Weekend Review

I decided to let my buddy Sam decide what I talk about this morning. He usually sends me articles to read, so now I will share a few of them with you.

BACK TO BENGHAZI

First, there is this opinion piece from the Washington Post's Dana Milbank, "Trey Gowdy injects Benghazi into the 2016 campaign":

Is Trey Gowdy planning a July surprise? 

The chairman of the Select Committee on Benghazi went to ground after he and his colleagues grilled Hillary Clinton in October. They haven’t had a single hearing since then (and had only three public hearings before that one), though they occasionally send news releases reminding the world that their 700-day-old investigation continues.   

But that is about to change. Gowdy, after blowing through several previous deadlines he set, has said to expect a final report “before summer,” and Republicans say they are drafting it now. In another indication that the rollout is approaching, Gowdy last month stopped giving Democrats transcripts of witness interviews. This move, ostensibly to prevent leaks, diminishes the minority’s ability respond to allegations contained in the majority report.

Sam's view: "Bernie Sanders is staying in the Democratic race just in case the Benghazi Committee damages Hillary so severely that the Democrats won't have any choice but to nominate him."

While it is possible that the committee has something so damaging that they are saving it to damage Hillary Clinton, I suspect just the opposite: They have nothing, so they are waiting until the summer news drought to kill the investigation, or even until after the election.

Don't get me wrong: I am not saying Hillary or the Obama administration didn't try to cover up Benghazi. We know they did that. No, the only question remaining was the classic Watergate question: Who first knew about the problems in Benghazi, and when did they know it? Obama's administration is a bunch of good little Nazis, so I doubt we will know the truth for decades.

SAUDI ARABIA: FRIEND OR FOE

Next, Sam sent me this New York Post editorial by Ralph Peters, "How Saudi Arabia dangerously undermines the United States":

Iran is our external enemy of the moment. Saudi Arabia is our enduring internal enemy, already within our borders and permitted to poison American Muslims with its Wahhabi cult. 

Oh, and Saudi Arabia’s also the spring from which the bloody waters of global jihad flowed. 

Iran humiliates our sailors, but the Saudis are the spiritual jailers of hundreds of millions of Muslims, committed to intolerance, barbarity and preventing Muslims from joining the modern world. And we help.

...Decades ago, the Saudi royal family realized it had a problem. Even its brutal practices weren’t strict enough for its home-grown zealots. So the king and his thousands of princes gave the budding terrorists money — and aimed them outside the kingdom. 

Osama bin Laden was just one extremist of thousands. The 9/11 hijackers were overwhelmingly Saudi. The roots of the jihadi movements tearing apart the Middle East today all lie deep in Wahhabism. 

Which brings us to 28 pages redacted from the 9/11 Commission’s report. Those pages allegedly document Saudi complicity. Our own government kept those revelations from the American people. Because, even after 9/11, the Saudis were “our friends.” 

(We won’t even admit that the Saudi goal in the energy sector today is to break American fracking operations, let alone face the damage their zealotry has caused.)

Have you noticed how the U.S. government's politicians are loathe to admit a mistake, especially when both Democrats and Republicans are complicit in the mistake?

So we made friends with the Saudis decades ago. After decades of both Republicans and Democrats being buddy-buddy with the Saudis, 9/11 happened, and the Saudis were complicit. You don't think so? Consider this New York Times story:

Saudi Arabia has told the Obama administration and members of Congress that it will sell off hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of American assets held by the kingdom if Congress passes a bill that would allow the Saudi government to be held responsible in American courts for any role in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. 

The Obama administration has lobbied Congress to block the bill’s passage, according to administration officials and congressional aides from both parties, and the Saudi threats have been the subject of intense discussions in recent weeks between lawmakers and officials from the State Department and the Pentagon. The officials have warned senators of diplomatic and economic fallout from the legislation.

Let's be honest about this: Governments don't make revenge threats like this unless they did something wrong. Especially when you consider this:

Saudi officials have long denied that the kingdom had any role in the Sept. 11 plot, and the 9/11 Commission found “no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded the organization.” But critics have noted that the commission’s narrow wording left open the possibility that less senior officials or parts of the Saudi government could have played a role. Suspicions have lingered, partly because of the conclusions of a 2002 congressional inquiry into the attacks that cited some evidence that Saudi officials living in the United States at the time had a hand in the plot. 

Those conclusions, contained in 28 pages of the report, still have not been released publicly. 

Even if the Saudis didn't have direct knowledge of the 9/11 attacks, I strongly suspect they set events in motion which led to 9/11.

It is well past time for the U.S. to become energy independent. We have the means. The only thing stopping us is politicians playing CYA for their buddies...and their buddies' buddies...and their buddies' buddies' buddies from several decades ago, who started this insane friendship with the Saudis.

OTHER STUFF

Finally, I discovered a rather funny website over the weekend: Political Humor.

Here are a few samples from it: