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Title: Saudis gave the US $360billion in deals. Now they want Trump to rescind 9/11 lawsuit law
Source: [None]
URL Source: http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world ... rBr?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp
Published: May 22, 2017
Author: Anita Kumar
Post Date: 2017-05-23 05:50:05 by BTP Holdings
Keywords: None
Views: 25
Comments: 5

Saudis gave the US $360billion in deals. Now they want Trump to rescind 9/11 lawsuit law

Tribune Washington Bureau

By Anita Kumar

9 hrs ago

© REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst U.S. President Donald Trump and other leaders including Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi (bottom, 2nd L) and Malaysia's Prime Minister Najib Razak (4th R) react to a wall of computer screens coming online as they…

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — President Donald Trump struck a series of deals with Saudi Arabia on his two-day visit but the kingdom is still anxiously waiting for him to deliver on something else: the repeal of a contentious 2016 law that allows relatives of 9/11 victims to sue the kingdom for their deaths.

Saudi officials have been quietly lobbying the administration and Congress to overturn the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, which led more than 800 families to file suit in New York in March.

The problem: Trump supported the bill and can’t do much to change it even if he wanted to. Still, Saudis are convinced the man they consider the ultimate salesman will make a deal.

“Do you think he will agree after all these activities we are doing for him?” asked Abdulnasser Gharem, a well-known Saudi artist who went to high school with two of the 9/11 hijackers in his hometown of Namas. Altogether, 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis.

Trump was welcomed like a member of the royal family in Riyadh over the weekend as he looked to restore relations with the country, which had soured during his predecessor’s tenure.

He was welcomed at the airport with a long red carpet, booming cannons and seven Saudi jets that flew overhead in V-formation, trailing red, white and blue smoke. A large image of Trump was beamed onto the exterior of his posh hotel. He even received the gold medallion, known as the King Abdul Aziz Collar, considered the kingdom’s highest honor.

Gharem, who has incorporated the 9/11 attacks into his artwork — he says he’s forbidden from showing it in Saudi Arabia — said Saudis, too, had suffered.

“We were the same; we were victims. Someone like me in the middle of nowhere was affected by what happened in New York, but no one was listening to us,” he said during an interview at his Riyadh studio.

U.S. and Saudi officials did not raise the issue publicly during Trump’s visit, the first stop on the first foreign trip of his presidency, and White House and National Security Council staff declined to comment on the issue. A Saudi official downplayed the topic, saying the kingdom had many pressing issues to discuss with U.S. officials, including the war in Syria, threats from nearby Iran and the civil war in Yemen.

But Saudi Arabia’s energy minister, Khalid al-Falih, said in an interview in March that his nation believed that the new administration and Congress would eventually reverse course, and others here see it as a major source of conflict. “If Trump supports the JASTA, he will lose the relationship with Saudi Arabia,” Mohammed Alhamza, a social researcher and writer, said bluntly through a translator during an interview in his Riyadh home, reflecting a view heard widely among Saudis.

“Do you expect Trump will pass JASTA after (billions of) Saudi riyals went to the United States?” Alhamza asked, a reference to a series of agreements Trump and Saudi King Salman had signed totaling $360 billion in weapons sales and economic development.

Like many Saudis, Alhamza thinks someone else helped the hijackers commit their sophisticated attacks and he is angry about a law he said was passed with no evidence that his nation was to blame and that could hurt his country economically.

The Saudi hijackers lived in Florida, California, Virginia and New Jersey before the attacks. All of them died in the worst terrorist attack in history, which killed nearly 3,000 people.

Trump, however, has little incentive to revisit the law, which is popular with his supporters who want someone punished for the terrorist attack. He’s lost leverage on Capitol Hill, even with members of his own party, as the White House remains embroiled in investigations into whether his campaign colluded with Russia to interfere in the presidential election.

“The image of an American president going to Saudi Arabia and coming back, and then asking the Congress to be nice to Saudi Arabia … I don’t think that’s going to sell very well,” said Bruce Riedel, a former senior adviser to the last four presidents who is now a senior fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.

Congress passed the bill last September. President Barack Obama vetoed the measure but lawmakers quickly overrode him, handing him the first veto override of his presidency in his final months in office.

Trump, then a presidential candidate, criticized Obama and distributed a statement by Rudy Giuliani, who had been the mayor of New York at the time of the attacks, calling Obama’s veto “an insult to those we lost on 9/11.” Trump has said little about the issue since he was inaugurated.

“Trump is limited in his ability to change this at this point,” said Jordan Tama, a professor in the School of International Service at American University in Washington. “Trump can’t do anything to stop what’s in place. There’s no prospect that would be repealed.”

The congressional action came after the release of a long-withheld 28-page section of the first U.S. report on the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks outlining possible links between the hijackers and Saudi officials that congressional investigators thought deserved more attention. Saudi Arabia organized a massive lobbying to stop the legislation, including asking former military leaders, business executives with interests in Saudi Arabia and veterans to warn lawmakers about the consequences.

The accusation that Saudi Arabia should be held responsible for the attacks has prompted bitterness.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel bin Ahmed al-Jubeir made that clear in Washington last year when the debate was raging over the release of the 28 pages that had been originally withheld from the 9/11 Commission report on the attacks.

“The 28 pages were used … to cast aspersions on Saudi Arabia,” he said. “And everybody talked about once they are released it will show incontrovertible proof that Saudi Arabia is guilty. That Saudi Arabia was behind 9/11. That Saudi Arabia committed 9/11. Not true. The 28 pages don’t reveal anything.”


Poster Comment:

Trump cannot interfere with any lawsuit since he would be crossing the boundary between the branches of government.

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#1. To: All (#0)

It would be up to Congress to decide to repeal the 9-11 law. ;)

"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one." Edmund Burke

BTP Holdings  posted on  2017-05-23   6:13:07 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#2. To: All (#0)

Remember the "dancing Israelis" that were picked up in New Jersey while filming the incident on 9-11-2001. The "dancing" indicated foreknowledge of the days events. ;)

"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one." Edmund Burke

BTP Holdings  posted on  2017-05-23   7:04:23 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#3. To: BTP Holdings (#0)

The Saudi hijackers lived in Florida, California, Virginia and New Jersey before the attacks. All of them died in the worst terrorist attack in history...

Bullshit.

“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.” ~ H. L. Mencken

Lod  posted on  2017-05-23   8:52:50 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#4. To: Lod (#3)

The Saudi hijackers lived in Florida, California, Virginia and New Jersey before the attacks. All of them died in the worst terrorist attack in history...

Bullshit.

Not according to Wiki:

en.wi kipedia.org/wiki/Hij..._the_September_11_attacks

And several of the supposed hijackers turned up alive after the fact.

www.topinfopost.com/2013/05/06/911-fbis-blunder-the-hijackers-were- alive-and-well

Not to mention the fact that it is entirely possible that the aircraft that hit the Twin Towers were piloted by REMOTE CONTROL.

911review.com/means/remotec ontrol.html

"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one." Edmund Burke

BTP Holdings  posted on  2017-05-23   16:08:38 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#5. To: BTP Holdings (#0)

Wilders checks Trump: It's Islam, not radical Islam

Terrorism expert Geert Wilders, the leader of the Netherland’s Party for Freedom, called President Donald Trump out on the speech he delivered to Saudis over the weekend when the president incited the world to get tough on terrorism, as the Dutchman insisted that Islam is the problem – not “Islamism” or “radical Islam.”

Before speaking at the American Freedom Alliance’s annual Heroes of Conscience dinner in Universal City, California, on Sunday night after Trump’s speech, Wilders made sure that nobody was confused by the president’s politically correct assertion that radical Islam is the problem.

“Islam is the problem,” Wilders told WND. “We can only deal with [the threat] if we first face the truth, [which] might not be too politically correct, but still is the truth, and that is that Islam – and not Islamism or radical Islam, but Islam – is an evil ideology, like communism or fascism, that has no place in a free society.”

Wilders stressed that portraying Islam in a more positive light only perpetuates the problem – similar to the way Trump tried to imply that Islam is not trying to wipe out Christianity.

“Terrorists] do not worship God, they worship death,” the president told Saudis in Riyadh. “This is not a battle between different faiths, different sects, or different civilizations. This is a battle between barbaric criminals who seek to obliterate human life, and decent people of all religions who seek to protect it.”

But Wilders made it clear that the very nature of Islam is dead-set against being a part of any democracy.

https://www.onenewsnow.com/culture/2017/05/24/wilders-checks-trump-its-islam-not-radical-islam

U.S. Constitution - Article IV, Section 4: NO BORDERS + NO LAWS = NO COUNTRY

HAPPY2BME-4UM  posted on  2017-05-24   11:53:39 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


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