Friday, Sep. 5, 2003. Page XII
Global Eye -- Strange AttractorsBy Chris Floyd
Who carried out the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States? People in the pay of Saudi Arabia, trained and maintained by the secret services of Pakistan. What did George W. Bush do to punish these accomplices to mass murder on American soil? Nothing. Instead he killed more than 30,000 innocent people -- in Iraq.
This is not some baseless "conspiracy theory" -- unlike, say, the Bushists' fantasies about a pre-war coupling between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. (Of course, the pair probably are in bed now, thanks to the pious bawds in the White House, whose lust for Iraqi booty has engendered a whole new breed of terrorists in the conquered land.) No, the Saudis' payment of protection money to Osama -- the scion of one of the kingdom's most powerful, well-connected families -- has been known for years. Likewise, Pakistan's intimate involvement with the Taliban and other Qaida-connected groups -- such as Mohammed Atta's Sept. 11 brigade and the gang that killed American journalist Daniel Pearl -- has also been widely attested.
Now this highly inconvenient -- hence largely forgotten -- history has surfaced again, in the confessions of top Osama henchman Abu Zubaydah, unearthed by author Gerald Posner and reported this week in Time magazine.
Zubaydah, captured by the Americans last year, confirmed that Saudi royals began paying off bin Laden in 1991. Young Osama, victoriously returned from the CIA-backed jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan, was feeling his fundamentalist oats, and wanted to take up arms against the demonic secularist Saddam, after the latter's invasion of Kuwait. But the Saudi royals preferred to bring in the hired muscle of their long-time business partner, George H.W. Bush. When Osama threw a fit over the presence of American "infidels" on holy ground, the royals told him he could go kill Americans if he wanted to -- as long as he kept his jihad hobby outside the confines of the kingdom. They bought his compliance with copious amounts of petrodollars -- most of them supplied, ironically enough, by the oil-addicted denizens of the United States.
Zubaydah, under torture (yes, we know, Americans never torture people -- and they don't launch unprovoked wars of aggression, either), gave up names, dates, even telephone numbers of al-Qaida's enablers in the Saudi royal family and Pakistani military. True, the wily terrorist operative might have been lying. But shortly after Zubaydah spilled these red-hot beans, all three Saudi princes he had named turned up dead -- within a single week, in June 2002. One died in a car crash, one reportedly had a heart attack, and the third wealthy prince somehow "died of thirst" in the Saudi desert. The following week, the top Pakistani official fingered by Zubaydah was also killed, along with his family, when his airplane suddenly fell out of a clear blue sky. Of course, this could just be coincidence -- after all, planes fall, cars crash, hearts fail and multimillionaires die of thirst in the desert every day, right? Still, it looks as if Zub's canary-like warbling might have struck a nerve somewhere out there.
More:
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2003/09/05/120.htmlTYY