The Leading State Sponsor of Terror

In ramping up for another nice distracting war, Bush brands Iran "the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism." Too bad all the evidence shows our "friend" Saudi Arabia is the rightful holder of that title. It is, by a large margin, the principle source of foreign fighters in Iraq: 45% to second place Syria's 15%. Hundreds of billions of state dollars are channeled year after year into supporting anti-western, anti-American Wahhabism worldwide. The token, publicity-friendly Saudi government "crackdowns" Bush likes to point to are overwhelmed by the overt participation of government officials in protecting and fostering terrorism:

"In November 2004, 26 Saudi clerics, 21 of whom are government officials, issued a fatwa calling on Muslims to join the jihad in Iraq. The leading figure behind the fatwa, Sheikh Salman bin Fahd Al-Odah, has heavily financed Saudi insurgents in Iraq and other locations.

Al-Odah has three television programs that serve as a forum for his extremist views. One of these programs is on the official Saudi government Channel 1. The sheikh commands a wide audience and is influential in matters beyond Saudi Arabia and Iraq. On Dec. 27, 2006, al-Odah appeared on Al-Jazeera to urge Saudis to travel to Somalia and join the Islamic Courts Union in their war against the legitimate Somali government.

Beyond al-Odah, the highest ranking Saudi official to openly support terrorism is Sheikh Saleh al-Luhaidan, chief of the Saudi judiciary [!]. In April 2005, the Institute for Gulf Affairs (then called the Saudi Institute) gave NBC a tape of al-Luhaidan instructing Saudis to send money and men to Iraq in order to aid then-al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. NBC confirmed the authenticity of the tape by calling al-Luhaidan. To this date, al-Luhaidan remains in his government position without censure."

The leading state sponsor of terrorism today, as it was at the beginning of the war in Iraq, is Saudi Arabia. Naturally, therefore, the appropriate thing to do is give them 20 billion in weapons, and invade Iran.