The de facto US-Al Qaeda partnership

Reobert Parry outlines the not-so-secret partnership -- Saudi Arabia, Israel and Al Qaeda -- which is visible to everyone with the eyes to see it, and thus remains invisible to pretty much everyone in our mainstream media.

Zacarias Moussaoui did the world a favor by reminding the world of Saudi participation in 9/11...

And, like the Saudis, the Israelis have sided with the Sunni militants in Syria because the Israelis share the Saudi view that Iran and the so-called “Shiite crescent” – reaching from Tehran and Baghdad to Damascus and Beirut – is the greatest threat to their interests in the Middle East.

That shared concern has pushed Israel and Saudi Arabia into a de facto alliance, though the collaboration between Jerusalem and Riyadh has been mostly kept out of the public eye. Still, it has occasionally peeked out from under the covers as the two governments deploy their complementary assets – Saudi oil and money and Israeli political and media clout – in areas where they have mutual interests.

In recent years, these historic enemies have cooperated in their joint disdain for the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt (which was overthrown in 2013), in seeking the ouster of the Assad regime in Syria, and in pressing for a more hostile U.S. posture toward Iran.

Israel and Saudi Arabia also have collaborated in efforts to put the squeeze on Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, who is deemed a key supporter of both Iran and Syria. The Saudis have used their power over oil production to drive down prices and hurt Russia’s economy, while U.S. neoconservatives – who share Israel’s geopolitical world view – were at the forefront of the coup that ousted Ukraine’s pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014.

The behind-the-scenes Israeli-Saudi alliance has put the two governments – uncomfortably at times – on the side of Sunni jihadists battling Shiite influence in Syria, Lebanon and even Iraq. On Jan. 18, 2015, for instance, Israel attacked Lebanese-Iranian advisers assisting Assad’s government in Syria, killing several members of Hezbollah and an Iranian general. These military advisors were engaged in operations against al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front.

Meanwhile, Israel has refrained from attacking Nusra Front militants who have seized Syrian territory near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. One source familiar with U.S. intelligence information on Syria told me that Israel has a “non-aggression pact” with these Nusra forces.

The US made an historic error when we decided to take sides in the centuries-old Sunni-Shiite conflict -- a conflict which has nothing to do with our culture, and which is well outside of our concerns.

Now, with Moussaoui’s deposition identifying senior Saudi officials as patrons of al-Qaeda, another veil seems to have dropped.

Complicating matters further, Moussaoui also claimed that he passed letters between Osama bin Laden and then Crown Prince Salman, who recently became king upon the death of his brother King Abdullah.

But Moussaoui’s disclosure perhaps cast the most unflattering light on Bandar, the erstwhile confidant of the Bush Family who — if Moussaoui is right — may have been playing a sinister double game.

Frankly, I'm more inclined to believe a creep like Moussaoui than to believe our conventional pundit class. We live in cynical times.

You want more on Salman? Here it is:

Likewise, you will search long and hard to find substantive discussion of the uncomfortable questions surrounding King Abdullah’s successor, his half-brother Salman. A rare exception, an editorial in Investor’s Business Daily, warned that ‘President Obama should think before bowing to Saudi Arabia’s new king’ because:

‘King Salman has a history of funding al-Qaida, and his son has been accused of knowing in advance about the 9/11 attacks.'

While the corporate news media continued to look away, an in-depth article in Foreign Policy by David Andrew Weinberg examined ‘Salman’s record of bolstering and embracing extremists’, noting that:

‘Salman was the [Saudi] regime’s lead fundraiser for mujahideen, or Islamic holy warriors, in Afghanistan in the 1980s, as well as for Bosnian Muslims during the Balkan struggles of the 1990s. In essence, he served as Saudi Arabia’s financial point man for bolstering fundamentalist proxies in war zones abroad.’

Weinberg continued:

‘Salman also helped recruit fighters for Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, an Afghan Salafist fighter who served as a mentor to both Osama bin Laden and 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.’

But Salman’s troubling record is ‘now getting downplayed for political convenience’, said Weinberg, and corporate journalists seem ignorant of the facts, or simply know not to go there.

We have formulated a quiet partnership with the very forces that attacked us on 9/11. Meanwhile, our home-grown legions of anti-Islam fanatics refuse to understand that Muslims are the ones dying in the fight against Al Qaeda and its offshoots, ISIS and Nusra. Millions of foolish, ill-informed and seemingly ineducable Americans cannot be made to understand that our policy of blind support for the Saudis means that we are supporting the very people who gave us ISIS.

And one of those foolish, ill-informed and seemingly ineducable Americans happens to be the governor of Louisiana...

Silly Bobby: The Republicans have flown into high dudgeon because Obama said some very cliched and inarguable things about the flawed record of Christianity. Bobby Jindal is leading the fray...

“It was nice of the President to give us a history lesson at the Prayer breakfast,” Jindal said. “Today, however, the issue right in front of his nose, in the here and now, is the terrorism of Radical Islam, the assassination of journalists, the beheading and burning alive of captives. We will be happy to keep an eye out for runaway Christians, but it would be nice if he would face the reality of the situation today. The Medieval Christian threat is under control, Mr. President. Please deal with the Radical Islamic threat today.”

I would argue that a Medieval form of Christianity still holds sway in the American south, and still poses an enormous threat.

We all know that if Jindal (or any other Republican not named Ron Paul) were in the White House, the alliance with the Saudis -- and with Salman, whose history is sketched above -- would be even stronger than it is today. As noted above, the Saudis are the main force backing the guys responsible for those beheadings which have shocked the world.

So who is Jindal trying to kid? No matter who wins the presidency in 2016, the de factor US-Al Qaeda partnership will continue, as will the secret policy of using ISIS against Assad.