Bush Delivers Arms Sale to Saudi Arabia

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — President Bush, on his first visit to this oil-rich kingdom, delivered a major arms sale Monday to a key ally in a region where the U.S. casts neighboring Iran as a menace to stability.

Bush's talks with Saudi King Abdullah, which began over dinner and were continuing with late-night meetings, also were expected to cover peace between Israelis and Palestinians and democracy in the Middle East.

Coinciding with Bush's trip, the Bush administration in Washington notified Congress on Monday that it will offer Saudi Arabia the chance to buy sophisticated Joint Direct Attack Munitions _ or "smart bomb" _ technology and related equipment, the State Department said. The administration envisions the transfer of 900 of the precision-guided bomb kits, worth $123 million, that would give the kingdom's armed forces highly accurate targeting abilities.

The proposed deal follows notification of five other packages to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, bringing to $11.5 billion the amount of advanced U.S. weaponry, including Patriot missiles, that the administration has announced it will provide to friendly Arab nations, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said. Administration officials say the total amount of eventual sales as part of the Gulf Security Dialogue is estimated at $20 billion, a figure subject to actual purchases.

The arms packages are an important part of the U.S. strategy to bolster the defenses of oil-producing Gulf nations, such as Saudi Arabia, against threats from Iran. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, which have majority Sunni Muslim populations, harbor deep suspicions about Shiite Iran's apparent designs to establish itself as a major power.

Congress already has been briefed on all the packages, which also include the sale of the Navy's Littoral Combat system. Lawmakers mostly see the deals as critical to maintaining relations with war-on-terror allies. Some are opposed to the JDAMs portion out of concern that it gives Saudi Arabia the ability to attack Israel, but are unlikely to muster the two-thirds majority needed, within an allowed 30-day period, to block the sales.

The administration has assured lawmakers in closed briefings in recent months that there would be proper restrictions on the JDAMs sales to ensure they would not threaten to Israel. Israel, which has been sold JDAMs technology by the U.S. as well, also has said it does not oppose the deal.

White House counselor Ed Gillespie said he did not know if the president and the king had discussed rising oil prices, but he said the subject has come up on this trip, particularly in terms of Bush's goals for developing alternate fuels and sources of energy, including nuclear power. The Saudis are responsible for almost one-third of OPEC's total output. Gillespie said Mideast leaders "talked about the nature of the market and the vast demand that's on the world market today for oil," something he called "a legitimate and accurate point."

Another item for possible discussion were the democratic principles Bush has promoted during his trip. While Abdullah has tried to push some reforms on education and women's rights and there have been limited municipal council elections, the king has been cautious and limited in his efforts. He apparently has been hampered by others in the royal family worried that fast changes could upset the country's conservative clerics and citizens.

After arriving Monday afternoon in Riyadh from Dubai, Bush expected to hear Abdullah urge him to keep up the pressure on Israel to halt settlements in Palestinian territories. The administration was able to persuade the Saudis to participate in the U.S.-sponsored Mideast peace conference in Annapolis, Md., in November.

Bush enjoyed a warm embrace from Abdullah. He was staying a night at the monarch's ranch _ a rare show of hospitality to a visiting dignitary that reflects Bush's hosting of Abdullah twice at his own ranch in Crawford, Texas.

And the king greeted Bush at the base of the steps of Air Force One _ a gesture the president never affords foreign leaders visiting the U.S. A band played each country's national anthem as the leaders walked on a red carpet behind a high-stepping uniformed officer carrying a gold sword.

After dinner in the King's Palace, Bush and Abdullah walked through a large central atrium and picked up cups of Arabic coffee to take into their meetings. Sitting side by side in chairs, Abdullah presented Bush with a gold necklace adorned with a large medallion _ the King Abdul Aziz Order of Merit, the country's highest honor, named after the founder of the modern Saudi state.

The award was placed around Bush's neck and the two exchanged the region's traditional double kiss. "I am honored," Bush said.

The hospitality masked Bush's deep unpopularity among ordinary Saudis.

A recent poll conducted for Terror Free Tomorrow, a bipartisan group whose goal is undermining world support for terrorism, found only 12 percent here view Bush positively _ lower than Iran's president or even al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden _ and more think warmly toward Iran than America. Top among the reasons are the chaos in Iraq that followed the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and the widespread Arab feeling that the United States is biased toward Israel and not serious in seeking Mideast peace.

A rare cold front brought clouds and rain to Riyadh for the visit. Tight security was evident: Hundreds of police cars have deployed along major roads and sharpshooters are on some rooftops. In one neighborhood, police using loudspeakers demanded that cars be removed from some streets as two helicopters hovered overhead.

Earlier in Dubai, Bush got a flavor of the cosmopolitan banking and business hub, whose glass skyscrapers and booming construction have turned it into the capital of Middle East hustle. The soaring Persian Gulf city-state was Bush's second stop in the seven-state United Arab Emirates federation. On the first, in Abu Dhabi on Sunday, he delivered a gentle lecture on democracy to authoritarian Arab allies and attended an opulent picnic at a desert horse camp.

Bush engaged in a day of cultural diplomacy in Dubai. He stopped at the historic home of the city-state's former ruler, now a museum, where a group of girls performed to Arabic music.He had lunch on cushions set in a circle with students of the Dubai School of Government. And he attended a gathering of a young leaders' group, in a conference room atop one of Dubai's signature buildings, the luxury hotel Burj Al Arab that is shaped like a tall ship sail.

Dubai is caught in the middle of the West's efforts to crack down on business in and out of Iran to protest its nuclear ambitions. Dubai, with a powerful Iranian business community, is eager to maintain its lucrative financial ties with Tehran, but wary of angering the United States and the United Nations

Bush Visits His Odious Saudi Friend

By Amitabh Pal, January 10, 2008

How do you punish the principal global purveyor of fundamentalist Islam, someone who backed the Taliban and continues to harshly suppress political freedoms, women and religious minorities?

If you’re President Bush, you reward him with a state visit, of course!

During his current Middle East trip, Bush is looking in on a rogues’ gallery of U.S. allies, from Bahrain and Egypt to the United Arab Emirates and Israel. But King Abdullah’s Saudi Arabia occupies the pride of place.

“The government places strict limits on freedom of association, assembly, and expression,” writes Human Rights Watch in its roundup of conditions in the kingdom in 2006. “Arbitrary detention, mistreatment and torture of detainees, restrictions on freedom of movement, and lack of official accountability remain serious concerns. Saudi women continue to face serious obstacles to their participation in society.”

Things haven’t improved since then. In a recent outrageous incident, which received media coverage globally, a woman who was gang-raped was sentenced to 200 lashes because she was meeting with a former boyfriend when they both were abducted and brutalized. The punishment had an undertone of bigotry, too, since the woman was Shiite, a persecuted minority sect under the Wahhabi fundamentalist Sunni rule perpetuated by King Abdullah and his clerics. (In all his benevolence, Abdullah finally pardoned the woman and her ex-boyfriend—sentenced to 90 lashes—after an international uproar.)

In another recent event, the Saudi authorities have jailed an outspoken blogger, Ahmad Fouad al-Farhan. Apparently, he was poking his nose into the detention of political prisoners. The crackdown by Saudi authorities on bloggers like al-Farhan is consistent with their suppression of other forms of independent media. (See the appeal by Reporters Without Borders for his release.)

In November, a Saudi judge sentenced two activists to four and six months in jail, respectively, for the heinous crime of encouraging a public demonstration. And the list goes on.

When I visited Saudi Arabia a few years ago as part of a journalists’ group, Saudi officials repeatedly told us that they couldn’t bring about political and social change because a conservative public would resist it. Turns out that this was hogwash, like most of everything else they fed us. A Gallup Poll conducted last summer found that majorities of both Saudi men and women favor an expansion of women’s rights in the country.

“More than 8 in 10 Saudi women (82%) and three-quarters of Saudi men (75%) agree that women should be allowed to hold any job for which they are qualified outside the home,” the poll says. “Sixty-six percent of Saudi women versus 52 percent of Saudi men agree women should be able to hold leadership positions in the cabinet and the national council.”

The other troubling aspect of my trip was the extent to which U.S. Embassy officials I met were apologizing for the regime. We all know that the Saudis have the United States over an oil barrel. Added to that are the massive defense purchases the kingdom makes and the sizeable investment it has in U.S. treasuries. Plus, there are the multiple ties that the Bush family has with the Saudi monarchs. (Craig Unger’s slightly hyperbolic but basically sound “House of Bush, House of Saud” is the best-known dissection of the U.S.-Saudi relationship.)

All this means that the United States is basically willing to overlook the Saudi regime’s noxious export of Wahhabi fundamentalism around the world and its appalling record at home. A few years ago, Bush accorded King Abdullah the rare honor of hosting him at his Crawford ranch, and is now furthering his friendship by dropping in on his buddy.

What’s a few human rights violations between friends?

The Secret Saudi Flight on 9-13 Could be the Key to the Bush-Saudi-Al Qaeda Connection

By Catherine Arnie

About a month after the September 11th attacks, I read an article in the Tampa Tribune by Kathy Steele entitled "Phantom Flight From Florida." The intriguing report told the tale of a flight out of Florida that allegedly took place on September 13 - a day when ALL civilian air traffic in the United States was grounded.

"This was out of a Tom Clancy movie," according to a retired homicide detective who was hired for the flight. Its mission was to spirit the son of a Saudi prince, the son of a Saudi army commander, and another unidentified Saudi from Florida to Kentucky, because "there was a perceived threat, and the family of the person wanted him home right away."

The "person" in danger was the son of Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, who is no minor figure in the Saudi Royal family. Rather, Prince Sultan is the kingdom's minister of defense, the third-ranking position in the Saudi Government, whose powers exceed those of even America's super-powerful Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Dan Grossi and Manuel Perez were the two Floridians who were hired to serve as private bodyguards on the flight.

According to the article in the Tampa Tribune, Dan Grossi is a retired Tampa cop who worked in internal affairs and homicide. Perez is a retired FBI man whose experience was in counter-terrorism and bomb-making. Perez now runs a detective agency and the two men provided security for the National Football League at Raymond James Stadium in September of 2001.

The article reported that shortly after the September 11 attack, Lexington police Lt. Mark Barnard received a request from a prominent Saudi Kingdom official for the protection of three young Saudi men in Florida, at least one of whom - Prince Sultan's son - had been studying English at the University of Tampa for three weeks. (Tampa police records listed Sultan Bin Fahad as the individual who specifically requested protection for the three men. That is probably Prince Sultan Bin Fahad, head of the Saudi General Presidency of Youth Welfare. In family-run Saudi Arabia, there is apparently a whole Ministry devoted to keeping Royal youth out of trouble - something the Bush family elders no doubt dream of copying.)

Apparently Barnard then contacted the Tampa police department and two "off-duty" Tampa intelligence detectives were assigned to watch the three Saudis for their protection. At around 11:00 AM on September 13, Dan Grossi received a phone call from the Tampa police detectives who needed help with a problem: escorting the Saudi men they were protecting on a flight to Kentucky.

Grossi and Perez evidently felt they were up to the task, and at 2:30 PM Grossi was contacted by the Tampa Police Department with specific instructions. And by 4:35 PM a plane carrying Grossi, Perez, Prince Sultan's son, the son of an unidentified Saudi military commander, and third unidentified Saudi, was in the air and en route to Kentucky. The private Lear jet flew from Ft. Lauderdale to Tampa, where it parked at Raytheon Airport Services, which owns a private hangar on the outskirts of the Tampa International airport.

(Tampa, of course, is home to General Tommy Franks and the Pentagon's Central Command (CentCom), which now rules Afghanistan and Iraq directly, and indirectly rules the entire oil-rich Middle East and Central Asia through its growing network of Halliburton-supplied military bases. Raytheon, of course, is the massive arms manufacturer that supplied many of the high-tech weapons used in Afghanistan and Iraq. Tampa is also near Venice FL, where Mad Cow Morning News has exposed numerous secrets about the training of 9-11 pilots Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi at shadowy local flight schools. And Tampa is in Florida, where Gov. Jeb Bush stole the 2000 election for his brother George, and where Jeb issued Executive Order 2001-261 to prepare the FL National Guard for a terrorist attack on 9-7-01.)

Their destination, according to the two bodyguards, was the Blue Grass Airport in Lexington, Kentucky, where the three Saudis were to link up with relatives who were in Kentucky to purchase race horses.

Grossi and Perez further stated that upon landing they saw several 747's parked on the tarmac with Arabic writing. The article suggests that at least one of these 747's flew back to Saudi Arabia with the boys, although their Floridian chaperones appear to have left the airport before that occurred. If true, the flight of these 747's would validate at least part of the Michael Moore story about powerful Saudis being allowed to fly out of the U.S. on the second day of the prohibition of all civilian flights.

Perez stated that he was unaware of who their charges were until they landed. Both men told of what a strange feeling it was to fly in an almost empty sky, and Perez recalls asking the pilot, "We're not going to get shot down are we?" - a legitimate fear, given the fact that fighter jets were urgently patrolling the skies looking for any more terrorists.

Regarding the curious fact that the flight had taken place when all other air traffic was still grounded, Dan Grossi said "he was told that clearance for the flight had come from the White House after the Prince's family pulled a favor from former President Bush."

If so, this was no ordinary ex-Presidential favor. In debunking a Michael Moore-inspired Internet rumor about a secret flight of relatives of Osama Bin Laden, Snopes.com describes exactly how restricted the skies were that day:

The Federal Aviation Administration ordered all flights in the United States grounded immediately following the terrorist attacks, and that ban stayed in effect until September 13. (Even then, for that first day commercial carriers were either completing the interrupted flights of September 11 or were repositioning empty aircraft in anticipation of the resumption of full service. New passenger flights did not resume until the 14th.) During that two-day period of full lock-down, only the military and specially FAA-authorized flights that delivered life-saving medical necessities were in the air. The enforcement of the empty skies directive was so stringent that even after the United Network for Organ Sharing sought and gained FAA clearance to use charter aircraft on September 12 to effect time-critical deliveries of organs for transplant, one of its flights carrying a human heart was forced to the ground in Bellingham, Washington, 80 miles short of its Seattle destination, by two Navy F/A-18 fighters. (The organ completed its journey after being transferred to a helicopter.)

After reading the Tampa Tribune article, I distinctly remember blinking and checking the URL to see if I had accidentally clicked on a link to one of those "publications" that spots Elvis, or reports that ninety year old women have just given birth to Bigfoot's baby. But no, this was indeed the Tampa Tribune.

I remember wondering how on earth our government could have authorized a flight out of the country before they even knew who the perpetrators of the attacks were?

And further, why did the families of the young men "perceive a threat" when it wasn't yet clear on the 13th of September exactly WHO had attacked America or where they were from?

According to a transcript on the State Departments website of a statement given by a "Senior White House Official" on September 13 at 5:22 PM it had not yet been announced that Bin Laden was behind the attacks when protection was requested for the three young men.

When this "Senior White House official" was asked if Osama Bin Laden had perpetrated the attacks against the US at 5:22 PM on September 13th, to which he replied: "I think that right now what we need to do is -- as I said, again, this happened 60 hours ago. We don't want to be premature, not because we don't want to name or finger someone, but because we want to make sure that we understand all the connections, not just a connection."

Was Prince Sultan a psychic who somehow mysteriously predicted that 15 of the 19 hijackers would turn out to be Saudi nationals? Or did he perhaps know who was behind the attacks since he was funding charities linked to Al Qaeda?

Now fast forward about a year and a half and imagine my surprise last week when I read a "Newsweek web exclusive" that reported that Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz - THE VERY SAME defense minister of Saudi Arabia - is being sued on the behalf of the victims of 9-11 for his alleged role in the financing of groups suspected to have links to the terrorist attacks of 9-11!

"Wow," I thought, "wasn't this the SAME Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz who had the kid on the Phantom flight?"

After further checking, I discovered that - yes, my friends - they are one and the same!

According to the Newsweek article, when three attorneys from the "prestigious Houston firm" that represents Sultan bin Abdul Aziz filed a motion in court in the Prince's defense, they also inadvertently provided evidence in the form of "stacks of affidavits and canceled checks" that indicated that the Prince had personally authorized the funneling of millions of dollars on the behalf of Saudi Arabian government to organizations that the US has identified and raided as terrorist front operations sympathetic to Osama Bin Laden.

But it gets worse...

The name of the "prestigious Houston Law firm" that is representing this suspected supporter of terrorism?

Why that would be none other than Baker Botts of Houston - as in JAMES Baker, as in THE James Baker: George Herbert Walker Bush's former Secretary of State and George W. Bush's counsel during the 2000 election recounts (you know, "Mr. the votes have been counted and recounted and counted again and even though we still lost we're taking the crown"?)

It seems that in spite of the fact that Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz and his government have been accused of funding charities linked to Al Qaeda, James Baker's firm still feels the need to defend the Prince against those "evil" trial lawyers representing the orphaned families of the 9-11 victims.

But perhaps what is just as shocking to me is the allegation that the son of this SAME Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz was reportedly flown out of the United States when all other planes were grounded following the special orders of Bush's own father!

Moreover, the entire 9-13 mission of the Lear jet is shrouded in mystery. That mission began in Ft. Lauderdale, stopped in Tampa and Lexington, and returned to Tampa to bring Grossi and Perez home. But then the jet flew to New Orleans "to pick up someone who needed a ride to New York." So this plane made AT LEAST 5 flights on 9-13, but the FAA told the Tampa Tribune, "it's not in our logs... it didn't occur." The White House, the State Department, and the National Security Council all refused to answer the Tribune's questions.

Now the Bush administration is refusing to make public an 800-page Congressional report on the attacks of 9-11. In fact, this administration is so hell-bent on keeping the report from the public that they are even "re-classifying" information that was already a part of the public record!

According to a new Newsweek bombshell by Michael Isikoff,

Among the portions of the report the administration refuses to declassify, sources say, are chapters dealing with two politically and diplomatically sensitive issues: the details of daily intelligence briefings given to Bush in the summer of 2001 and evidence pointing to Saudi government ties to Al Qaeda. Bush officials have taken such a hard line, sources say, that they are refusing to permit the release of matters already in the public domain -- including the existence of intelligence documents referred to on the CIA Web site.

As average citizens struggle to carry on their daily business and keep their blood pressure in check in the midst of a new "orange alert," Mr. Bush & Co. are still busy protecting their buddies in Saudi Arabia and lying to the American public.

Why can't we know the truth about who our enemies are, Mr. Bush?

One has to wonder when George W. said, "You're either with us or against us" - just exactly who he meant by "us." "Us" is beginning to look like a Bush-Saudi-Al Qaeda conspiracy, especially when one includes the well-known business ties between George H. W. Bush, James Baker, and the Bin Laden family through the infamous Carlyle Group.

In a scandal this potentially huge - one implicating the President's close family and family lawyer - shouldn't a Special Prosecutor be appointed? If the President was Bill Clinton, the family member was Hillary Clinton, and the family lawyer was Webster Hubbell, the media - not to mention the Republican Party - would be demanding a Special Prosecutor at the top of their lungs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Even though the post-Watergate Special Prosecutor law was repealed after Ken Starr's legal lynching of President Clinton, pre-Watergate-style Special Prosecutors can still be appointed by the Attorney General.

Editor's note: the initial version of this article incorrectly identified Bush family consiglieri James A. Baker III of Baker, Botts as the same James A. Baker who serves as Counsel for Intelligence Policy to the Justice Department's Office for Intelligence Policy and Review (OIPR). It is not the same person. For a fuller explanation of this error, click here.