With recent pressure the president has royally proclaimed he will decide on whether to declassify it during some Friday before a holiday weekend this summer. Meaning he can either decide not to and hope the presidential elections suck all the attention away, or announce he will declassify the pages and hope it takes until Christmas to complete. It's surprising he didn't appoint another blue ribbon panel to study whether he should declassify these or not, which is probably because he doesn't need a year or two to stall.
Speculation has focused on the docs confirming the Michael Moore Fahrenheit 9/11 cartoon version of Bush, but stop and use some critical thought for a second.
One, if this were just some politically embarrassing confirmation on Bush's chummy friendship with the Sauds why wasn't it released long ago? Two, 9/11 and Islamic terrorism didn't just spring forth on W's inauguration day, it was there dating back to his pappy's presidency at least. So, what about Saudi involvement in terrorism BEFORE Bush? Were they playing a double game with us with bin Laden, et al?
It's possible, certainly not probable, but possible the release of the 28 pages might also pressure some sunshine on the details described in this essay going back to the 90s. For instance, who was Ramzi Yousef, exactly? Who funded him? Who were he and his uncle KSM really working for, or against? Was there Saudi involvement in the Oklahoma City bombing, or other plots going back well before 9/11? This of course would be seminal considering that Bill Clinton is effectively running for a third term in the White House.
There are many reasons why even an Obama administration wouldn't release information fingering the House of Saud in the 9/11 plot, oil, obviously, but also the notion that America was going to war with Mecca and Medina. Or the notion that 28 pages won't satisfy our curiosity. Hillary already knows the answers to many of these questions and she's a favorite to enter the Oval Office and lock everything down for another 8 years. Good luck getting anything out of a president allowed to get away with having a private server.
So we return to Obama and the 28 pages. If he does shock the world and authorize release--and the release occurs before the November elections--and it illustrates Saudi involvement in the plot DURING the tenure of Bill Clinton (when the plot was hatched), what would that do to his wife's presidential chances? Is Obama holding a massive Trump card at the moment?
HILLARY WEIGHS IN .. already
In a slightly bizarre spectacle former Clinton insider George Stephanopoulis asks Hillary about the Schumer-Cornyn 9/11 bill, in which she claims she has no opinion on because she hasn't studied it (maybe she learned about it on TV). After the interview, Team Hillary realized how bad this looked and responded with a statement, which is a model for law school students:
"Hillary Clinton supports the efforts by Senator Schumer and his colleagues in the Senate to secure the ability of 9/11 families and other victims of terrorist acts to hold accountable those responsible. As president she would work with Congress to this end."Hard-hitting and specific! Hillary wants to hold people accountable! The person who used a private server, outside of all government rules and ethics.
MORE 4/17/16
It's interesting that 9/11 Commissioner John Lehman said the following:
John Lehman, secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration and another member of the 9/11 Commission, told 60 Minutes:
“We’re not a bunch of rubes that rode into Washington for this commission… We’ve seen fire and we’ve seen rain and the politics of national security. We all have dealt for our careers in highly classified and compartmentalized in every aspect of security. We know when something shouldn’t be declassified. And this, those 28 pages in no way fall into that category.”
[snip]
Lehman told 60 Minutes that he has no doubt some high Saudi officials knew assistance was being provided to al Qaeda, but he doesn’t think it was ever official policy. He also doesn’t think it absolves the Saudis of responsibility, Kroft said in his commentary.Keep in mind the 28 pages aren't from the 9/11 Commission Report, which barely mentions Bandar, they are from a Congressional Inquiry Report initiated in 2002. The question then is whether this information was classified only by the Bush administration, or whether there were Democrats on the committee who agreed to keep it quiet.
After all, the Kuala Lumpur terror summit meeting was held in January 2000, well before Bushitler and Darth Cheney entered office. If Saudi Arabia was working with AQ that means they were doing so under Clinton. Did he know? We are left with the following scenarios regarding the CIA: 1) they knew about Saudi involvement but didn't tell Clinton, or 2) they didn't know about it, and if so, why not (especially since they tracked the terrorists from Kuala Lumpur to Los Angeles)? Or 3) they knew and told Clinton but he didn't do anything, or worse, told agencies to stand down.
All of those have tremendous blowback potential not directed towards Bush. The question is will the media allow any blowback on the Clintons for anything? They may not, but they have no control over a loose cannon like Trump at a debate, do they.
WORD 4/19/16
This should be the final post on this topic, really on this blog, period. Many bloggers got their legs posting on the search for objective truth about the GWoT, especially after the disinformation began. I threw in my two cents because it seemed important.
Now Donald Trump, the leading Republican candidate for President of the United States, is out today using this 28 page issue to suggest Bush fraudulently attacked Iraq, exactly as far lefties have claimed for years. Forget that it's another attempt at throwing away all history prior to Bush's inauguration. It's maddening to see this twit out there rolling this issue to pander to moderate and lefty New York voters and think he's the frontrunner. It's a subject that should not be 'used' for anything, it should be investigated like everything else.
It's equally maddening to see Bill Clinton poised for a THIRD TERM in the White House after everything that has occurred since he left, stuff partially caused by his failures to stop AQ from growing during the 90s, as "path to 9/11" indicated. The media? They do not care about objective truth they care about the coronation of his wife as the first woman president because they love her and the concept of her. This despite her disqualifying display of ineptness and lack of judgment in the personal server story alone (Benghazi not included). The fight has basically been lost. But here's one more attempt to pass along some rational thought.
John Schindler: why we need to discuss more than just Saudi Arabia.
