Thursday, February 5, 2015

Ready for Hillary: The Bush-Saudi Connection

Now that President Obama and his retinue are safely back from groveling before the Saudi royal family, they can get back to politics as usual.. They can insist (indirectly, through the New York Times) that not only did the Bush retinue grovel worse, they were even complicit in 9/11. It's been an open secret for years that certain members of the royal family were whisked out of the country in the immediate aftermath of the attacks: the only people permitted to breach the no-fly zone.

Open government advocates have long demanded the declassification of a redacted portion of the 9/11 Commission Report, which allegedly names all the names and has the potential to deeply embarrass members of the Bush administration, if not directly implicate them in criminal behavior. In a sane world, it would also shock the American public.  But government officials with a long tradition of having each others' backs have long resisted calls for such transparency. Major corporate media outlets have largely ignored the story.

Until this week, that is. In a series of front-page blockbusters, the New York Times has outlined the deep financial and ideological ties between the Saudis and Al Qaeda, and between the Saudis and George W. Bush as exposed by a previously scorned Super Max prisoner named Zacarias Moussaoui. Today, the newspaper floated a trial balloon from the Obama administration which hinted that they are at least considering the release of 28 redacted pages of the 9/11 Commission report.

They seem to be getting ready for Hillary. They seem to be noticing that Jeb Bush represents the only serious threat to her ascension to the throne of American Empire. (The Times took care of Chris Christie earlier this week, pointing out that like every corrupt politician worth his salt, he likes to live large and enjoys many a pay-to-play perk.)


But back to the players known as the Bushes and the Saudis and the Obamas. The Times' Carl Hulse transmits the desired message:
“I think it is the right thing to do,” said Representative Stephen F. Lynch, Democrat of Massachusetts and an author of a bipartisan resolution encouraging President Obama to declassify the section. “Let’s put it out there.”
White House officials say the administration has undertaken a review on whether to release the pages but has no timetable for when they might be made public.
Maybe they're waiting for Jeb to announce that on second thought he needs to spend some more time with his family. So for now, they're being extremely nuanced and discreet.
Mr. Lynch and his allies have been joined by former Senator Bob Graham of Florida, who as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee was a leader of the inquiry. He has called for the release of the report’s Part 4, which dealt with Saudi Arabia, since President George W. Bush ordered it classified when the rest of the report was released in December 2002.
 Mr. Graham has repeatedly said it shows that Saudi Arabia was complicit in the Sept. 11 attacks. “The 28 pages primarily relate to who financed 9/11, and they point a very strong finger at Saudi Arabia as being the principal financier,” Mr. Graham said last month as he pressed for the pages to be made public.
This is purely conjecture on my part, but I smell Florida politics. Graham's daughter, newly elected to a seat in the House of Representatives, would like to run for the Senate seat now occupied by Marco Rubio. And if Marco Rubio runs for president, that  seat is potentially up for grabs. The problem is that Jeb is currently way ahead of Rubio in the polls. If Jeb goes away, so potentially does much of a state re-election campaign for  Rubio.

To be fair to Graham, though, he has always fought against the redaction of the pages of his commission's report which directly tie  the Saudi royal family to the attacks. He just got a little more polite about the non-transparency issue when Barack Obama took office, is all.

It helps that the 9/11 families are ramping up the pressure, especially those suing Saudi Arabia itself in federal court. They're losing patience with Obama's continued reassurances that the truth will out. Hulse of the Times:
“If we stop funding of terrorism and hold those people accountable, wouldn’t it make a dent in the financing of terrorism today?” asked William Doyle, whose son, Joseph, was killed in the World Trade Center. Mr. Doyle said that President Obama personally assured him after the death of Osama bin Laden that he would declassify that section of the report.
Now that Obama is in his proverbial last quarter and his administration is already transitioning over to Empress Hillary, that time may be nigh... or more specifically, as close to possible as Election 2016, to provide maximum impact and electoral advantage. An October surprise is not out of the question.

More likely, in my view, is that the Obama people are simply posturing. They waited until a hardcore hawk named Richard Burr (R-NC) took over the Senate Intelligence Committee chairmanship before sending out their nouveau-transparency signals and rattling Jeb Bush in the process. They had heretofore dutifully avoided releasing the redacted sections of the report when the Democrats held the Senate.

Burr has actually demanded that the recently released and heavily redacted Senate report outlining CIA torture be re-classified and placed back in his hands for the protection of the guilty.

All Hillary has to do in her upcoming campaign is hint that the Bushes orchestrated a 9/11 cover-up. She obviously can't release classified material herself, now that she's safely and temporarily out of government. She will be able to tell voters that they would be shocked, shocked if they only knew what she knows.

And she is not telling.


12 comments:

Kat said...

The most exciting choice since Legitimists v. Orleanists.


Jay–Ottawa said...

Why can’t we women learn to band together like men to reach a goal? Clubby men have been filling the POTUS chair for centuries. After the terrible job done by men in the past 60 years especially, it’s high time we give a woman a chance. Haven’t we read enough feminist literature to catch on yet? Women are different. Women don’t do dog like loyalty like the guys. They can turn on a dime much faster than men. Hillary has been doing what was necessary so far to climb this far. But I suspect she has another agenda, which she has kept in her pocket for decades. Waiting for her chance. Look what she sprang as valedictorian at her college graduation from Wellsly. She set aside her prepared speech at the last minute and blasted the invited speaker, I think he was the Massachusetts Attorney General, a black, who had just given a speech in support of the Vietnamese War. POW! Ad lib. Now, finally, she’s practically a shoo-in as trhe next prez and women are beginning to desert her. Great timing, ladies. Even on this blog. Women who don’t stand behind our best chance yet to put a woman in overerall charge just might be self-loathing. Don’t underestimate Hillary. She can’t do much worse than Obama, or the Bushes, or even Bill. Unlike nice guy Carter she has political smarts and knows when to bend and when not to. Nobody on the Repub side comes near her ability and experience. FDR came from the rich side of town and look what he did for the common people. It looks now like Hillary comes from the corporate side of the spectrum. That’s a necessary compromise to reach the top levers of power. But she’s a woman, remember, and could pull a big surprise once she no longer has to be a yes-girl to anybody else. The 2016 election will be a real test for those who SAY they support women.

Denis Neville said...

My favorite was “The Great Escape.”

No, not the one with Steve McQueen and James Garner.

I mean the Saudi Royal Family Great Escape immediately following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Some pausing only long enough to empty their safes, leaving their pool pumps running.

Dozens of Saudi Royals and bin Laden family members fled the U.S.A. in a secret airlift authorized by the Bush White House despite the Federal Aviation Administration’s grounding of all flights. Two royal princes, one allegedly an al-Qaida go-between and the other whose father’s home in Florida was visited by some of the hijackers, were on those planes.

House of Bush, House of Saud.

Denis Neville said...

Knock Knock. Who's there?

A glassy eyed Clintonista!!!

Oh, Lord! The idea of eight more years of the Clintons – and it will be plural – gives me nightmares.

“The relentless sameness of the two-party political system is beginning to feel like a Jacob’s Ladder nightmare with no end; we’re entering another turn on the four-year merry-go-round, and the thought of having to try to get excited about yet another minor quadrennial shift in the direction of one or the other pole of alienating corporate full-of-shitness is enough to make anyone want to smash his own hand flat with a hammer.” – Matt Taibbi

It’s both sad and amusing to know how many people have this attachment to voting for and putting their hopes in politicians. Nobody excels like we Americans in our capacity to fool ourselves, in our capacity for outright denial. Too many are absolutely clueless. Only the smallest minority is truly conscious of what is occurring. Our government is purely a stage setting and is run by extremely powerful and global interests. Hillary Clinton is a globalist. Corruption goes to the heart of things.

“We lived, as usual, by ignoring. Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.” –Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

Hillary Clinton plays handmaid to the empire. It’s not what Hillary Clinton says, but what she doesn’t say.

2008 was, for me, the Democratic Party’s last chance to become again a party even remotely like the party the New Deal suggested they could be.

Will said...

If Denis Neville's comment didn't piss you off enough about the cozy relationship between the Bushes and the Saudis, here's an 18-minute clip from Michael Moore's 2004 documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" to really send you over the edge. (Caution: Dubya's face is so extra-punchable here, it's tough to stay focused on the material.)

http://vimeo.com/82098716

Karen Garcia said...

From the Devil's Dictionary, revised 21st century edition:

"Self-loathing female: a woman who does not support HRC on the sole basis of her gender and her occasional willingness to call out loathsome men.

Thanks but no thanks, Sonidos, to your subverted version of the Sisterhood. It kind of reminds me of the opening scene of Macbeth.

Hillary is no friend to women, despite her many vapid books and speeches promoting "girl power." She promoted NAFTA, which destroyed the factory job of many a blue-collar American woman and contributed to a lot of female misery south of the border, too. (Female slave labor in Juarez ring a bell?) Hillary espoused the end of direct cash aid to poor families, tossing millions of women and children off the welfare rolls in the 90s, and into lives of abject poverty. Once a Goldwater Girl, always a Goldwater Girl.

If it's World War III, along with continuing wealth inequality that you crave, then by all means vote for Hillary.

I happen to like myself, as well as my male and female family and friends. Therefore, I will resist Hillary (and the plutocracy that she represents) with every ounce of my being. I am dread-y for Hillary.

And no, that doesn't translate into cheering for the first coming of Ted Cruz or the second coming of Hitler.

Kat said...

Sonidos,
Why the shilling for Hill? She does not care about you. No politician cares about you. They all look upon us little "folks" (to use a word favored by another master of smarm) with contempt. They do not care what we think.

Pearl said...

Sonidos; Two other women who were great destroyers of democracy come to mind, Margaret Thatcher and Golda Meir. Israel's only Prime Minister ushered in the era of vengeful militarism and sorrowfully stated after she left office that "We have become a nation of Killers". Hillary CAN do much worse than Obama or the Bushes and would usher in a nation of killers, an attitude she supported in the past.
Yes, a woman could be a great president but not as long as she is spawned by the current military industrial complex in power. Anyone, male or female, hoping to attain high office currently, cannot succeed without the approval of the worst right wing extremists of our nation. Unless and until the citizens rise to their responsibilities and support and fight for a suitable candidate as happened during the FDR years, we will continue to slip backwards.
Elizabeth Warren anyone?

Pear; said...

correction: it should read in the second sentence: Israel's only female Prime Minister .......

annenigma said...

@Sonidos

So if the Republicans nominated a woman candidate, should we women band together to give that woman a chance and prove we actually support women? Hey, a Republican woman can change just as easily after being elected as someone *claiming* to be a Democrat. She might have a hidden agenda kept in her pocket too. Carly Fiorina comes from the corporate side but might just be playing the same game as Hillary. Yup, that's it. Just Hope, for Change. After they get re-elected and they don't have anything to worry about anymore, they can pull that hidden agenda out of their pocket. (We're still waiting, Mr. Peace Prize-Constitutional Law-Most Transparent Administration Ever-President)

If we've learned anything from Obama, it's that after winning our votes, they don't need us anymore and they will throw us under the bus as soon as the new curtains are up in the White House. THEY DON'T SUDDENLY BECOME POPULISTS!

So the last time Hillary showed any guts was nearly 50 years ago? What guts did it take to preface her commencement address with a couple minor rebuttals to remarks by Republican Senator Edward Brooke? I read her commencement speech. It was quite boring and unimpressive. The only reason it got so much hype was because she was the FIRST student speaker at a Wellesley commencement because they never had Valedictorians. Some politically connected Democrat friend (related to former Secretary of State Dean Acheson) spearheaded that change and Hillary got the gig.

Now she's hoping to ride the wave of hope that she'll be the FIRST woman President. After Barack Obama broke the color barrier, we now realized just how hollow a victory breaking a historical barrier can be.

The fact is that Hillary is old school. She has ridden the coattails of a man through her journey in politics. As regards women, Elizabeth Warren is of the same generation and nearly the same age, but she made it on her own. I'll take anyone, male or female, who has the guts to speak truth to power and act on it in the 21st Century, not just make some tepid remarks in 1969 and act like a rabid warhawk after that whenever real power is within her grasp.

Pearl said...

Besides, I don't think I would want to vote for anyone whose Hedge funders daughter and son-in-law reside in a multimillion dollar condo and together have formed the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Foundation which has helped make them billionaires. She is not a free agent as a result and has demonstrated a love for money and power that does not bode well should she become president.
Not great family values to inspire us.

annenigma said...

There's at least one female alternative to Hillary. Dr. Jill Stein has announced she's forming an exploratory committee to seek the Green Party nomination for President in 2016.

Of course the Duopoly and their corporate media partners will never allow a 3P candidate to be seen and heard nationally. We can count on them to once again mobilize their army of lawyers to use the injustice system and rigged election laws to prevent any 3P candidate from inclusion in nationally televised Presidential debates.

It's a crying shame because even if 3P candidates didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of being elected, people could at least hear cogent arguments for new policies. If those ideas sparked people's interest and support, even opposing candidates would have to at least pretend to favor them too. If they later dissed the voters by changing their tune (that hidden agenda), all the more people to be pissed off. That sounds like Democracy to me. But that's what the Powers-That-Be consider threatening and dangerous. It does happen to be exactly how new movements get off the ground, by gaining national exposure. The Occupy movement briefly got liftoff before it was shot down and crushed on orders of the PTB.

It's a moot point anyway since Democracy in this country is essentially dead except for the charade of voting for pre-selected candidates who represent the PTB. It's like HRC once said:

WHAT DIFFERENCE AT THIS POINT DOES IT MAKE!!!