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Sat. Jun 01, 2002

QuoteLog, 6/1

QuoteLog, 6/1 – "Israel’s Shin Bet security service last week instructed a delegation from the New York Police Department on how to deal with suicide bombings. On Monday, eight senior law enforcement officials from Georgia arrived for a week of lectures, seminars, and scrutiny of an Israeli paramilitary border police unit. The bomb unit of the Los Angeles Police Department was here earlier this month. And Israeli police superintendent Shlomo Aharonishky met two weeks ago in Washington with Chief of Police Charles Ramsey and FBI agents to discuss how to handle suicide bombers. ’There is no question the ties have gotten closer,’ says Gil Kleiman, an Israeli police spokes-man. ’No other law enforcement agency has the experience we have in dealing with terrorism within the constraints of a Western system of law and court systems.’ [...] Israeli specialists have a low regard for American security searches. They say they tend to cause unnecessary discomfort for travelers, while being prone to missing potential assailants. ’The United States does not have a security system, it has a system for bothering people,’ Dror says. ’The difference between the Israeli and American systems is that we are looking for the terrorist, while the Americans look for the weapons,’ he adds."

Ben Lynfield, Christian Science Monitor

"Fifteen of the 19 September 11 hijackers were Saudis. Perhaps as many as 80 percent of the prisoners held at Guantnamo are Saudis. Osama bin Laden is a Saudi, and al Qaeda was supported by large contributions from Saudis, including members of the Saudi royal family. The Saudis’ cooperation with our efforts to track down the financing of al Qaeda appears to be somewhere between minimal and zero. They got us to let members of the bin Laden family scamper out of the United States on a private jet shortly after September 11. They refuse to provideas almost every other country hasmanifests of plane passengers flying to the United States. Such behavior is nothing new. The Saudis stymied the FBI investigation of the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing. The Saudis refused a U.S. request in 1996 that they take custody of bin Laden; he went to Afghanistan instead. They refused in 1995 to hand over Imad Mughniyah, believed responsible for the bombing of a Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983. Far from aiding our efforts against terrorism, the Saudis have worked against themto protect the terrorists in their own ranks. Also, the Saudis have praised suicide bombings and raised money for the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. Government-controlled Saudi media have frequently spread the vilest kinds of anti-U.S. and anti-Jewish propaganda. Freedoms? Zero for seven. The Saudis run a totalitarian society. Not one of the seven freedoms identified by President Bush in his State of the Union speechthe rule of law, limits on the power of the state, respect for women, private property, free speech, equal justice, religious toleranceis honored by the Saudis."

Michael Barone, US News and World Report

"The bin Laden/Mullah Omar crime family was trained in Afghanistan by the Pakistani secret police and paid for by Saudi Arabian money. The American ’national security’ class looked (and looks) upon the Pakistani secret police and the Saudi Arabian royal family as friends and allies. The most glaring example of this collusion was to be seen on September 11 last [see ’Minority Report,’ January 21], when the FBI helped Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador, fly several members of the bin Laden clan out of the country with no questions asked. If you remember, dear reader, you yourself were unable to fly anywhere that day [...] But Bush continues to fawn on this disgusting dynasty, while for the oil executives who make up his inner circle the same dynasty fulfills the useful function of being the only Arabs they know or care about [...] In a ridiculous recent book titled The Clash of Fundamentalisms, Tariq Ali begins by saying that ’there exists no exact, incontrovertible evidence about who ordered the hits on New York and Washington,’ and then goes on to state, exactly and incontrovertibly enough, that with these hits, ’the subjects of the Empire had struck back.’ Wrong. Wrong twice. As wrong as could be. These attacks came from the servants and satraps of the Empire, and the Empire’s managers are culpable for a little bit more than their failure to foresee them."

Christopher Hitchens, The Nation

"Ari Fleischer, the White House press secretary, is famous. But I knew him back when he was merely infamous, as chief Republican spokesman on the House Ways and Means Committee. He spoke with a cool, quick certainty, unhindered by any sense of conscience. A profile in GQ-not many Hill staffers receive such attentiondubbed him the ’flack out of hell.’ The typical press secretary shovels out fairly blunt propaganda, the kind reporters can spot a mile away and sidestep easily. But Fleischer has a way of blindsiding you, leaving you disoriented and awestruck [...] But what Fleischer does, for the most part, is not really spin. It’s a system of disinformationblunter, more aggressive, and, in its own way, more impressive than spin. Much of the time Fleischer does not engage with the logic of a question at all. He simply denies its premises-or refuses to answer it on the grounds that it conflicts with a Byzantine set of rules governing what questions he deems appropriate. Fleischer has broken new ground in the dark art of flackdom: Rather than respond tendentiously to questions, he negates them altogether."

Jonathan Chiat, New Republic