COLUMNS: August 7 
 We can handle
the truth: getting real [-------] answers out of the [---------]
White House!
Here's an excerpt from the report compiled by the Joint Inquiry
Into Intelligence Community Activities Before & After The Terrorist
Attacks of September 11, 2001:
"[-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------.]"
The missing story isn't just in those now infamous 28 censored
pages that allegedly implicate financial ties between Saudi Arabia
and 9/11 hijackers, many of whom were Saudi nationals. What's also
noteworthy - Bush's true motivations in censoring the material -
is the story that has yet to be written.
Over the past week the mainstream media and the Bush administration have focused their beady, little eyes on the
interrogation of Omar al-Bayoumi, which took place this past Sunday. According to U.S. "intelligence" al-
Bayoumi, a Saudi national who was living in San Diego in 2000, assisted two of the hijackers in finding an apartment and a flight school. The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Associated Press and television news outlets have spent the days since the report's release working on rumors and insider leaks in search of some answer as to what's in the deleted text. Spending page after page regurgitating the report's outline of Bayoumi's assistance to the two hijackers.
Bush has said that the classified pages "would make it harder for us to win the war on terror." Like Pavlovian dogs, the media fell prey once again to Bush's weapons of mass distraction and sicced itself on the next face (al-Bayoumi's) of intangible villainy while the question of Bush's true motives went unanswered. Does anyone even ask questions anymore?
Well if the mainstream media won't, luckily, the Governmental Affairs Committee will. The panel is putting the full-court press on the Bush administration to find out if it has shielded some Saudi Arabian organizations accused of financing terrorist groups from possible U.S. economic sanctions. Among them is the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, an organization officially sponsored by the Saudi government that is suspected to have served as a 9/11 financier.
Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.), a vice chairman of the congressional
inquiry into the September 11 attacks, told NBC that the censored
pages may be withheld because they "might be embarrassing to
some international relations."
So I'm left wondering two things:
Embarrassing to whom?
and
If Saudi Arabia really did indirectly fund the 9/11 attacks why is the White House bending over backwards to cover for them?
Secretary of State Colin Powell even went as far to say that the administration still has issues with Saudi Arabia "with respect to financing and how money gets to charitable organizations." However, Powell said the Bush administration has had conversations with "our Saudi friends about that" and had good talks last week with the foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, on his visit to Washington. Actually, what al-Faisal said after the meeting was that his nation was being "indicted by insinuation" and could not reply to "blank pages." "We have nothing to hide," he said. "We do not seek, nor do we need, to be shielded."
So, is the White House shielding Saudi Arabia or itself? "Our
Saudi friends"…This is the same shock-and-awe Bush administration,
right? The one that uses terms like "evil doers"? The
Bush administration whose foreign policy motto is: Got Oil?
Maybe I'm missing something, but considering the scrutiny Bush's
credibility is suffering in the eyes of many Americans this doesn't
seem like a good P.R. move. Threatening Saudi Arabia would be more
in line with Bush's usual M.O. It can't be that after all these
years of barking that the wars initiated by Presidents Bush (senior
and junior) were far more complicated than greedy ties to oil, it
may come down to what I've always seen as the oversimplified explanation.
After all, Bush and his neo-con cronies have well-documented ties to oil money and the United States has inseparable ties to oil-rich countries. Although, (as The Washington Post's David Ignatius notes) Saudi Arabia recently announced that their national oil company will partner with European corporations, Shell and Total, to look for gas in one of the country's desolate regions, breaking their dependence on the trade of U.S. military protection for Saudi oil. Potentially, the U.S. will enter into the next round of bids to explore for new gas sources but surely the foreseeable profits can't be reason enough for an entire administration to back off their "war on terror" that's mysteriously kept their approval ratings up this far.
The deleted text of the 9/11 report may not have the answer, but
lets thank Bush for the omission, since it may be pointing us one
step closer to uncovering his unjustified and undocumented reasons
for both war and "friendship."
About
Carla Costa
Carla Costa lives in Providence, Rhode
Island, a city where mayors are indicted and incarcerated. More
of her ranting nonsense can be found in Punk Planet, Women Who Rock
and at The
Rogue Reporter. Her Gusto politics column appears every Thursday.
E-mail Carla
Talk politics at the The Water Cooler
Past Columns:
July 28: Election 2004 Warm-Up: What's Left for Liberals?
August 7: We can handle the truth about Saudi Arabia
August 14: Marriage doesn't mean going to the chapel
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