward the wilderness and the desert in search of the milk of birds and would eventually die of thirst and loneliness, because he believed in illusions and chased after them and thought that what they asked of him was obtainable. ...
I recalled this story because of some U.S. groups' demands from popular and official Saudi institutions to pay an amount in excess of $100 trillion in compensation to the families of the Sept. 11 victims. ... Regardless of the fundamental idiocy of this lawsuit, the demand for the sum mentioned is like the search for the milk of birds, or even ants' milk, if ants even have udders and milk. ...
Other columnists and papers downplayed the vitriol by attempting to highlight the fact that the lawsuit was not a U.S. government initiative, but instead was launched by a private effort.
"The Saudi press attacked the suit filed by a group of the families of the victims of Sept. 11 and even demanded that the Riyadh government re-examine strategic relations with Washington. ..." wrote Daoud Al-Shirian, a Saudi columnist for the Arabic-language daily Al-Hayat, based in London.
But, he said, "The [Saudi] media did not distinguish between [the] American government [initiative] and private [initiative]. ... It presented the damages [from the] lawsuit as an [American] act of political settling of accounts with Saudi Arabia due to its stand on the Palestinian matter. ..."
"Washington's adherence to its relations with Riyadh is genuine, but American policy is not laid out by one man or one party; it is shaped by various circles, and therefore what is not happening can be seen as initial signs of change in policy toward Saudi Arabia," Al-Shirian wrote. "This change does not mean hostility or clashes, but change of some foundations and beliefs. ..."
In Saudi Arabia proper, however, press accounts remain belligerent toward the U.S.
"Most provocatively, [National Security Adviser] Condoleezza Rice, adviser to the cowboy who rules the White House, said: 'We have moral justification for changing the regime in Baghdad,'" wrote Abdallah Al-Kaid, for the Al-Riyadh. "Since when does the American administration attach any importance to the moral or human aspect?
"The Saudi people are not to be blamed for the state of horror to which you [Americans] are subject in your country – a situation from which you will not escape ... unless you concede the rights of the people and fight the evil among you and stop your aggression toward the world," Al-Kaid said. "You must remember that the 'Country of Falsehood' endures for one hour, while the 'Country of Truth' lasts until Judgment Day."
He said Saudis "have no need to defend our good and clean name" because the kingdom was "peace-loving" and has "never started a war against anyone. ..." Continuing, he said "no one needs proof" of America's crimes, which are "written in history as black as your history of murder and genocide."
"The land of Japan is the best proof of your barbarism," he said, adding that Washington "annihilated" the "land of the Indians" as well.
"After all this, you want to delude us with the claim that you seek to create peace and justice in the world and fight terrorism, and that you are morally justified in attacking the peoples and governments?"
Officials have said 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 terrorist hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. Osama bin Laden, head of al-Qaida – the organization believed to be behind the attacks – is also a Saudi national.
Early last month, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld decried the leak of a recommendation by a defense think tank that the United States give the Saudi government an ultimatum to stop backing terrorism or face seizure of its oil fields and its financial assets in the United States.
"Saudi Arabia supports our enemies and attacks our allies," the briefing paper said. Riyadh was also described as "the kernel of evil, the prime mover, the most dangerous opponent" in the Middle East.
Rumsfeld tried to downplay the recommendation in a Pentagon briefing.
Saudi Arabia "is nonetheless a country where we have a lot of forces located and we have had a long relationship, and yet it is correct ... that a number of the people who were involved in Sept. 11 happened to have been Saudi individuals and that there's those issues that Saudi Arabia is wrestling with just as other countries in the world are wrestling with them," he said.
Lets give them something to talk about since they hate us no matter how much we do for the sorry ingrates. Make some glass.
The Saudis are lunatics. Murderers and thieves. Despots who force little girls into burning schools lest they show uncovered faces to Arab males. Do the Saudis feel responsible for any deaths? Hardly.
Hey Saudi....skrew you!
Yep, I got a good look at the skull behind that mask... and I won't ever forget, nor forgive.
How far we have come from "government OF the people". Sigh.
Yes.
Sigh.
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