In one sense, I wanted to read it to find out what the connections were/are. In another, I struggled to read it because it felt very dry and segued off into areas that didn't really interest me. ( )

A good book about the relationship between many high-ups in the Republican party and the royal family of Saudi Arabia and the Bin Laden family who own a large construction company. An unexpected star in the book is actually Bluegrass Airport. On 9/11 many rich Saudis, members of the royal family, Bin Laden's family, etc. were in Lexington, KY buying horses. While the rest of national airspace was closed, someone high up in the U.S. gov't authorized the evacuation of Saudis from around the country. They flew first to Lexington, then got on a big 747 and flew away, eventually to Saudi Arabia. Some of these folks would have been worth interrogating, particularly those related to Bin Laden, and others who had ties to the bombers.

The book is sad because it shows how we're so tied into Saudi Arabia that we'll never be able to fully fight terrorism (see my previous posts on this subject). ( )

This book both frightens and angers me. It also has further inspired me to watch the current Bush and do everything in my power to make sure that no further Bushes or friends of Bush win the presidency. The family is power hungry, greedy, and dangerous. ( )

The book reveals just how closely the ties are between the U.S. and the Islamic dictatorship of Saudi Arabia. The one key criticism of the work is that Ungar wants to postulate that the connection is between the two houses: Bush and Saud. He is incorrect on this point. The intimate relationship is between the interests of the respective countries. It will matter little who is in the White House unless U.S. energy policy changes significantly. Most likely the Saudis will continue to drain the resources of the U.S. to do their bidding.

Barack Obama, for example, has agreed that the Saudis can continue to kill Americans. The 9/11 Families received the sharp end of the stick as the U.S. government supports the Saudis against Americans. The Justice Department is supporting the Saudi royal family's bid to be removed from a 9/11 lawsuit.

The families of victims have accused the royal family of financially backing terror groups that carried out the 2001 attack.

Their complaint alleges that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Saudi High Commission for Relief to Bosnia and Herzegovina (SHC), and four Saudi Princes (acting in both official and personal capacities) made donations to charitable organizations with the knowledge that those organizations were diverting funds to al Qaeda, and that a fifth Saudi prince knowingly provided banking and financial services to Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.

A lawsuit, Federal Insurance Co. v. Kingdom Of Saudi Arabia, was initiated in 2003 by a consortium of insurance companies seeking to recover more than $300 billion for losses incurred by the 9/11 attacks.

The Saudi princes cited in the claims were:

* Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, president of SHC, who was warned in 2000 of his organization's ties to al Qaeda (pp. 7, 10, 255-6, 258, 265-9, 297) ;

In addition to Unger, in his 2003 book Why America Slept, author Gerald Posner claimed that Prince Ahmed bin Salman had had ties to al-Qaeda and had advance knowledge of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

* Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, the designated successor to King Abdullah, who received warnings as early as 1994 that some Muslim charitable groups were fronts for al Qaeda (pp. 168, 176, 219, 235, 242-4, 287-8, 293);

* Prince Naif bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, who as Saudi Minister of the Interior monitors and controls the charities operating in Saudi Arabia (pp. 87, 89, 182-3, 263, 288);

* Prince Turki al-Faisal bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, who was the director of the Kingdom's Department of General Intelligence ("DGI") until August 2001 (pp. 266, 268); and,
* Prince Mohamed al Faisal al Saud (p. 288) , who unlike the other princes named is not a government official but a bank manager alleged to have knowingly provided material sponsorship to international terrorism.

"I find this reprehensible," Kristen Breitweiser, a leader of the Sept. 11 families, told The New York Times.

Bush-Obama have covered up allegations of Saudi involvement.

Here is the damming expose of how business interests of the Bush family, other Republicans and corporatists with the Saudis influence their policy decisions to the detriment of the American people. All the stories have been told before but Unger builds up a good record of evidence over thirty years without wagging an accusatory finger in the manner of Greg Palast. He’s also good at pointing out the disturbing behavior of non-Bushies in regards to the Saudis to offer some balance (ex-Carter National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinzki started the plan to support Afghani Islamists against the Soviets a tact happily embellished by Reagan/Bush – p. 98), and makes it clear when certain claims cannot be substantiated. All very scary stuff, especially since xenophobic America-is-#1 types are ironically very likely to reelect Bush this fall. The most interesting thing I learned in this book is how Bin Laden appealed to the House of Saud to allow him to rally Islamic support and lead the battle to liberate Kuwait from the hated Sadaam Hussein in 1990 (al-Qaeda-Sadaam links indeed!).

“Thanks to such warm relations with the media, Bush repeatedly turned his liabilities into assets. A poor public speaker who made one verbal gaffe after another, Bush played the self-deprecating common man under fire by the know-it-all intellectuals. Intimate with the Wise Men of Washington since childhood, scion to one of the greatest political dynasties in American history, Bush was even able to sell himself as an outsider to power.” (p. 197)

“Few in the United States liked to admit it, but by switching the venue of America’s response to 9/11 to Iraq, the United States may have inadvertently played directly into Al Qaeda’s and Osama bin Laden’s hands. More than twenty years earlier, bin Laden had gone to Afghanistan to lure another superpower into a land war inside a Muslim country. America’s Cold Warriors had cackled with glee when the Soviets took the bait, and the long and brutal war that ensued helped lead to the demise of the Soviet empire. In the mountains of Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden had learned that he and his band of impassioned warriors could defeat a superpower in a guerilla war.” (p. 278) ( )