Saudi Money backs Terrorism

The normal reaction to that sort of headline would be to shrug your shoulder, think 'wow, obvious' and move on to the next article about Lady Gaga. Well, that's unfair, Lady Gaga is probably following the US Embassy Cables.

This Cable actually makes some interesting reading, especially when a person considers the dates. This sentence and following was highlighted by the Guardian:

Despite this presence, however, more needs to be done since Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qa'ida, the Taliban, LeT, and other terrorist groups, including Hamas, which probably raise millions of dollars annually from Saudi sources, often during Hajj and Ramadan. In contrast to its increasingly aggressive efforts to disrupt al-Qa'ida's access to funding from Saudi sources, Riyadh has taken only limited action to disrupt fundraising for the UN 1267-listed Taliban and LeT-groups that are also aligned with al-Qa'ida and focused on undermining stability in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Let's go back a few years ago, the then President of the United States, George Bush was beating the war drum stating a military action against Iraq was both imminent and necessary. He and his allies, such as Tony Blair gave two very compelling reasons, at least to any one who wanted to believe them, the first was, Iraq was an unstabilizing influence in the region that wanted to expand its control and could do so since it had 'Weapons of Mass Destruction'. The other reason, and when I use the word 'reason', you can replace it with the word 'lie', was that Iraq was a major player in the attack of 9/11.

The proof of the lie in the former is the fact after some seven years, no weaspons, no proof of the existence of such weapons have been found. The latter was easily disproved and this comment in the cable makes it clear that the funding for Al-Qada was never with Iraq, but with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. So another argument that the invasion of Iraq is illegal and therefore those who were involved in the planning and bringing about the invasion are guilty of war crimes. If you have to lie to justify an action that involves the murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent people, then that is a war crime, a crime against humanity. I know the actual number will never be calculated, but why quibble over a few thousand?

Now for his trouble, Julian Assange faces harrassment, the possibility of arrest, detention and then what happens can only be imagined and shuddered. Or it could be nothing will happen, there's too much light on him, to quote that line from the movie "JFK". If he was to suddenly disappear, or be arrested and tossed into a jail, there would be such an outrage that any government foolish to do it would face a great deal of wrath from the world at large. Hopefully they would realize to do anything to Julian would make him a martyr. Let's face it, the charges against him are a joke. It wouldn't surprise me if they seized his computer we would have about the finding of child pornography on them. Why? To further discredit him.

However, the backlash has begun. People are standing for freedom on speech and the right to read. While a lot of the cables is rather gossipy, it's still information and information needs to be free.

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