Vito,
Do you think the Saudi's had nothing to do with the attacks on 9-11?
While I don't believe that the attacks were sanctioned or condoned by the actual top dozen or so leaders in the Saudi Govt, there is quite a bit of evidence that some of the Royal Family had been providing funding (at significant levels) to radicals, including al qaeda for quite some time and were likely aware that attacks were planned.
You probably think me a "liberal" as well, but I've posted on here for years that the only politician of this era who has actually called a spade a spade and brought up the Saudi's "guilt" for exporting radical Wahhabism for the last 150 yrs, was a politician who I dislike - Mike Huckabee of all people.
And I'm certainly no Alex Jones, but if you look at events within the royal family in the months that followed 9-11 it gets very interesting and past the point of looking like mere "coincidence."
1. Prince Ahmed bin Salman - you may remember him as the owner of Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner "War Emblem." You may also remember him as the guy who went to NYC to make a rather large donation and Rudy Giuliani told to take a hike after it was reported he had made several anti-American comments the previous week or two. He was also the guy who organized the "airlift" of numbers of Saudi's out of the US a few days after 9-11,while all other flights were grounded. The flight originated in Lexington, KY where he kept his private 747 and stopped at least once to pick up other members of the Saudi Royal family before exiting US Air Space. (I had done some contract work for a firm in Lexington just a few years previously and was told by an off-duty flight attendant all about Salman and his 747 for which he paid a $50,000 fine to the FAA every time he landed or took off from the airport there as it was sitting on the tarmac when we landed.) He died at a hospital in Riyadh about 6 months later at the age of 43, with his COD listed as a heart attack.
2. His cousin, Prince Sultan bin Faisal bin Turki bin Abdullah, age 41 was killed in a single car accident just the next day later, on his way to the funeral of his cousin Salman. Abdullah was a former fighter pilot and there were reportedly no witnesses to the accident.
3. Prince Fahd bin Turki bin Saud al-Kabir's body was found about a week later, after Abdulla's funeral, with the official report concluding that he had gotten lost in the desert and died of thirst/exposure. (This was less than 10 days after the death of Salman of the supposed heart attack.)
All three of these men were reportedly named by suspect Abu Zubaydah, a very close associate of Bin Laden, who was the "mastermind" of the failed "millennium attacks which were thwarted by US and Canadian authorities, the successful bombing of the USS Cole and helped plan 9-11. During questioning, in order to prove his innocence he gave his interrogators the names and phone numbers of members of the royal family who would "vouch" for him. The first name on the list was Salman and when the US investigators called, they confirmed that the number was in fact Salmans.
Now this part is interesting, Zubaydah had been flown blindfolded to an American controlled compound, but the interior had been made to look like it was a Saudi facility and the CIA used two agents who were born or raised in SA, who passed themselves off as Saudi Security Officials. Zubaydah was reportedly relieved that he was in Saudi hands, as he thought his buddies (the 3 princes) would get him out of trouble by using their stroke as members of the Royal Family.
The other connection between at least two of them was that they were known to visit the Sarasota, FL home of an adviser to the Royal Family, a man by the name of Esam Ghazzawi. This was the same home where Mohamad Atta, the leader of the 9-11 attackers, was alleged to have visited a number of times while he was training at the Pilot's school located in Sarasota.
Isil/Daesh is the Saudi's version of their Frankenstein monster, many were involved in creating it directly, or as blowback to the perceived corruption of their rule, but largely it is on their hands.
And those f'ers are corrupt. When we were dating, a friend of my now wife was invited to attend what was described as a "Party" by a younger member of the Royal family, who had a romantic interest in her friend. When they arrived at the huge mansion in Beverly Hills, it turned out that there were really only about a dozen people there. It was the guy's "uncles" birthday, the "Sheikh" who owned the mansion.
There were 4 women there, and the uncle offered all of them $50,000 to join them in his bedroom to help him celebrate, when my wife and friend turned him down, he upped the offer to $100,000. I knew something was up, when the two of them turned back up to my apt, only after being gone about an hour and a half. The opulence, the top shelf alcohol and open containers of cocaine along with a spread of gourmet food items they described being enough to feed 200 people was insane. The nephew called my wife's friend and apologized for his uncle's behavior, but also admitted it was somewhat commonplace and he had been wary of inviting her because he thought it might happen.
So yes, I can understand those who (radical or not) are completely opposed to the Saudi Royal obvious corruption understandable. On the one hand they publicly push the strict Wahhabi code on their own people, while in private doing things that would make the devil blush. At some point, the fit is going to hit the shan and they will go down.
I really believe the primary reason it didn't happen previously, is that the Israeli's have been working with the Saudi's through back channels for decades and are afraid a far more radical and anti-Israel govt would emerge from the ashes.