Alwaght-US President Barack Obama has slammed legislation allowing victims of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks to sue the Saudi ruling family in US courts.
“This is a matter of how ... the United States approaches our interactions with other countries,” Obama said Tuesday in an interview with “CBS This Morning.”
Ahead of his visit to Saudi Arabia this week, the Obama White House said it will veto the current bipartisan Congressional bill that would, if passed, strip Saudi Arabia of diplomatic immunity. Without this sovereign immunity, it would then be possible for 9/11 victims 'families to file a prosecution case against the rulers of the oil-rich kingdom.
Obama claimed that allowing Americans to “routinely start suing over governments” would open the floodgates to lawsuits by individuals in other countries against the US government.
It has long been suspected by 9/11 families and many other citizen-investigators that the House of Saud was heavily involved in the terror attacks that claimed the lives of some 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001.
Out of the 19 alleged plane hijackers, 15 were Saudi citizens. There is credible evidence that some of these individuals were working as Saudi intelligence agents, supported financially and logistically by the Saudi embassy and consulate in the US.
Senator Bob Graham, who led the original 2002 Congressional inquiry into the attacks, is one of the most outspoken public figures, who is now accusing the Saudi regime of involvement –and also, more damningly, that the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) impeded the initial criminal probe. In short, US authorities are implicated in a despicable cover-up.
Elsewhere, families of 9/11 victims say it "is a slap in the face" for President Obama to lobby against a bill that would hold the Saudi regime responsible for aiding and abetting the terrorists who carried out the terror attacks.
Meanwhile Obama's deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes, while speaking to David Axelrod in Monday's edition of "The Axe Files" podcast has admitted that a lot of al-Qaeda money came out of Saudi Arabia.
At first, he tried to tone down what amount to the first official admission of Saudi involvement in September 11, saying "I think that it’s complicated in the sense that, it’s not that it was Saudi government policy to support Al Qaeda, but there were a number of very wealthy individuals in Saudi Arabia who would contribute, sometimes directly, to extremist groups. Sometimes to charities that were kind of, ended up being ways to launder money to these groups."
But moments later the truth came out when he said "So a lot of the money, the seed money if you will, for what became Al Qaeda, came out of Saudi Arabia," he added.
And then the punchline came out when Axelrod asked if "that happen without the government’s awareness?" To which Rhodes responded that he doesn’t believe the government was “actively trying to prevent that from happening."
Saudi Arabia has threatened that it will sell off $750 billion in American assets if legislation to hold it liable for the 9/11 attacks is passed by the US Congress
In other words, the Saudi government knew that "a number of very wealthy Saudi individuals" were funneling funds into what would become the organization blamed for the attack on the twin towers.
Obama was scheduled to leave Washington Tuesday and arrive Wednesday in the Saudi capital of Riyadh. The visit is expected to be overshadowed by the debate over congressional efforts to expose any Saudi involvement in 9/11 attacks.
