Friday, June 09, 2006

Aid for Saudi Arabia?

It’s small but it’s a start:

The House voted, 312-97, to strip Saudi Arabia of $420,000 that lawmakers had included in the bill, most of it to train Saudi officials in techniques for finding terrorists and detecting terrorist attacks.

"American taxpayer dollars should not be supporting Saudi hate and terror," said Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., who pushed to strip the funds. "Why should we provide aid to a country that has systematically exported terrorism?

Weiner is a liberal Democrat from Brooklyn, New York who is staunchly pro-Israel.

Kolbe said the vote would only set back efforts to help the Saudi Arabian government root out terrorists in that nation.

"For heaven sakes, is this not something we want to do?" he said. "This is about the war on terror."

Jim Kolbe is a Republican from Tucson, Arizona, who will be retiring this year. (Quotes from the Associate Press article by Mary Dalrymple.)

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ignorace is truly a virus. Why is anybody making a big deal about 420,000? It's nowhere near the money spent by the US to fund the Taliban and ultimately UBL in Afghanistant against the Soviets. Saudi has had the most successful anti-terror campaign than anybody in the world. Thousands of terrorists have been either killed/captured inside the Kingdom.

Jason Pappas said...

1. The US did not fund the Taliban or UBL. The Taliban rose to power 6 years after the Russians were expelled and we were long since out of the picture. The Taliban replaced those who now comprise the Northern Alliance. UBL never needed our funding and refused to deal with us. We did fund other Islamic anti-Soviet fighters (Reagan and others were ignorant about Islam.) By the way, the Taliban was created by Pakistan and was funded by Saudi Arabia.

2. The Saudis only started fighting terrorists when terrorists started striking Saudi Arabia. They've told jihadists to go and fight the infidels and they did for a time. Saudi policy isn't anti-jihadists but anti-anti-Saudi-jihadists. It's a dispute among like minded Islamists. A family disagreement.

3. It's not the amount; it is the principle. Obviously Weiner gets it. I give him or anyone credit regardless of political party.

Anonymous said...

Wom, if you'd like to give $420,000 to the Saudis, be my guest. But don't force the rest of us to do so.

Jay.Mac said...

Is there the other question here of why the blue blazes is the United States giving aid money to the incredibly rich Saudi Arabia? Given the vast oceans of money they're making selling oil can't they afford to pay for their own anti-terror program?

Why should the US be giving them cash for anything?

Anonymous said...

The way I read it, the 420k was to pay trainers, to train the Saudis.

Oh, JP you over simplify the situation when you say the US did not fund the Taliban. Irrespective of what name they went under, the Mujhadeen , which comprised both the NA factions and islamist factions was what morphed into the Taliban.

Without the Mujhadeen, the Taliban would have had no oppourtunity, to get the foothold they eventually did.

Epaminondas said...

wom... you are factless..read
Ghost Wars, history of afghanistan's wars, by the Chief correspondent of the Washington Post, and Charlie Wilson's War, by 60 minutes chief producer..they both say the same thing, and represent over 1000 pages of iron hard fact.

They indicate without doubt, that your opinion is baseless.

Sheeeeeeeeesh

Epaminondas said...

as for the saudi aid...
F#CK 'EM