World News

I'm old enough to remember the 9/11 attacks. It was never in question that Saudi Arabia was complicit in what happened. The majority of the terrorists were Saudi. It took a bit longer for the fact that the Saudi government was complicit to emerge, but we knew within a short time that at the very least, they provided financial support to the terrorists.

The argument for starting the "war on terror" was that Al-Qaeda planned the attack, so we should attack the countries that harbor them. At the time, the majority of the country supported this; I remember George Bush Jr.'s approval ratings being in the 90s for a short time. Even then, most of us knew that Saudi Arabia was at least complicit in what happened. The lust for revenge, as much as it was justified, made people forget that.

Over the last 23 years, I feel like a lot of Americans have forgotten the role that Saudi Arabia played in the events of 9/11; after all, they're our "ally," right? I have always been on the fence regarding whether or not invading Iraq and Afghanistan was a good idea. Back in 2001, though, I felt like invading Saudi Arabia was a great idea. 23 years later, I don't feel any different. Should the United States have attacked Iraq and Afghanistan, I'd say "probably"; should we have attacked Saudi Arabia? Absolutely. Yet it never happened.

Don't you love how Saudi Arabia, the country who was very obviously behind 9/11, hasn't suffered a single negative consequence as a result of their actions? They literally got away with 9/11. And then the US invaded some unrelated countries. Mind blowing.

Remember kids: Iran is the bad Middle East autocracy and Saudi Arabia is the good Middle East autocracy.

US foreign policy has always been and will always be interest based rather than value based, but they will use moral arguments and threat inflation to drum up support for their misadventures abroad.

was that evidence called "literally what everyone has known for the last 25 years"?

I love The Atlantic but "Two decades of U.S. policy appear to be rooted in a mistaken understanding of what happened that day"? I'm not sure I buy that. Maybe the Saudi complicity is deeper than we originally realized but I don't think anybody is really shocked by these recent revelations. US policy has driven by political agendas or, sadly, certain VP's business interests

I, like most of the millenial lemmings it seems, am not shocked about this. I remember what Dubya said as president, the daily evils. I would have never thought it could get worse and then we got Trump, and I think it all does echoes out from 9/11. If there are future historians, 9/11 is going to be the pivot that this entire century stumbles over, probably leading directly to WW3 any day now.

But when I see articles like this, (in the Atlantic ofc, always this one or the NYT) my nostrils fill up with the smell of consent being manufactured. Has the shadow council decided that we shall war with the Saudis now? With Russia and China just flat-out taking land now, has the US decided to extend it's "protection" more directly over a few strategic areas?

the costly policies that the United States has pursued for the past quarter century have been rooted in a false premise.

No shit

So we should invade Iran?

Tl;dr: A new filing in a lawsuit brought by the families of 9/11 victims against the government of Saudi Arabia alleges that al-Qaeda had significant, indeed decisive, state support for its attacks. Officials of the Saudi government, the plaintiffs’ attorneys contend, formed and operated a network inside the United States that provided crucial assistance to the first cohort of 9/11 hijackers to enter the country.

You mean the only people that were allowed to fly when all other air traffic was shut down?

Russia, China, Saudi Arabia and North Korea are the Mount Rushmore of asshole governments.

This isn't new. Also, this is a false narrative that the invasion of Iraq was ever about retribution for 9/11.

It was started because the Dubya administration insisted that Iraq had WMDs and implied that Saddam was planning on using them relatively soon

So did they want to raise the price and we said no so then they asked us to start a fake war against one of their competitors? Is that what actually happened?

Saudi got away with killing Americans on American soil. End of that story. They did it, we all know they did it, and no one will do anything about it. That's just how it works. That's how all of this works.

A blue-ribbon commission concluded that Osama bin Laden had pioneered a new kind of terrorist group—combining superior technological know-how, extensive resources, and a worldwide network so well coordinated that it could carry out operations of unprecedented magnitude

Caves in Afghanistan...

Honestly, the conspiracy theories for 9/11 were a thousand times more believable than this "expansive terrorist network" that somehow lacked influence outside of perhaps the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Seeing this sponsored by a US ally makes a lot of sense to me.

That was clear to me from a few days after the attacks. Some called me conspiracy nut for that. Good to see that someone finally dug up the truth. You simply cannot trust those Saudi buggers. They smile and hug you, just to drive a knife in your back.

Always keep in mind that we are unbelievers and heathens for them and that it is absolutely OK for them to betray and deceive us.

pikachu face