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.