Taxpayer Funded Arms Sold on Middle East Black Market Meant For Syrian Rebels

The funeral in Rimoun, Jordan, for Anwar Abu Zaid, a police captain who was killed after he attacked a police training center in November. American and Jordanian officials said they believed that the weapons he used had been meant for a program to train Syrian rebels. 

Credit Nasser Nasser/Associated Press

The White House chapter of the Spending Other People's Money Society, uses taxpayer funds to supply criminals in the Middle East. It is what the previous Attorney General, Eric "White people are cowards" Holder did, sending taxpayer purchased automatic weapons to Mexican drug cartels, who used them to kill Americans. Does anyone suspect an enemy spy is running the White House? 

[From article]
Weapons shipped into Jordan by the Central Intelligence Agency and Saudi Arabia intended for Syrian rebels have been systematically stolen by Jordanian intelligence operatives and sold to arms merchants on the black market, according to American and Jordanian officials.
Some of the stolen weapons were used in a shooting in November that killed two Americans and three others at a police training facility in Amman, F.B.I. officials believe after months of investigating the attack, according to people familiar with the investigation.
The existence of the weapons theft, which ended only months ago after complaints by the American and Saudi governments, is being reported for the first time after a joint investigation by The New York Times and Al Jazeera. The theft, involving millions of dollars of weapons, highlights the messy, unplanned consequences of programs to arm and train rebels — the kind of program the C.I.A. and Pentagon have conducted for decades — even after the Obama administration had hoped to keep the training program in Jordan under tight control.
The Jordanian officers who were part of the scheme reaped a windfall from the weapons sales, using the money to buy expensive SUVs, iPhones and other luxury items, Jordanian officials said.
The theft and resale of the arms — including Kalashnikov assault rifles, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades — have led to a flood of new weapons available on the black arms market. Investigators do not know what became of most of them, but a disparate collection of groups, including criminal networks and rural Jordanian tribes, use the arms bazaars to build their arsenals. Weapons smugglers also buy weapons in the arms bazaars to ship outside the country.
The F.B.I. investigation into the Amman shooting, run by the bureau’s Washington field office, is continuing. But American and Jordanian officials said the investigators believed that the weapons a Jordanian police captain, Anwar Abu Zaid, used to gun down two American contractors, two Jordanians and one South African had originally arrived in Jordan intended for the Syrian rebel-training program.
The officials said this finding had come from tracing the serial numbers of the weapons.
Mohammad H. al-Momani, Jordan’s minister of state for media affairs, said allegations that Jordanian intelligence officers had been involved in any weapons thefts were “absolutely incorrect.”
“Weapons of our security institutions are concretely tracked, with the highest discipline,” he said. He called the powerful Jordanian intelligence service, known as the General Intelligence Directorate, or G.I.D., “a world-class, reputable institution known for its professional conduct and high degree of cooperation among security agencies.” In Jordan, the head of the G.I.D. is considered the second most important man after the king.
[. . .]
The training program, which in 2013 began directly arming the rebels under the code name Timber Sycamore, is run by the C.I.A. and several Arab intelligence services and aimed at building up forces opposing PresidentBashar al-Assad of Syria. The United States and Saudi Arabia are the biggest contributors, with the Saudis contributing both weapons and large sums of money, and with C.I.A. paramilitary operatives taking the lead in training the rebels to use Kalashnikovs, mortars, antitank guided missiles and other weapons.
The existence of the program is classified, as are all details about its budget. American officials say that the C.I.A. has trained thousands of rebels in the past three years, and that the fighters made substantial advances on the battlefield against Syrian government forces until Russian military forces — launched last year in support of Mr. Assad — compelled them to retreat.
The training program is based in Jordan because of the country’s proximity to the Syrian battlefields. From the beginning, the C.I.A. and the Arab intelligence agencies relied on Jordanian security services to transport the weapons, many bought in bulk in the Balkans and elsewhere around Eastern Europe.
The program is separate from one that the Pentagon set up to train rebels to combat Islamic State fighters, rather than the Syrian military. That program was shut down after it managed to train only a handful of Syrian rebels.
Jordanian and American officials described the weapons theft and subsequent investigation on the condition of anonymity because the Syrian rebel training is classified in the United States and is a government secret in Jordan.
[. . .]
Jordanian officials who described the operation said it had been run by a group of G.I.D. logistics officers with direct access to the weapons once they reached Jordan. The officers regularly siphoned truckloads of the weapons from the stocks, before delivering the rest of the weapons to designated drop-off points.
Then the officers sold the weapons at several large arms markets in Jordan. The main arms bazaars in Jordan are in Ma’an, in the southern part of the country; in Sahab, outside Amman; and in the Jordan Valley.Continue reading the main story
It is unclear whether the current head of the G.I.D., Gen. Faisal al-Shoubaki, had knowledge of the theft of the C.I.A. and Saudi weapons. But several Jordanian intelligence officials said senior officers inside the service had knowledge of the weapons scheme and provided cover for the lower-ranking officers.

[. . .]
Word that the weapons intended for the rebels were being bought and sold on the black market leaked into Jordan government circles last year, when arms dealers began bragging to their customers that they had large stocks of American- and Saudi-provided weapons.
Jordanian intelligence operatives monitoring the arms market — operatives not involved in the weapons-diversion scheme — began sending reports to headquarters about a proliferation of weapons in the market and of the boasts of the arms dealers.
After the Americans and Saudis complained about the theft, investigators at the G.I.D. arrested several dozen officers involved in the scheme, among them a lieutenant colonel running the operation. They were ultimately released from detention and fired from the service, but were allowed to keep their pensions and money they gained from the scheme, according to Jordanian officials.
[. . .]
In 2009, a Jordanian doctor — brought to the C.I.A. by a G.I.D. officer after the doctor said he had penetrated Al Qaeda’s leadership — turned out to be a double agent and blew himself up at a remote base in Afghanistan. Seven C.I.A. employees, as well as the G.I.D. officer, were killed in the attack.
Two recent heads of the service, also known as the Mukhabarat, have been sent to prison on charges including embezzlement, money laundering and bank fraud. One of them, Gen. Samih Battikhi, ran the G.I.D. from 1995 to 2000 and was convicted of being part of a scheme to obtain bank loans of around $600 million for fake government contracts and pocketing about $25 million. He was sentenced to eight years in prison, but the sentence was eventually reduced to four years that were served in his villa in the seaside town of Aqaba.
Gen. Mohammad al-Dahabi, who ran the service from 2005 to 2008, was later convicted of stealing millions of dollars that G.I.D. officers had seized from Iraqi citizens crossing into Jordan in the years after the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. His trial showed that he had also arranged for money to be smuggled in private cars from Iraq into Jordan and had been involved in sellingJordanian citizenship to Iraqi businessmen. He was sentenced to 13 years in prison and fined tens of millions of dollars.
[. . .]
By late 2013, the C.I.A. was working directly with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other nations to arm and train small groups of rebels and send them across the border into Syria.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/27/world/middleeast/cia-arms-for-syrian-rebels-supplied-black-market-officials-say.html?_r=0

C.I.A. Arms for Syrian Rebels Supplied Black Market, Officials Say
By MARK MAZZETTI and ALI YOUNES

JUNE 26, 2016

Missing 28 Pages From 9/11 Commission Report Should Be Revealed

McCarthy was the prosecutor of the Blind Sheik, who directed the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. This lengthy article makes the connections arguing for the release of the hidden 28 pages of the 9/11 Commission report. 

[From article]
national security is principally about keeping Americans safe, not winning court cases. Sure, winning in this instance meant justice was done and some terrorists were incarcerated. How safe, though, had we really kept Americans? For all the effort and expense, the number of jihadists neutralized was negligible compared to the overall threat. The attacks kept coming, as one might expect when one side detonates bombs and the other responds with subpoenas. As the years passed, the tally of casualties far outstripped that of convicted terrorists. When 9/11 finally happened, killing nearly 3,000 of our fellow Americans, al-Qaeda credited none other than the Blind Sheikh with issuing the fatwa — the sharia edict — that authorized the attack. We had imprisoned him, but we had not stopped him.
[. . .]

American counterterrorism, even seven years after 9/11 (and fully 15 years after the jihadists declared war by bombing the World Trade Center), had bored its head ever deeper in the sand. It consciously avoided the central truths driving the terrorist threat against the United States. The most significant of these is that violent jihadism is the inexorable result of the vibrance in Islam of sharia supremacism — a scripturally-rooted summons to Muslims to strive for conquest over infidels until Allah’s law (sharia) is established everywhere on earth.
[. . .]
The conquest for which it strives, moreover, is not necessarily to be achieved by violence. Sharia supremacism is, nevertheless, a mainstream interpretation of Islam. Inevitably, it leads some believers to carry out jihadist violence, and an even greater number of believers to support the jihadists’ objectives, if not their methods.
[. . .]

Since 1993, the bipartisan American ruling class, throughout administrations of both parties, has refused to acknowledge, much less grapple with, this central truth of the threat we face. It has insisted, against fact and reason, that Islam is a monolithic “religion of peace,” and therefore that there can be no causal connection between Islamic doctrine and terrorism committed by Muslims. It has fraudulently maintained that jihadist violence is not jihadist at all [. . .] Terrorist attacks must be airbrushed into “violent extremism,” shorn of any ideological component — as if the killing were wanton, not purposeful. The fact that the attacks are so ubiquitously committed by Muslims (who explicitly cite scriptural chapter and verse to justify themselves), is to be ignored — as if all religions and ideologies were equally prone to inspire mass-murder attacks if believed too fervently.
[. . .]
of Americans slaughtered on 9/11 by 19 jihadists, 15 of them Saudis. The government must disclose the 28 pages of the 2002 congressional report on the 9/11 attacks that it has shamefully withheld from the public for 14 years. Those pages outline Saudi complicity in the jihad.
[. . .]

The Saudis are the world’s chief propagator of sharia supremacism, sharia being the law of the Sunni kingdom. In Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism, a literalist interpretation of Islam rooted in scripture dating back 1,400 years, is the dominant belief system. For decades, the House of Saud has played a double game with the West: 1) feigning moderation while promoting and internally enforcing this repressive fundamentalism, which brutally discriminates against women, non-Muslims, and Muslim minorities; 2) posturing as a staunch counterterrorism ally while exporting their ideology
[. . .]
In Sarasota, Fla., Abdulazziz al-Hijji, a well-connected Saudi oil executive, abandoned his home with his wife, Arnoud, and their small children in August 2001, just weeks before the attacks. They fled to Saudi Arabia. The departure was obviously abrupt: The family left behind three cars, furniture, jewelry, food, etc.
[. . .]
A 2002 report pried from the FBI indicates that a member of the al-Hijji family attended Huffman Aviation, the same Venice, Fla., flight school as the 9/11 hijacker-pilots who attacked the Twin Towers, Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi. (A third hijacker, Ziad Jarrah, who piloted the plane that heroic passengers forced to crash in Pennsylvania, trained at a flight school a short distance away.) According to published reports, Escondito Circle security records indicate that cars connected to the hijackers were seen at the al-Hijji home.
[. . .]
Upon entering the United States, [Saudi hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Midhar] frequented the King Fahd mosque in Los Angeles, whose sharia supremacist imam, Fahad al-Thumairi, just happened to be an accredited diplomat at the nearby Saudi consulate.
[. . .]
Bayoumi is a native Saudi who worked for years in the Kingdom’s defense ministry before moving to the U.S. in 1994. The defense ministry continued to pay him a salary while he held a series of no-show jobs in the San Diego area. For over a year prior to 9/11, he also received an extra stipend of approximately $3,000 per month
[. . .]

Like Abdulazziz al-Hijji, Bayoumi suddenly left the United States to return to Saudi Arabia in the weeks before the 9/11 attacks. By then, Midhar and Hazmi had moved on to Virginia,
[. . .]
the Justice Department developed a passport-fraud case against him and an arrest warrant was issued. As I’ve outlined here, Awlaki was thus placed under arrest when he arrived at JFK International Airport in New York on October 10, 2002, on a flight from Riyadh. Remarkably, the Justice Department intervened to direct that he be un-arrested and allowed to enter freely . . . in the company of the Saudi government representative who was conveniently on hand to assist him. For years, our government implausibly claimed that the arrest warrant had been vacated because the case was weak. Subsequently, FBI and Justice Department officials fessed up to Congress that the government knew Awlaki was returning to the United States ahead of time, and that the warrant for his arrest had not been vacated when he arrived — the decision was mysteriously made to allow him to go free, in the custody of his Saudi handler.
[. . .]
In 1972, in cooperation with the Saudi government, the Muslim Brotherhood established the World Assembly of Muslim Youth in Riyadh. WAMY’s stated purpose was to “arm the Muslim youth with full confidence in the supremacy of the Islamic system over other systems.” It grew into the world’s largest Muslim youth organization, operating in over 60 countries. As I outlined in The Grand Jihad, WAMY is intolerant of non-Muslims, supportive of violent jihad, and boldly anti-Semitic. It has been banned in Pakistan, where it shared office space with the Benevolence International Fund, an al-Qaeda charitable front founded by Osama bin Laden’s brother-in-law, Mohammed Jamal Khalifa. WAMY has also been accused by the governments of India and the Philippines of abetting terrorism.
[. . .]

On the night before the 9/11 attacks, those two hijackers, joined by a third, Midhar, checked into the Marriott Residence Inn near Dulles Airport. That same day, Saleh Hussayen, a Saudi government official then touring the U.S. offices of WAMY and other Saudi concerns, left a different hotel in which he was staying and, for reasons that have never been explained, checked into the very same Residence Inn. Coincidence? Well, after the three hijackers attacked the Pentagon, the FBI tried to interview Hussayen. But, as an FBI agent later testified, Hussayen “feigned a seizure, prompting the agents to take him to a hospital, where the attending physicians found nothing wrong with him.” Though the agent wanted Hussayen to be barred from fleeing the U.S. until she could conduct the interview, higher-ups rebuffed her recommendation. Hussayen was allowed to return to Saudi Arabia.
[. . .]
Abdullah Awad bin Laden and his brother Omar, who shared a Falls Church home, were among several prominent Saudis — including several other bin Laden family members — whom our government permitted to be whisked out of the United States in the hectic days immediately following 9/11. At the time they scurried out, before anything resembling a competent investigation of potential terror ties could have been carried out, the skies were still closed to American travelers.
[. . .]
Washington’s bipartisan insistence that the Saudi regime is a vital counterterrorism ally of the United States is a delusional byproduct of its willful blindness to sharia supremacism — the ideological driver of violent jihadism and the oil-rich kingdom’s most consequential export. The point of the post-9/11 investigations was to hold every culpable actor and negligent government agency accountable. No American citizen or government official, not even the sitting president, was spared. It is time for Washington to stop running interference for the Saudis while the Saudis run interference for the jihadists. At long last, let’s see the 28 pages.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/434144/9-11-report-28-pages-saudi-arabia-terrorism-connections-should-be-released

Willful Blindness and Our Saudi ‘Friends’
by ANDREW C. MCCARTHY

April 16, 2016 4:00 AM 

@ANDREWCMCCARTHY

Saudi Arabia Manipulated Oil Markets, Outsmarted Itself

[From article]
The economic devastation you see all around, as markets collapse, is due in no small part to the KSA's manipulations – manipulations that have throttled progress for decades.
However, the Saudis have made a major blunder this time. Technology is still making fracking cheaper. So a considerable number of frackers are waiting out the storm. Once the Saudis raise prices, American exploration will be back online quickly. The KSA is fighting a losing battle.
Worse yet, any increase in prices will also help Iran's budget. It seems the KSA is stuck at the bottom of the price graph, damned no matter what its monarch does.
In five years, the KSA's foreign reserves are expected to be emptied out. Already, the KSA is dropping internal subsidies on electricity and domestic gasoline. The local people are upset. Upset Muslims means violent revolution.



For over forty years, this blight of a tribe has caused recessions, caused depressions, and damaged the planet's economy. They got wealthy by re-impoverishing an emerging Third World, starting with the artificially created 1973 oil crisis. They have used their oil wealth to sponsor terrorism (as has Iran). Rather than investing wisely in industry to pick up market slack to become a modern diversified economy, they have invested instead in subsidizing mullahs, arming Salafist extremists in Syria, and exporting Islam around the world.
Now they have no options. Any increase in prices will restart American, European, and Chinese frackers. Failure to increase prices will bankrupt them. As a further blessing, we Americans will no longer have to hear the caterwauling idiocies of environmentalist Chicken Littles screaming about "peak oil."



What the USA can do is protect its fracking industry by severely taxing any oil imports under $50 a barrel. This may upset some free marketers, but the price of oil is rigged. We should rig it in our favor, and insulate ourselves from Saudi manipulations.
Good riddance to the KSA – a corrupt, vicious regime! May their next chief export be bottled camel urine. I wish America had never gotten involved with them.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/01/the_end_of_saudi_arabia.html

January 20, 2016
The End of Saudi Arabia?
By Mike Konrad

Evaluating Middle East Conflicts, And Their Effects on US Interests

[rom article]
Like every regime in the Middle East, the Saudis look out for their own national interests first. And their goals here are to first force us to choose between them and Iran, and then to conscript U.S. power on their side in the coming wars of the Middle East.
[. . .]
The Turks, too, look out for number one. The Turkish shoot-down of that Russian fighter-bomber, which may have intruded into its airspace for 17 seconds, was both a case in point and a dangerous and provocative act.
Had Vladimir Putin chosen to respond militarily against Turkey, a NATO ally, his justified retaliation could have produced demands from Ankara for the United States to come to its defense against Russia.
[. . .]
Do U.S.-Turkish interests really coincide today?
While Turkey’s half-million-man army could easily seal the Syrian border and keep ISIS fighters from entering or leaving, it has failed to do so. Instead, Turkey is using its army to crush the Kurdish PKK and threaten the Syrian Kurds who are helping us battle ISIS.
[. . .]
“We have no permanent allies … no permanent enemies … only permanent interests” is a loose translation of the dictum of the 19th century British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston.
[. . .]
no nation should be able drag us into a war not of our own choosing.
In cases where we share a common enemy, we should follow the wise counsel of the Founding Fathers and entrust our security, if need be, to “temporary,” but not “permanent” or “entangling alliances.”

http://buchanan.org/blog/will-mideast-allies-drag-us-into-war-124529

Will Mideast Allies Drag Us Into War?
Tuesday - January 5, 2016 at 12:48 am
By Patrick J. Buchanan

Contrary To Misguided Journalists, Religious and Political Leaders, Islam is Not a Religion As Christianity Is

[From article]
“I worry greatly that the rhetoric coming from the Republicans, particularly Donald Trump, is sending a message to Muslims here … and … around the world, that there is a ‘clash of civilizations.'”
So said Hillary Clinton in Saturday night’s New Hampshire debate.
Yet, that phrase was not popularized by Donald Trump, but by Harvard’s famed Samuel Huntington. His “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order” has been described by Zbigniew Brzezinski as providing “quintessential insights necessary for a broad understanding of world affairs in our time.”
That Clinton is unaware of the thesis, or dismisses it, does not speak well of the depth of her understanding of our world.
[. . .]



Did the worst attack on the United States since Pearl Harbor, 9/11, have nothing to do with the Islamic faith?
Did Fort Hood and the San Bernardino massacres, the London subway bombings and the killings at Charlie Hebdo, as well as the slaughter at the Bataclan in Paris, have nothing to do with Islam?
Does the lengthening list of atrocities by terrorist cells of ISIS, Boko Haram, al-Qaida, al-Shabaab and the Nusra Front have nothing to do with Islam? Is it really illiberal to inquire “into the religious opinions” of those who perpetrate these atrocities? Or is it suicidal not to?
There has arisen a legitimate question as to whether Islamism can coexist peacefully with, or within, a post-Christian secular West.
[. . .]
As of 1960, the Great Wave of immigration into the United States from Southern and Eastern Europe had been halted for 35 years.
And the children of these millions had been largely assimilated and Americanized.
Yet, 50 years after the Turkish gastarbeiters were brought in the millions into Germany, and Algerians and other North Africans were brought into France, no such wholesale assimilation had taken place.
Why not? Why are there still large, indigestible communities in France where French citizens do not venture and French police are ever on alert?
[. . .]



Iran holds presidential elections every four years, but is a Shiite theocracy where the Ayatollah is a virtual dictator. Saudi Arabia is a Sunni kingdom and home to Wahhabism, a Sunni form of puritanism.
Those ruling regimes are rooted in Islam.
[. . .]
Where Islam is the ruling faith, the Quran is secular law.
[. . .]
Historically, Christianity came to dominate the Roman Empire through preaching, teaching, example and martyrdom. Islam used the sword to conquer the Middle and Near East, North Africa and Spain in a single century, until stopped at Poitiers by Charles Martel.
And this is today’s crucial distinction: Islam is not simply a religion of 1.6 billion people, it is also a political ideology for ruling nations and, one day, the world.

http://buchanan.org/blog/islam-and-the-west-an-irreconcilable-conflict-124463

Islam and the West: An Irreconcilable Conflict?
Monday - December 21, 2015 at 10:11 pm
By Patrick J. Buchanan

Islamic State Issues Order To Kill Disabled Babies

Mosul Eye/Facebook

[From article]

According to the Iraqi activist blog Mosul Eye, sharia judges have ruled that ISIS followers are authorized to kill infants with Down Syndrome or congenital deformities. Already since the religious decree (fatwa) was issued, militants have killed at least 38 children between one week and three months old by lethal injection or suffocation.
In a post on the Mosul Eye Facebook page, the group claims that any child with a disability is now at risk of being killed, and released a brief video showing disabled children. The killings reportedly took place in ISIS strongholds in Syria and Mosul, the northern Iraqi city seized by ISIS in June 2014.

http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/12/14/islamic-state-issues-fatwa-children-syndrome-murders-38-disabled-infants/

Islamic State Issues Fatwa Against Children with Down Syndrome, Murders 38 Disabled Infants
by THOMAS D. WILLIAMS, PH.D.

14 Dec 2015

* * *




[From article]
ISIS have issued a fatwa which orders children with Down's syndrome and other disabilities to be killed in a chilling echo to the workings of the Nazis, it is claimed.
Sharia judges have apparently ruled that ISIS followers are authorised to 'kill newborn babies with Down's Syndrome or congenital deformities and disabled children' in their latest sickening act.
More than 38 children born with deformities and Down's syndrome, aged between one week and three months, have already been killed by lethal injection or suffocation, according to Iraqi activist group Mosul Eye.
The organisation, which released the a video report highlighting the depraved acts, said the killings took place in ISIS strongholds in Syria and Mosul, northern Iraq.[. . .]
Mosul Eye said it monitored the deaths of children born with Down's syndrome and found they are mostly those of foreign fighters who married Iraqi, Syrian and Asian women.
The group said during its investigation it discovered that the fatwa was issued by one of Islamic State's Sharia judges, a Saudi judge named Abu Said Aljazrawi.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3358840/How-depraved-ISIS-Group-s-Sharia-judges-order-children-s-syndrome-disabilities-killed-chilling-echo-Nazis.html

How much more depraved can ISIS get? Group's Sharia judges order children with Down's syndrome and other disabilities to be killed in chilling echo of the Nazis
ISIS has reportedly issued fatwa ordering disabled children be killed
Iraqi activist group claims more than 38 disabled children already killed
Nazis murdered disabled because they were a 'burden'
See our full news coverage on ISIS at www.dailymail.co.uk/isis
By EMMA GLANFIELD FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 01:42 EST, 14 December 2015 | UPDATED: 06:12 EST, 14 December 2015

ISIS Terrorists Kill Five in Saudi Arabia

A meeting in hussainiya in the coastal town of Qatif, 400kms east of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Friday. A gunman opened fire at the meeting, state TV said. 
Photo - AFP

[From article]
"A person who opened fire on a husseiniya was killed, and the attacker was in his twenties," reported government-run channel, Al Ekhbariya TV.
A resident reached by telephone told Reuters that the assailant approached the meeting hall in the eastern city of Saihat in a taxi but was stopped at a checkpoint manned by volunteers protecting the site.
Police arrived and a gunbattle broke out, which the resident said injured several people and left the shooter dead.
IS, an ultra-violent group based in Iraq and Syria, claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement posted online.
[. . .]
IS has launched a series of deadly attacks inside the kingdom in recent months, aiming to stir sectarian confrontation on the Arabian peninsula and bring about the overthrow of Gulf countries' ruling dynasties.
A suicide bomber killed at least 15 people in an attack on a mosque used by members of a local security force in southwest Saudi Arabia in August and two separate suicide bombings on mosques in May killed 25 worshippers.
Groups of volunteer security guards have been formed around sites of the kingdom.
http://www.timesofoman.com/article/69715/World/GCC/Gunman-opens-fire-at-meeting-kills-five-in-Saudi-Arabia-attack-claimed-by-IS-militant-group

Gunman kills five in Saudi Arabia attack claimed by IS militant group
October 17, 2015 | 3:29 PM
by Reuters

Accepting Migrants For Some, Not For Others

Not all migrants are refugees. Some seek better economic opportunities. Some are recruiters for terror organizations. Were the effects of these two groups discussed? You didn't say. Not all are from Syria. Was question raised why Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE refuse to accept any of these migrants? Saudi Arabia said it was because they fear bringing terrorists into their country. Why is this not an issue for EU nations and the United States?

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2015/9/24/ces-future-europe-summit/

Amid Crises, Experts Gather To Discuss E.U.’s Future
By ALEC J. GRIGORIAN and CLAIRE E. PARKER, CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Harvard Crimson
September 24, 2015

Why Do Muslims Migrate To The U.S. Instead of Wealthy Muslim Dominant Nations?

[From article]
The stories and photographs of migrants attempting to enter Europe is a human tragedy, heartbreaking as people die trying to cross the Mediterranean. On August 27, 2015, over 50 migrants were found dead inside an abandoned truck, a Hungarian registered vehicle, abandoned on a highway in Austria, near the Hungarian border. In April, more than 400 died in a shipwreck in the Mediterranean. In August, several hundred people were on board a boat that sank off the coast of Libya. So far, more than 2,300 have died while crossing the sea.
[. . .]
NATO is supposed to be working on the “root causes” of the large numbers seeking migration by working with partners in the Middle East and North Africa to help them stabilize their own countries. It is trying to help those countries take more responsibility for their own security. Thus, Jordan is being assisted in defense capacities, in training, and advising. Western countries are trying to assist in achieving a cease-fire and reaching a peaceful negotiated solution for the conflict in Libya.
[Conflict in Libya? I thought after Khadaffi it was all peace, prosperity and good will. What conflict?]
[. . .]
One might reasonably expect the migrants, escaping their suffering from war, oppression and poverty, to be offered shelter in the wealthier countries such as Saudi Arabia, the Gulf countries, the United Arab Emirates including Qatar and Dubai.
The refusal of these countries to aid fellow Muslims is inexcusable.
[. . .]
Dubai is economically successful with its heavy investments in real estate, airlines, ports, the drug trade, and human trafficking. It displays its wealth by its rain forest in the desert, large shopping malls, and the world’s tallest twin towers. Dubai is already preparing for the World Expo to be held there in 2020.
Qatar, with the highest per capita income in the world, has become influential politically and economically, punching, as the British say, above its weight. Politically, it has been involved in assisting Libyan rebels, those opposing the Assad regime in Syria, and aiding the ruling party in Tunisia. It owns, in whole or in part, the Al Jazeera Media Network, property in London including the Shard, Canary Wharf, Barclays Bank, Harrods Store, No. 1 Hyde Park, the world’s most expensive block of apartments, British horse racing, Sainsbury’s Stores, and the London Stock Exchange, and the football club Paris St. Germain in France. Qatar is spending lavishly on preparing to host the football FIFA World Cup competition in 2022.
[. . .]
Now is the time for the world community to discuss, the problem and to ask, in the words of Socrates, do you know by what means the wealthy Arab nations might be persuaded to change their behavior and do the right thing

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/08/a_solution_to_the_migration_crisis_.html

September 2, 2015
A Solution to the Migration Crisis
By Michael Curtis

Changing Middle East Alliances

[From article]
Bibi Netanyahu must know how Chiang Kai-shek felt as he watched his old friend Nixon toasting Mao in Peking.
The Iran nuclear deal is not on the same geostrategic level. Yet both moves, seen as betrayals by old U.S. allies, were born of a cold assessment in Washington of a need to shift policy to reflect new threats and new opportunities.
[. . .]
But as U.S. and Iranian interests converged, those of the U.S. and its old allies — Saudi Arabia, Israel and Turkey — were diverging.
[. . .]
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown in the Middle East today.
The Israelis, too, see Iran as their great enemy and indispensable pillar of Hezbollah. For Bibi, any U.S.-Iran rapprochement is a diplomatic disaster.
[. . .]
Clearly the United States and Iran have overlapping interests.
Neither wants all-out war with the other.
[. . .]
For Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Israel all want the Assad regime brought down to break up Iran’s Shiite Crescent and inflict a strategic defeat on Tehran. But the United States believes the fall of Assad means the rise of ISIS and al-Qaida, a massacre of Christians, and the coming to power of a Sunni terrorist state implacably hostile to us.
Look for the Saudis and Israelis, their agents and lobbies, their think tanks and op-ed writers, to begin beating the drums for the United States to bring down Assad,
[. . .]
Any U.S.-Iran rapprochement would be dead, and we will have been sucked into a war to achieve the strategic goals of allies that are in conflict with the national interests of the United States. And our interests come first.

http://buchanan.org/blog/a-mideast-game-of-thrones-16275

A Mideast Game of Thrones
Tuesday - July 21, 2015 at 12:09 am
By Patrick J. Buchanan

Sunni Terror Group ISIS Grows

[From article]
Assad’s situation seems more imperiled than at any time in this four-year civil-sectarian war that has cost the lives of some 220,000 soldiers, rebels and civilians, and made refugees of millions more.
[. . .]
Half of Syria has been lost to ISIS, the Nusra front, and other jihadist and rebel groups. All of Syria’s border crossings with Iraq have been lost to ISIS. All of the border crossing with Turkey, excluding Kobani, have been lost to ISIS or rebels linked to al-Qaida. Syria’s border with Lebanon is becoming a war zone.
Some 100 Russian military advisers are said to have pulled out of Syria, suggesting Vladimir Putin may be reconsidering Russia’s historic investment.
[. . .]
Israel’s deputy chief of staff, Gen. Yair Golan, who headed the Northern Command, was quoted this week, “The Syrian Army has, for all intents and purposes, ceased to exist.”
[. . .]
Arrayed against him are not only the Nusra Front and ISIS, which are attracting recruits from abroad, but also Turks, Saudis and Gulf Arabs, who have been clandestinely aiding Sunni rebels we regard as terrorists.
[. . .]
Now consider what [Gen. David Petraeus] is saying: America should send her best and bravest back into Iraq to defeat ISIS, while Turkey, the Saudis, the Gulf Arabs and Israel are helping bring about the defeat of a Syrian army that has been battling ISIS for years.
[. . .]
It is time we stopped letting other nations pick the enemies for us to fight. And as our “friends” are looking out for themselves first, last, and always, let us Americans begin to do the same.

http://buchanan.org/blog/is-isis-coming-to-damascus-16108

Is ISIS Coming to Damascus?
Friday - June 5, 2015 at 12:16 am
By Patrick J. Buchanan

Executioners Needed in Saudi Arabia, Bring Your Own Sword

A Saudi Arabian executioner shows off his sword. Executioners are also required to perform amputations on those convicted of lesser offences. 

Photograph: Magazine/Rex_Shutterstock

Still wondering why so many people want to immigrate to the US and to European countries. Even while expressing hatred toward Americans, and America. Why don't they want to go to Saudi Arabia or to El Salvador?
[From article]
The Islamic kingdom is in the top five countries in the world for putting people to death, rights groups say. It ranked third in 2014, after China and Iran, and ahead of Iraq and the United States, according to Amnesty International figures.
A man beheaded on Sunday was the 85th person this year whose execution was recorded by the official Saudi Press Agency, compared to 88 in the whole of 2014, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW). Amnesty said there were at least 90 executions last year.
Most were executed for murder, but 38 had committed drugs offences,

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/18/saudi-arabia-advertises-eight-new-executioners-beheadings-soar

Saudi Arabia advertises for eight new executioners as beheading rate soars
Jobs classified as ‘religious functionaries’ at lower end of civil service scale
85 reported executed so far this year, rivalling total for whole of 2014
Reuters in Riyadh
Monday 18 May 2015 12.00 EDT

Saudi Arabia King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud Dies At About 90

King Abdullah With George Bush

[From article]
The absolute ruler of one of the most conservative societies on Earth, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia had to tread a narrow line between maintaining relationships with the West and appeasing opinion at home.
Raised with traditional Islamic views he was, nevertheless, seen as something of a reformer and became a vocal advocate of peace in the Middle East.
Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud is believed to have been born in August 1924 in Riyadh, although there is some dispute about his actual birth date.
He was the 13th of the 37 sons of King Abdul Aziz Al-Saud who created the modern state of Saudi Arabia, and gave his family name to the new country.
[. . .]
His mother, Fahda, the eighth of his father's 16 wives, was of Bedouin descent and the young Abdullah spent long periods of his childhood living traditionally in the desert.
In a strict household the young prince was brought up to follow his father's traditional views and was taught religion, literature and science by Islamic scholars at the court.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-10214554

22 January 2015 Last updated at 20:18 ET
Obituary: King Abdullah

BBC

Saudi Arabia Born US Citizen By Marriage Charged With Espionage

Photo by: Steve Earley
Mostafa Ahmed Awwad, 35, of Yorktown, Va., a civilian with the U.S. Navy, leaves the federal courthouse in Norfolk, Va. on Friday, Dec. 5, 2014 after he was arrested on charges he tried to steal schematics for the under construction Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier for Egypt. Prosecutors said Awwad provided computer drawings downloaded from the Navy to an undercover FBI agent posing as an Egyptian intelligence officer in October. 
AP Photo/The Virginian-Pilot, Steve Earley


[From article]
Saudi-born Mostafa Ahmed Awwad, 35, of Yorktown, Va., was arrested Friday on an FBI affidavit claiming he planned to use a dead-drop location along a secluded hiking trail to hand off secret information about the Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier, set to be delivered to the Navy in 2016, Fox News reported Saturday.
During a hotel meeting on Oct. 9, Mr. Awwad gave the undercover agent, posing as an Egyptian spy named “Yousef,” secret drawings of the vessel and “discussed where to strike the vessel with a missile in order sink it,” the affidavit says.
He also asked for $1,500 to buy a tiny camera to photograph restricted material around the shipyard.
[. . .]
According to the affidavit, Mr. Awwad was born in Saudi Arabia, married a U.S. citizen in Cairo in 2007 and took steps to become a U.S citizen.
He was hired to work at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard’s nuclear engineering and planning department in February and received security clearance in August.
[. . .] At the end of the meeting Mr. Awwad agreed to provide the undercover agent with passport photos at the dead-drop location to be used to create a fake Egyptian passport so he could travel to Egypt without alerting U.S. government officials.
On Oct. 23 Mr. Awwad traveled to the dead drop location on the hiking trail where he retrieved $3,000 from a hole in the ground and left the photos and a one-tarabyte external hard drive, which the FBI later collected.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/dec/6/fbi-charges-saudi-born-naval-engineer-over-plans-s/

FBI charges Saudi-born naval engineer over plans to sink aircraft carrier
By Kellan Howell
The Washington Times
Saturday, December 6, 2014

Saudi Arabia Imposes Death Sentence By Crucifixion

[From article]

Nimr Baqer al-Nimr, a reformist cleric, has repeatedly called for an end to corruption and discrimination against minorities. He has a wide following, particularly among young people in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, home to most of the country’s minority Shiites, who are considered heretics by the Sunni-ruled government.
After being imprisoned for nearly two years, al-Nimr appeared in Riyadh’s Specialized Criminal Court Wednesday with his lawyer and two brothers. Charged with terrorism offences and “breaking allegiance to the king,” the judge upheld the country’s harshest sentence — “crucifixion” — where the decapitated body is publicly displayed. His brothers were reportedly detained after the sentencing.

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2014/10/15/saudi_court_sentences_highprofile_shiite_cleric_to_death.html

Saudi Arabia sentences reformist Shiite cleric to ‘crucifixion’
Saudi court sentences iconic Shiite cleric Nimr Baqer Al-Nimr to death, sparking fears of sectarian unrest in region.
By: Shenaz Kermalli

Special to the Star

Published on Wed Oct 15 2014

Saudi Police Arrest Entire Christian Congregation

[From article]
Islamist police in Saudi Arabia have stormed a Christian prayer meeting and arrested its entire congregation, including women and children, and confiscated their bibles, it has been reported.
The raid was the latest incident of a swingeing crackdown on religious minorities in Saudi Arabia by the country's hard-line Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.
The 28 Christians were said to be worshipping at the home of an Indian national in the eastern city of Khafji, when the police entered the building and took them into custody. They have not been seen or heard from since, raising concerns among human rights groups as to their whereabouts.
[. . .]
A spokesperson for the Saudi government claimed to have no knowledge of the arrests, according to Fox News.
But the English-language newspaper, The Saudi Gazette, as well as several Saudi Arabic-language news outlets, have reported on the arrests.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2756134/Dozens-Christians-including-women-children-arrested-Saudi-Arabia-tip-state-s-Islamist-police-force.html

Dozens of Christians 'including women and children' are arrested in Saudi Arabia after tip-off to state's Islamist police force
28 people were arrested at home of Indian man in the eastern city of Khafji
Reports claim women and children were among the congregation
Human rights activists have appealed to the U.S. to help secure release
In Saudi Arabia it is against the law for Muslims to abandon their faith
By MATTHEW BLAKE FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 03:57 EST, 15 September 2014 | UPDATED: 06:25 EST, 15 September 2014

Saudi King Warns Of Terror Attacks

Previously Russia warned the FBI about the Tsarnaev brothers and their links to terrorists. The FBI investigated and found no threat. Will those FBI geniuses do a similar investigation this time? And while they investigate or not terrorist threats to the nation, the FBI stands by while local police, Harvard University campus police and superintendents, crime families take turns with Communists harassing a 70-year-old white man. They all say, "He's crazy." which under their standards means they can harass disabled persons without worry of accountability. The same man was drugged for 80 consecutive days by government psychiatrists using hallucinogens contrary to law. He was not under the care of any physician, and there was no court order to allow this criminal abuse, poisoning under state statutes. After scaring him the FBI used him as a decoy, to fight organized crime for 15 years and did not pay him one cent. They did coordinate a subsequent 25-year retaliation campaign by the same crime families who participate (as in ongoing) 44 years later. What expensive, misguided priorities, and waste of taxpayer money.

[From article]
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has warned that the West will be the next target of the jihadists sweeping through Syria and Iraq, unless there is "rapid" action.
"If we ignore them, I am sure they will reach Europe in a month and America in another month,"

http://news.yahoo.com/saudi-king-warns-west-jihadists-next-target-093701543.html

'Saudi king warns West will be jihadists' next target

August 30, 2014 5:37 AM

Brief History of Muslim Religious Divisions

[From article]
The dramatic arrival of Da'ish (ISIS) on the stage of Iraq has shocked many in the West. Many have been perplexed -- and horrified -- by its violence and its evident magnetism for Sunni youth. But more than this, they find Saudi Arabia's ambivalence in the face of this manifestation both troubling and inexplicable,
[. . .]
Many Saudis are deeply disturbed by the radical doctrines of Da'ish (ISIS) -- and are beginning to question some aspects of Saudi Arabia's direction and discourse.
[. . .]

The American author and journalist, Steven Coll, has written how this austere and censorious disciple of the 14th century scholar Ibn Taymiyyah, Abd al-Wahhab, despised "the decorous, arty, tobacco smoking, hashish imbibing, drum pounding Egyptian and Ottoman nobility who travelled across Arabia to pray at Mecca."
In Abd al-Wahhab's view, these were not Muslims; they were imposters masquerading as Muslims. Nor, indeed, did he find the behavior of local Bedouin Arabs much better.



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alastair-crooke/isis-wahhabism-saudi-arabia_b_5717157.html

Alastair Crooke
Fmr. MI-6 agent; Author, 'Resistance: The Essence of Islamic Revolution'
You Can't Understand ISIS If You Don't Know the History of Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia
Posted: 08/27/2014 11:56 am EDT Updated: 08/28/2014 3:59 pm EDT

White House Alienates Israel and Arabs Alike; Palestinians Remain Dependent

[From article]
In Cairo, General Sisi regards Obama as a Muslim Brotherhood sympathizer; in Riyadh, King Abdullah regards him as the enabler of the Shia Persian nuclear program; and in Amman, the other King Abdullah regards him as the feckless bungler who's left the Jordanians with the world's wealthiest terrorist group on their eastern border.
[. . .]
So we are in a bizarre situation where the Arab leaders are more hostile to Hamas than Washington is.
I'm often asked why I don't write more about the Palestinian situation, and the reason I don't is because the central fact of the dispute - the Palestinians' Jew hatred - never changes.
[. . .]
Everywhere else, from Nigeria to Nauru, at some point the natives say to the paternalist Europeans, "Thanks very much, but we'll take it from here." But the Palestinians? Can you think of any other "people" who'd be content to live as UN "refugees" for four generations? They're the only "people" with their own dedicated UN agency,
[. . .]
But the rights every other sovereign state takes for granted are denied to Israel. "The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews," wrote America's great longshoreman philosopher Eric Hoffer after the 1967 war. "Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people and there is no refugee problem ... But everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab ... Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious it must sue for peace. Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world."
[. . .]
On the Continent, losing wars comes with a territorial price: The Germans aren't going to be back in Danzig any time soon. But, in the Middle East, no matter how often the Arabs attack Israel and lose, their claims to their lost territory manage to be both inviolable but endlessly transferable.
And so land won in battle from Jordan and Egypt somehow has to be ceded to Fatah and Hamas.
[. . .]
The nominal control of the land has passed from Jordan and Egypt to Israel to Arafat to Abbas to Hamas, but the UNRWA is forever, runnning its Mister Magoo ground operation and, during the periodic flare-ups, issuing its usual befuddled statements professing complete shock at discovering that Hamas is operating rocket launchers from the local kindergarten.

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0714/steyn073014.php3#.U93Q490--yN

Jewish World Review

July 30, 2014 / 3 Menachem-Av, 5774
The Man Who Never Calls
By Mark Steyn

Foreign Students, Graduates, Arrested at Greater Boston Reservoir

Michelle McPhee reported on May 15, 2013, WRKO radio, Howie Carr Show, that the seven arrested had no valid IDs, and were driving rented cars. State police said they do not release the names of persons issued summonses, which is what they did. Huh? How different from what local police did to me. After I complained about police harassment they arrested me and held me in a mental hospital for 78 days for a competency evaluation. Later Harvard University campus police stalked me for three years, arrested me twice and lied about why. Curious how respectfully foreigners get treated by police even those without licenses when they are stopped driving illegally. But citizens like myself get the full force of any and all laws in order to punish me for speaking out about government abuses. This is how the nation's most prominent university led by The President and Fellows of Harvard College, and its host city which claims to be concerned with the most vulnerable persons in the city treat victims of government criminal abuses. How charming the way they show their intolerance in the name of tolerance. How they indicate their support for diversity by censoring diverse speech they dislike. 

[From article]
State police alerted the Springfield office of the FBI, which is investigating the five men and two women, who are from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Singapore.
[. . .]
the individuals live in Amherst, Cambridge, Sunderland, Northampton and New York City.

http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2013/05/authorities_quabbin_reservoir_tests_normal_after_trespassing

Authorities: Quabbin reservoir tests normal after trespassing arrests
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
By: Laurel J. Sweet
Boston Herald