Our friends the Saudis

It's creepy enough to have even to deal in passing with the Holy Roller Muslims of Saudi Arabia and creepier yet that our oil jones leaves us painfully dependent on that corrupt and crazy bunch. A couple of reporters at Vanity Fair magazine make a pretty convincing case that GWB's great friends and co-oilmen in Saudi were active supporters of the attacks on September 11, 2001.

Congress’s Joint Inquiry [into the attacks], its co-chair Bob Graham told the authors, had found evidence “that the Saudis were facilitating, assisting, some of the hijackers. And my suspicion is that they were providing some assistance to most if not all of the hijackers. . . . It’s my opinion that 9/11 could not have occurred but for the existence of an infrastructure of support within the United States. By ‘the Saudis,’ I mean the Saudi government and individual Saudis who are for some purposes dependent on the government—which includes all of the elite in the country.”

Read more here in the magazine. It's a nice long piece with lots of evidence. Oddly enough, I've not seen much in the rest of the press about the allegations. Disconcerting to find out that your dope dealer is not your friend, huh?
And then from the NYT:

A proposed Saudi counterterrorism law that would give the Interior Ministry sweeping powers and mandate jail sentences for criticizing the king would effectively squelch political dissent, human rights advocates said on Thursday.

Read the rest of that one here. Appalling, innit?