----- Original Message ----- From: "Gautam Mukunda" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, October 24, 2004 8:09 PM Subject: Re: Brin: On the Saudis
> --- Doug Pensinger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Can you give me a good answer on why the part of the > > 9/11 investigation > > dealing with the Saudis has been kept secret by the > > Bush administration? > > > > The 9/11 attacks were planed financed and carried > > out mostly by Saudis. > > Why haven't we made them accountable for their > > atrocities? > > I'm going to take these as one. The most important > figure in the 9/11 attacks (other than Bin Laden) was > Egyptian. I don't see you declaring that we attack > Egypt. Zacarias Moussoui is German. Why arne't you > calling for us to attack Germany? It is true that 15 > of the 19 hijackers were Saudis. It is _not_ true > that the Saudi government was involved. It was not. > In fact, one of the _non_ redacted portions of the > 9/11 report explicitly stated that the Saudi > government was entirely uninvolved. Up until about a > year ago, the Saudis could probably be best described > as passive sponsors of terror. Their government did > not sponsor terrorism, but did not do much to stop it > either. Since the attacks on Saudi Arabia proper, the > Saudi government has been actively participating in > attacking Al Qaeda. This is something that is agreed > on across the board. The best open source work on the > subject has been done by Dan Byman at Georgetown > University - if you want more details, I suggest you > look at his work. The reason we haven't done anything > to the Saudis is because we _need_ the Saudis. > They're the only people who can police their own > society. We can't do it. Demands for doing something > to the Saudis are the most astonishingly facile thing > in American politics today. What, exactly, is it we > are supposed to do, other that what we are already > doing, which is persuading them to crack down on > terror and liberalize their society? We can't _force_ > them to do it. > > > > The USGA estimates that the coastal plain of the > > Arctic National Wildlife > > Refuge would provide us with about 6 months worth of > > oil. If we tapped > > every possible oil resource in the U.S., drilling > > wells in pristine > > wilderness and defacing the coastal grandeur of the > > Big Sur, how much oil > > would that provide us with? > > I have no idea. Every little bit helps. I love the > loaded language here, by the way. The Alaskan oil > pipeline was such a catastrophe, after all. The > predictions of the environmental movement on such > things have been so conclusively wrong, time after > time, that it's not like there's a lot of credibility > left here. Nor, in fact, do I care. As I said, every > little bit helps - every bit of oil we get > domestically is oil we don't buy abroad. Isn't that > what we're supposed to want? I agree with most of your post, but I differ here. Eventually, it would be very worthwhile to drill for that oil. But, since we can still purchase oil at a price that is significantly less than the '81 price, after inflation, and since oil is such a small part of our economy, I think it makes sense to leave it in the ground as a long term strategic reserve....Oil well drilling contributes very little to environmental problems, I agree. So, that part of drilling in Alaska or Big Sur doesn't bother me. Its just that the oil isn't going anywhere, and oil is useful for a number of things...not just Joules...so I think it is worthwhile to wait until we use it. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
