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Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse

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Re: Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse

#81

Post by madaxe_again »

hartpuff wrote: post #54
mirimir wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CIA and/or NSA very likely knew that the 9/11 terrorists were in the US, learning to fly airliners. Not long after 9/11, there were reports that Mossad agents (the "art students", as I recall) had been tailing the 9/11 terrorists. Almost all of whom were Saudis. But I've seen no credible reports that any of them knew what was planned. And yes, those pages might be very interesting.

> The CIA and/or NSA very likely knew that the 9/11 terrorists were in the US, learning to fly airliners. Has there ever been an explanation why the hijackers risked conspicuously attending flight schools under the noses of the US authorities, rather than, say, absolutely any other country in the world ?

It's cheaper in the US than pretty much anywhere else, and there are large numbers becoming pilots, so more noise to hide in. It might be cheaper to train is some weird and wonderful corners of the world, but they'd have been far more noticeable.

Re: Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse

#82

Post by salafi »

cygx wrote: post #68
salafi wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't, for the life of me, understand why people associate being a Salafi with the various terrorist groups. I have never heard a Salafi scholar promote any acts terrorism. In fact, every single high-ranking scholar in Saudi Arabia (those who call themselves Salafi), are all opposed to groups like ISIS, Al Qaida, and Al Nusra. There are dozens of audio clips on Youtube from such scholars who clearly warn the Muslim…

ISIS is a true product of Salafism, and we must deal with it with full transparency. - Sheikh Adel al-Kalbani, former imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca

> former imam

A refutation of Kalbani: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2wD5KSN-zI

Re: Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse

#83

Post by jdimov9 »

ptaipale wrote: post #30
justincormack wrote: post #20

The poster recommended listening to "their media" for a balanced view on Saudi Arabia, which is nonsense in a country without a free press. And also suggested that the alternative to Saudi Arabia was Iran. Looked like a typical paid commenter.

I think there is a common fallacy that people who you disagree with need to be paid by someone, otherwise they wouldn't be as they are. I disagree with the poster but I'll grant that he may completely believe what he says and doesn't need to be paid in any way. The same phenomenon works for pro-Russia trolls, for instance. I don't think they are "paid", particularly paid with money.

I am very much pro-Russia. You got a problem with that?

Re: Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse

#84

Post by ck2 »

mirimir wrote: post #45
s_q_b wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are nine pages redacted from the 9/11 report, because they were deemed too incendiary against an ally, Saudi Arabia. I want those pages.

The CIA and/or NSA very likely knew that the 9/11 terrorists were in the US, learning to fly airliners. Not long after 9/11, there were reports that Mossad agents (the "art students", as I recall) had been tailing the 9/11 terrorists. Almost all of whom were Saudis. But I've seen no credible reports that any of them knew what was planned. And yes, those pages might be very interesting.

Everyone also forgets the twin towers were already successfully attacked several years earlier by a huge bomb in the basement.

Anything about the world trade center should have lit up intelligence reports like a christmas tree.

Re: Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse

#85

Post by cygx »

salafi wrote: post #78
cygx wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To give an actual example, in Bosnia the leader of the Salafi movement has been arrested for recruiting for ISIS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilal_Bosni%C4%87

He's far from being a Salafi. He's a Bin Laden sympathizer, for one. Ask any mainstream Muslim who the Salafi scholars are in recent times and undoubtedly one of the first names mentioned would be the late Ibn Baz. Ibn Baz was a harsh critic of Bin Laden and his ideology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abd_al-Aziz_ibn_Baz#Osama_bin_... Here is confirmation from Al Fawzan (the most-respected Saudi scholar now) regardin…

yeah, yeah, no true Scotsman

This. From the outside, it looks like a conflict within Salafism.

It's hardly the only movement such things have happened to (eg revolutionary socialism vs reformist socialism).

Re: Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse

#86

Post by cordite »

_0nac wrote: post #22

I've worked a fair amount in Saudi Arabia, and yeah, even by (low) Gulf standards it's a deeply fucked-up place and definitely a ticking time bomb. A few things people don't realize until they've actually been there: - Not all Saudis are rich. Quite the opposite, there are destitute beggars on the streets of Riyadh. The women were the saddest side, kneeling by the roadside begging for alms in their all-enveloping pit…

Medical professionals too are imported, mostly from Europe with English skills. Which means that as far as documenting things in Arabic, only the legal names of people and their relations would need such electronic support. Maybe a few others, but not much.

I am not sure what ramifications this has for patients.

Re: Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse

#87

Post by macspoofing »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #43
fit2rule wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you've missed the point - which is not that Saudi Arabia will collapse for financial reasons - but rather that the corrupt infrastructure which composes the system of organization (it could hardly be called government) of the House of Saud is getting more and more unstable, and less able to be kept together with mere funds alone - since there is already so much money in the empire, that the costs of the corru…

Re: corruption I don't think the Saudis are any more corrupt than Western economies. The patronage networks are personalised and familial in a way that's (mostly) unfamiliar to the West. But it's naive to think that Western politics isn't any more bought and paid for - in its own way. My understanding is that Saudi Arabia has been directing a large part of Western foreign policy since at least the oil shocks of the 1…

>I don't think the Saudis are any more corrupt than Western economies.

Not.even.close. This level of hyperbole is just annoying.

Saudi Arabia, and the corresponding billions (trillions?) dollars of oil wealth is comoletely controlled by one unelected, corrupt, family. There is nothing anaologous to this in the modern world.

Re: Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse

#88

Post by toyg »

mirimir wrote: post #58
s_q_b wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NSA also had a tap on the Yemeni safe house where the attackers were calling to coordinate. The hijackers even stayed in Laurel, Maryland, from which you can literally see Alpha and Bravo. Yet the 9/11 commission only spent three visits and a paltry amount of time up at Fort Meade and NBP, anecdotally because the commute to the Fort is too long. Edit in reply: No, they never put the intelligence together. See her…

So did the NSA know what the attackers were going to do? I find it very hard to imagine that the NSA and/or CIA would have let the attacks happen, even to protect key assets and methods. Maybe they had compromised some Mossad communication channel. Or maybe they had a double agent. But what would have been worth the risk to DC and NYC?

More likely, they had taps but did not know what they were talking about. It was widely reported that, pre-9/11, Arabic translators were scarce in most Western intelligence services including the US, since their traditional focus were Russian, Eastern-European languages, and Chinese. You just need basic informal codes for most logistic purposes (which would be mostly "I've done this, I've done that" to confirm timings and prepare the next steps, rather than "I will hijack a plane and crash it into NYC" which would have been agreed beforehand) to make it very difficult for people who might not know all the intricacies and slang of regional Arabic varieties.

So the NSA might have known these people were learning to fly and maybe even preparing a hijack, but until 9/11 this was not dramatic -- if and when the hijack happened, they would have been expected to fly to Cuba or something and then dealt with. Pre-9/11, airplane hijacks had become rare since their '80s and '70s heydays, maybe there was some complacency (as in "yeah these guys will never manage it, and even if they do, we'll likely get most passengers back safely anyway, let them play"). Or at least that's what a sharp Occam's razor would suggest.

Re: Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse

#89

Post by XorNot »

rtpg wrote: post #80
s_q_b wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are nine pages redacted from the 9/11 report, because they were deemed too incendiary against an ally, Saudi Arabia. I want those pages.

Serious question but are the contents likely to be anything more than "SA money ended up in AQ hands"? I can't imagine too many bombshells being able to remain classified.

And also how many times has that happened to the US recently anyway?

Re: Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse

#90

Post by tome »

s_q_b wrote: post #36
nabla9 wrote: post #25

Boko Haram, al-Qaida, ISIS, Ansar al-Shariah, Jund al-Khilafan, al-Nusra, ... You can backtrack basically all active jihadist groups that attack west back to to the Saudi funded ideology. Even ISIS is offshoot of Wahabbi/Salafism. The "traditional" Islamist like Brotherhood put their efforts in Arab countries. Saudis are not in control of these groups, but they are responsible for the ideology. Saudi Arabia's Curricu…

There are nine pages redacted from the 9/11 report, because they were deemed too incendiary against an ally, Saudi Arabia. I want those pages.

> I want those pages.

What would you do with them? Surely you can't believe that keeping them secret protects an ally to the expense of America? Surely it's much more likely that keeping them secret protects an ally to the benefit of America.

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