Saudi King Fahd dies

[aeroplane]

Mon Aug 1, 2005 4:29 AM ET
By Dominic Evans
RIYADH (Reuters) - King Fahd bin Abdul-Aziz of Saudi Arabia, who died on Monday, forged strong ties with Washington to steer his conservative kingdom through two turbulent decades but a violent Islamist backlash clouded his final, ailing years.

Fahd ascended one of the world's richest thrones in June 1982 during a petrodollar boom which transformed Saudi Arabia from a poor desert country into a global economic power and pushed its isolated tribal society into the modern world.

He used the huge oil revenues to back Saddam Hussein's Iraq in its eight-year war with Shi'ite Muslim Iran, but when Saddam invaded neighboring Kuwait, Fahd invited U.S. forces to Saudi Arabia to launch their recapture of the tiny emirate in 1991.

His decision to let half a million non-Muslim fighters into Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam and home to its holiest sites, angered Saudi scholars and a Saudi-born mujahideen fighter in Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden.

Bin Laden turned against the royal family and its U.S. allies. Ten years later his al Qaeda network, using mainly Saudi hijackers, carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks which plunged Saudi-U.S. ties, a cornerstone of Fahd's reign, into crisis.

The attacks revealed strains between Fahd's foreign policy, which linked his country inextricably to the world's sole superpower, and the royal family's alliance with largely anti-American and ultra-conservative religious scholars at home.

In 2003, al Qaeda launched a violent campaign inside Saudi Arabia, targeting Westerners, security forces and oil sites.

By then an ailing King Fahd, weakened and wheelchair-bound after a stroke in 1995, had already passed day-to-day control of the kingdom to his younger half-brother, Crown Prince Abdullah.

His declining health sparked frequent talk of palace power struggles between Abdullah and Fahd's six full brothers, who include the powerful ministers of defense and interior.

Shortly after the government announced Fahd's death, Abdullah was declared monarch and Sultan his crown prince.

Continued ...

[/quote]http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2005-08-01T082856Z_01_N01515201_RTRIDST_0_INTERNATIONAL-SAUDI-FAHD-DC.XML

Imagine having enough money that you could openly fund wars and persons known as "dictators" holding weapons of mass destruction, and yet dignitaries around the world honor you in death not as a supporter of terrorism, but as a hero. Wow. That is Fckt-up! This is another thought all together, but I wonder who might have "financed" the 9/11 attacks? My theory is that whomever was behind it, it was because they lost a game of poker while visiting Vegas or Atlantic City.
_________________
"Penalties against the possession of a drug
should not be more damaging to the individual
than the drug itself."

US President Jimmy Carter

[aeroplane]

Mon Aug 1, 2005 4:29 AM ET
By Dominic Evans
RIYADH (Reuters) - King Fahd bin Abdul-Aziz of Saudi Arabia, who died on Monday, forged strong ties with Washington to steer his conservative kingdom through two turbulent decades but a violent Islamist backlash clouded his final, ailing years.

Fahd ascended one of the world's richest thrones in June 1982 during a petrodollar boom which transformed Saudi Arabia from a poor desert country into a global economic power and pushed its isolated tribal society into the modern world.

He used the huge oil revenues to back Saddam Hussein's Iraq in its eight-year war with Shi'ite Muslim Iran, but when Saddam invaded neighboring Kuwait, Fahd invited U.S. forces to Saudi Arabia to launch their recapture of the tiny emirate in 1991.

His decision to let half a million non-Muslim fighters into Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam and home to its holiest sites, angered Saudi scholars and a Saudi-born mujahideen fighter in Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden.

Bin Laden turned against the royal family and its U.S. allies. Ten years later his al Qaeda network, using mainly Saudi hijackers, carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks which plunged Saudi-U.S. ties, a cornerstone of Fahd's reign, into crisis.

The attacks revealed strains between Fahd's foreign policy, which linked his country inextricably to the world's sole superpower, and the royal family's alliance with largely anti-American and ultra-conservative religious scholars at home.

In 2003, al Qaeda launched a violent campaign inside Saudi Arabia, targeting Westerners, security forces and oil sites.

By then an ailing King Fahd, weakened and wheelchair-bound after a stroke in 1995, had already passed day-to-day control of the kingdom to his younger half-brother, Crown Prince Abdullah.

His declining health sparked frequent talk of palace power struggles between Abdullah and Fahd's six full brothers, who include the powerful ministers of defense and interior.

Shortly after the government announced Fahd's death, Abdullah was declared monarch and Sultan his crown prince.

Continued ...

[/quote]http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2005-08-01T082856Z_01_N01515201_RTRIDST_0_INTERNATIONAL-SAUDI-FAHD-DC.XML

Imagine having enough money that you could openly fund wars and persons known as "dictators" holding weapons of mass destruction, and yet dignitaries around the world honor you in death not as a supporter of terrorism, but as a hero. Wow. That is Fckt-up! This is another thought all together, but I wonder who might have "financed" the 9/11 attacks? My theory is that whomever was behind it, it was because they lost a game of poker while visiting Vegas or Atlantic City.
_________________
"Penalties against the possession of a drug
should not be more damaging to the individual
than the drug itself."

US President Jimmy Carter

[Brother Adam]

Oh no...we lost another moron! Shucks!

I love how they slip Osama in there as the 9-11 culprit. It's, unfortunately, a lot like the judeo x-tian religions. They just keep beating you over the head with stuff telling you to believe until you give in. Only, I never gave in. Works well on weak people. Bow your head, close your eyes, and recite doctrine to keep it well ingrained in the sub-conscious.
_________________
-Brother Adam (we are all one family)

“Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”

-James Madison

Police officers acquitted for beating a 64 yr old man recently in New Orleans. In the words of their defense attorney "all he had to do was comply"....and they wouldn't have fractured his face.

[Brother Adam]

Oh no...we lost another moron! Shucks!

I love how they slip Osama in there as the 9-11 culprit. It's, unfortunately, a lot like the judeo x-tian religions. They just keep beating you over the head with stuff telling you to believe until you give in. Only, I never gave in. Works well on weak people. Bow your head, close your eyes, and recite doctrine to keep it well ingrained in the sub-conscious.
_________________
-Brother Adam (we are all one family)

“Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”

-James Madison

Police officers acquitted for beating a 64 yr old man recently in New Orleans. In the words of their defense attorney "all he had to do was comply"....and they wouldn't have fractured his face.

[Mystic Power]

I'm still getting over the death of Nat King Cole...
_________________
"We are the Ones we have been waiting for."
~Hopi Elder ~

"In Lak'ech"
~ Ancient Mayan: "I am another YOU." ~

[Mystic Power]

I'm still getting over the death of Nat King Cole...
_________________
"We are the Ones we have been waiting for."
~Hopi Elder ~

"In Lak'ech"
~ Ancient Mayan: "I am another YOU." ~