But we have to keep them as a close ally no matter what, right? There is no low Saudi Arabia can't sink to.
Similar to Israel.
They’ll only become more desperate as the world reduces fossil fuel dependence.
They also buy lots of guns from the US. This is one of the real reasons. Lockheed Martin’s profit margins would decrease by a significant amount if our relationship with SA changed at all.
Even if the Saudis and other major countries in the reason were able to decrease tensions with Iran, Lockheed Martin and its associated propagandists and lobbyists would start beating the war drums to increase tensions and thus sales.
Edit: *one of the real reasons. Added para. on LM ensuring tensions in the region always remain high even when the people that live there and their government’s reduce tensions.
Not just Lockheed but all of the big defense contractors.
What's a bone saw or terrorist attack or two between such good friends.
"But for three shining decades, war profits were never higher."
Like how they invited Putin during the COP28 conference without telling anyone?
Per the article, they started to change policy a bit after some of the groups they were sponsoring started attacking the monarchy:
Astonishingly, the attacks of 9/11 had little effect on the Saudi approach to religious extremism, as diplomats and intelligence officials have attested. What finally changed royal minds was the experience of suffering an attack on Saudi soil. In May 2003, gunmen and suicide bombers struck three residential compounds in Riyadh, killing 39 people. The authorities attributed the attacks to al-Qaeda, and cooperation with the U.S. improved quickly and dramatically.
And they murdered Kashoggi in what year?
Right. We reward them no matter what they do.
Quick let's buy more oil from them.
Fuck it pisses me off. The oil embargoes in the 70s were the pants on fire moments we should have put an ungodly amount of R&D into nuclear, fusion, solar, wind, and batteries. And built Metro lines.
Jimmy Carter tried to convince America to move to renewables, but was stymied by the Iran Crisis. Carter put solar panels on the White House, and Reagan removed them. Reagan's Veep was Texas oilman George HW Bush, who'd called Reagan's tax cuts for the wealthy nonsense before being asked to join the ticket.
But but but bOtHsIdEsSaMe.
I love how in the alternate history of For All Mankind the world basically ditched fossil fuels in the seventies and went nuclear.
If the US can choose who rules North Korea, sell trillions worth of weapons to them, buy cheap oil from them, and install as many military bases as they want on their lands, then North Korea would've been the US closest ally no matter how many crimes against humanity they commit against their people.
No shit we knew this like 20 years
Yes, but the new evidence points to it as well!
"We used to be complicit in 9/11. We still are, but we used to be, too." - Mitch al-Hedberg
Haven't we already known this for, you know, 23 years?
Yes.
Dude, this shit is so outdated now it's not even funny. We knew it was Osama. We knew he operated in a terrorist network which is pretty damn broad over in the Middle-East as that's been their issue for quite some time even back then. Of course there's going to be some complicity and those helping eachother because of whatever code they function under since they're a terrorist network.
Of course George Bush was a fucking idiot along with Donald Rumsfield, Dick Cheney and every other war-mongering shithead in that administration who simply wanted to go to Iraq anyways as a make-good because they derailed their primary objective. Can't find Osama? Get rid of Saddam, why not, it'll make for some sugarcoated sounding progress. All the while, let's tank the fucking economy while we're at it. Oh and get rid of some American lives who were just thrown into this makeshift war too.
Shit, we knew there was some level of complicity with the 1993 WTC bombing attempt. Almost nobody talked of that. Big fucking clue there!
The Middle-East is seriously corruption central, there's barely any resemblance of dignity over there. We shouldn't have been surprised of anything fucked up that ever happened while in there and around there.
Damn, if only we could have known that an attack where 90% of the hijackers were Saudi that Saudi Arabia could be involved.
How/why is it that I say things, and 20 years later everybody acts like its a new discovery??.
It's hardly a new discovery. This is just more evidence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alleged_Saudi_role_in_the_September_11_attacks
Why is this coming out now? Like we know... Why is this a news story, now? I am absolutely not a conspiracy theorist, but this makes me feel like one. Is something going to happen to Saudi Arabia... Are some powers at be trying to sway public opinion for some reason?
Is something going to happen to Saudi Arabia
Nope.
Why is this coming out now?
Because it's too late for anyone to do anything with this information. It's the same reason why they don't mind us knowing about the SS-level war crimes the US perpetrated in Vietnam - they know it's far too late for the majority of people in the US to care.
No shit...? The only reason that Saudi Arabia isn't a stretch of glass is because they were providing oil whilst Iraq was making moves to cut it off. Sate your bloodlust and destroy a regional inconvenience at the same time? That's a freebie.
Just like Israel, this revelation won’t affect our relations with them, because the US government cares about money, not people, and to them the massive boost that defense contractors got from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were worth the lives lost.
How many minutes would the Saudis remain an alli if they suddenly ran out of oil?
Five? Ten minutes?
It would probably take the Houthis 5 minutes to invade the entire country if the USA dipped lol.
The 9/11 Commission Report recounted numerous contacts between Bayoumi and Thumairy, but described only “circumstantial evidence” of Thumairy as a contact for the two hijackers and stated that it didn’t know whether Bayoumi’s first encounter with the operatives occurred “by chance or design.” But the evidence assembled in the ongoing lawsuit suggests that the actions Thumairy and Bayoumi took to support the hijackers were actually deliberate, sustained, and carefully coordinated with other Saudi officials.
The 9/11 Commission Gee Dubby and Darth Cheney fought against for a year? That they refused to testify under oath to? That they wanted Dark Lord Henry Kissinger to chair, and appointed him to do so before a hurricane of backlash slapped a hair of shame into their faces?
That 9/11 Commission? You say they fucked up some key evidence? No. It can’t be. They met for years. There must be a simple explanation.
So you’re saying we need to invade Iraq? /s
Nothing. No reason. Just sayin’.
For more than two decades, through two wars and domestic upheaval, the idea that al-Qaeda acted alone on 9/11 has been the basis of U.S. policy. A blue-ribbon commission concluded that Osama bin Laden had pioneered a new kind of terrorist group—combining superior technological know-how, extensive resources, and a worldwide network so well coordinated that it could carry out operations of unprecedented magnitude. This vanguard of jihad, it seemed, was the first nonstate actor that rivaled nation-states in the damage it could wreak.
That assessment now appears wrong.
Yeah no shit. It was wrong at the time. Many, many people said so.
Like “it turns out basing our economies on destroying the planet might have been a bad idea.” Yeah. Howabout that.
After 9/11, President George W. Bush and his team argued that a nonstate actor like al-Qaeda could not have pulled off the attacks alone, and that some country must have been behind it all. That state, they insisted, was Iraq—and the United States invaded Iraq. In a savage irony, they may have been right after all about state support, but flat wrong about the state.
Whaaaaaaaaaat???
Nooooooooooooooooooo!
2004 Article: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2004-apr-11-oe-unger11-story.html
Is this just more info about what we could already see then?
Pretty much — it makes it clear that they didn't just come from Saudi Arabia but had active support from within the government there.
Astonishingly, the attacks of 9/11 had little effect on the Saudi approach to religious extremism, as diplomats and intelligence officials have attested. What finally changed royal minds was the experience of suffering an attack on Saudi soil. In May 2003, gunmen and suicide bombers struck three residential compounds in Riyadh, killing 39 people. The authorities attributed the attacks to al-Qaeda, and cooperation with the U.S. improved quickly and dramatically.
Suspicion: The attack was actually planned and/or executed by the CIA or some US agency you've never heard of. RIP, 39 people, but America got the policy cooperation it wanted.
Unrelated but another little known fact, did you know that most humans on earth breath air?
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