Friday, May 26, 2017

Our Eternal Pals

The facts are well-known. For five decades, Saudi Arabia has spread its narrow, puritanical and intolerant version of Islam — originally practiced almost nowhere else — across the Muslim world. Osama bin Laden was Saudi, as were 15 of the 19 9/11 terrorists.

[...]

The Islamic State draws its beliefs from Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi version of Islam.

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Leaked German intelligence reports show that charities “closely connected with government offices” of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait are funding mosques, schools and imams to disseminate a fundamentalist, intolerant version of Islam throughout Germany.

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Trump has adopted the Saudi line on terrorism, which deflects any blame from the kingdom and redirects it toward Iran.

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Almost every terrorist attack in the West has had some connection to Saudi Arabia. Virtually none has been linked to Iran.

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And we know, via a leaked email from former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, in recent years the Saudi government, along with Qatar, has been “providing clandestine financial and logistic support to [the Islamic State] and other radical Sunni groups in the region.” Saudi nationals make up the second-largest group of foreign fighters in the Islamic State and, by some accounts, the largest in the terrorist group’s Iraqi operations. The kingdom is in a tacit alliance with al-Qaeda in Yemen.

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The Saudis showered Trump’s inexperienced negotiators with attention, arms deals and donations to a World Bank fund that Ivanka Trump is championing. [...] In short, the Saudis played Trump.

  WaPo
The Saudis have lots of money. We like that.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

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