Read Between the Lines of Those 28 Missing Pages

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20030804/scheer20030729

Love the truth; it ultimately bows to no master. Even for the President of the United States, the commander in chief of the world's most powerful propaganda machine, deceptions inevitably unravel.

In the last week we've moved from the 16 deceitful words in George W. Bush's State of the Union speech to the 28 White House-censored pages in the congressional report that dealt with Saudi Arabia's role in the September 11 terrorist attack on the United States.

Yet even in its sanitized version, the bipartisan report, long delayed by an embarrassed White House, makes clear that the United States should have focused on Saudi Arabia, and not Iraq, in the aftermath of September 11.

As we know, but our government tends to ignore, fifteen of the nineteen hijackers came from Saudi Arabia; none came from Iraq. Leaks from the censored portions of the report indicate that at least some of those Saudi terrorists were in close contact with--and financed by--members of the Saudi elite, extending into the ranks of the royal family.

The report finds no such connections between Iraq and Al Qaeda terrorists. It is now quite clear that the President--unwilling to deal with the ties between Saudi Arabia and Osama bin Laden--pursued Hussein as a politically convenient scapegoat. By drawing attention away from the Muslim fanatic networks centered in Saudi Arabia, Bush diverted the war against terror. That seems to be the implication of the 28 pages, which the White House demanded be kept from the American people when the full report was released. snip

Obviously alluding to Saudi Arabia, Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), the former Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, said Sunday, "High officials in this government, who I assume were not just rogue officials acting on their own, made substantial contributions to the support and well-being of two of these terrorists and facilitated their ability to plan, practice and then execute the tragedy of September 11." snip

Even after September 11, 2001, the Bush Administration immediately protected Saudis in the United States, including allowing members of the large Bin Laden family who were in this country to be spirited home on their government's aircraft before they could be questioned. This at a time when many immigrants from all over the world were being detained arbitrarily.

by the Saudi's deep commitment to establishing a beacon of democracy in the Middle East, and the billions they have contributed to the Iraq war, not to mention their assistance in wiping out the Wahabism driving the fervor to destroy America.

Or not.

That would be the end of the US as a world power. Immagine if it were to go off the market for 5 years.