Hillary Clinton’s Dealings With Saudi Arabia Back In Focus For 9/11 Bill
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has now explicitly threatened to sell up to $750 billion in treasury securities and other assets in the United States if Congress passes a bill allowing the Saudi government to be held responsible for its alleged role in the 9/11 terrorist attacks by the victims’ families.
The bill, called the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, already passed the Senate Judiciary Committee and would remove immunity from foreign governments in cases “arising from a terrorist attack that kills an American on American soil.” The bill was introduced by Senator John Cornyn and is co-sponsored by Senator Chuck Schumer.
A recent report by 60 Minutes revealed that much of the controversial material in the famed 28 withheld pages of the 9/11 Commission Report contains information linking Saudi government officials to the 9/11 hijackers. The report from 60 Minutes suggests that the 9/11 Commission’s statement, that there was “no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded the organization,” is purposely misleading, as the 28 pages reveal connections between non-senior officials in the Saudi government helping men who would become part of the 9/11 attacks settle in the United States.
The 60 Minutes report and the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act became a political football over the weekend when both former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders came out in support of the bill after earlier equivocating. On the other side is President Barack Obama, whom both candidates claim to support and see themselves as heirs to.
But for Hillary Clinton this new position is problematic in other ways as well. The Saudi royal family and the Clinton family have a close personal and commercial relationship. According to the Clinton Foundation website, Saudi Arabia gave the Clinton Foundation between $10-$25 million. After the Saudis gave to the foundation, the Hillary Clinton-run State Department cleared a massive arm sale to Saudi Arabia worth $29 billion. The defense contractors in the deal also donated princely sums to the Clinton Foundation.
In 2012, Clinton received a $500,000 necklace from the king–the most expensive gift given to any government official that year.
Emails released by the State Department, as part of an ongoing scandal related to former Secretary Clinton’s use of a private email server, show Team Clinton celebrating the arms sale to Saudi Arabia. The planes that former Secretary Clinton helped secure for Saudi Arabia are currently being used in war crimes in Yemen. Why do they hate us?
Hillary Clinton’s support for arming Saudi Arabia also raises concerns about her proclaimed championing of women’s rights. Saudi Arabia has been regularly condemned for treating women as second class citizens, even disallowing women from ever leaving their home without a male guardian. In fairness to former Secretary Clinton, whose surrogates like to remind people of Clinton’s speech in China where she said “Women’s rights are human rights,” Clinton’s Saudi benefactors are not big on human rights and beheaded almost twice as many people as ISIS last year.
If the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act passes, the US may finally start holding terrorist-sponsoring states accountable for their attacks against Americans. Will there ever be accountability for those states’ enablers? Hillary Clinton better hope not.