Matters of Character and Convenience
October 2020: A Bin Ladin Makes Headlines
Noor Bin Ladin, outspoken supporter of U.S. incumbent president Donald Trump and niece of the widely-documented mastermind September 11, 2001, “terrorist attacks” in the United States, launches an attack on a member of the U.S. Congress.
“Ilhan Omar says she ‘loves’ America,” the Bin Ladin (en) is quoted says, “Gee, I wonder what hating America looks like.”
What’s in a Name: Bin Laden(s), Bin Ladin(s)
The Bin Laden family, also spelled “Bin Ladin,” is said to be “a
wealthy family intimately connected with the innermost circles of the Saudi
Royal family.”
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ineage
Among scores of known spawns of Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden (1908–1967):
- #8 (son of the patriarch Muhammad bin Ladin, older half-brother of
Osama bin Laden) Yeslam bin Ladin (born 1950) married (1974-1988) in Jeddah,
Saudi Arabia, Lausanne, Switzerland-born (1954) Carmen Dufour bin Ladin, parents
of Wafah Dufour [entertainer, resident of Jeddah, Geneva, and Manhattan, on Geneva,
Switzerland, holiday in the summer of 9/11 attacks on New York and Metro Washington],
Najia Dufour, and Noor Bin Ladin [resident of Switzerland].
- #18 Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden (“Osama, son of Mohammed, son of Awad, son of Laden”, born in Saudi Arabia, died in Pakistan: August 11, 1988 – May 2, 2011), 1st General Emir of al-Qaeda August 11, 1988 – May 2, 2011.
Globe and Mail published a 2004 article that noted Wafah (then 26) was an
American citizen with two law degrees, and easy passage between Geneva and London; Najia
(then 24) had gone into business with a friend; and Noor (in October 2020 news) was still in school.
U.S. Love-Hate Affair with “Terrorists”
Carter through Bush I & II bookending Clinton through Obama
Son of Saudi millionaire founder of Saudi Binladin Group construction company, Osama Bin Laden, in 1979, goes to Pakistan, and uses “money and machinery from his own construction company to help the Mujahideen resistance in the Soviet–Afghan War.”
The United States and Saudi Arabia, under CIA Operation Cyclone (1979-1989) supplied “$40 billion” in “financial aid and weapons to almost 100,000 Mujahideen and Afghan Arabs from forty Muslim countries” funneled through Pakistan’s premier intelligence agency of Pakistan, Inter-Services Intelligence or ISI.
During his trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia former Serbian President Slobodan Milošević testified that—
“Bin Laden had used Albania as a launch pad for violence in the region and Europe.
U.S. officials had been informed that KLA was being aided by al-Qaeda.
However the U.S. was focused on breaking up Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY), so U.S. officials aided the ethnic-Albanian separatist militia, known as the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), thus allying with Osama bin Laden “despite the 1998 United States embassy bombings earlier.”
Milošević concluded that the United States had “aided the terrorists, which culminated in its (U.S.) backing of the 1999 (Bill Clinton) NATO bombing of Yugoslavia during the Kosovo War.”
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elief
In 1997, Osama Bin Laden condemned the United States for its hypocrisy in not labeling the bombing of Hiroshima as terrorism.”
Bin Laden was said to have been driven by a desire “to right” what he perceived as “injustices against Muslims perpetrated by the United States, and sometimes by other non-Muslim states.” “Violent jihad” was said to be the means he advocated.
Bin Laden wanted the United States “to withdraw all of its civilians and military personnel from the Middle East, as well as from every Islamic country of the world.”
Bin Laden is said to have believed in a strategy of luring “his enemies,” such as the U.S. and Soviet Union, “into a long war of attrition in Muslim countries, attracting large numbers of jihadists who would never surrender.”
Such a strategy would “lead to the economic collapse of enemy countries.” His goal was to “‘bleed them to the point of bankruptcy”; or put another way, “‘bleed’ them dry.”
After Bin Laden (with others) was indicted “for capital crimes” in connection with the 1998 United States embassy bombings in Africa, and though the U.S. had more than once allied with Bin Laden, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), on June 7, 1999, listed Bin Laden, among hundreds, on its list of “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives.”
A second FBI-Most-Wanted “Top-22”- Terrorists list related to the “indictment for the 1998 embassy attack.” A month after September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush released the list.
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audis, Bushes, and bin Laden
Craig Unger’s House of Bush, House of Saud
Excerpt
“If the Saudis had been happy with the presidency of George H.W. Bush—and they were—they must have been truly ecstatic, in the summer of 2000, that his son was the Republican candidate for president. Indeed, the relationship between the two dynasties had come a long way since the seventies ….
Post-9/11: Saudi Prince Bandar “protested media reports that referred to those involved in terrorism as ‘Saudis’…. But Osama bin Laden was Saudi; … and he was not just any Saudi.
The bin Ladens were one of a handful of extremely wealthy families that were so close to the House of Saud that they effectively acted as extensions of the royal family.
Over five decades, they had built their multi-billion-dollar construction empire thanks to their intimate relationship with the royal family. …
Like Bandar, the bin Laden family epitomized the marriage between the United States and Saudi Arabia. Their huge construction company, the Saudi Binladin Group, banked with Citigroup and invested with Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch. Over time, the bin Ladens did business with such icons of Western culture as Disney, the Hard Rock Café, Snapple and Porsche. In the mid-1990s, they joined various members of the House of Saud in becoming business associates with former secretary of state James Baker and former president George H.W. Bush by investing in the Carlyle Group, a gigantic Washington, D.C.-based private equity firm.…
Author and journalist Craig Unger in House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World’s Two Most Powerful Dynasties, a 2004 book exploring the relationship between the Saudi Royal Family and the Bush extended political family):
“The Bushes and their allies controlled, influenced or possessed substantial positions in a vast array of companies that dominated the energy and defense sectors. Put it all together, and there were myriad ways for the House of Bush to engage in lucrative business deals with the House of Saud and the Saudi merchant elite. …
[T]he Saudis were also linked to Dick Cheney (Richard Bruce Cheney, businessman, U.S. vice president 2000-2009) through Halliburton, the giant Texas oil exploration company that had huge interests in the kingdom.”
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Final Curtain
Six years after the incidents of September 11, 2001, the Senate of the United States, splashed in the headlines a doubling of the previous $25 million to a $50 million reward for information leading to the capture or killing of [former U.S. ally] Osama bin Laden and the [Mujahideen successor] al-Qaeda organization.
A decade after September 11, 2001, a United States military special operations unit deployed to Abbottabad, an eastern city of Pakistan, reportedly cornered and killed [former U.S. ally] Osama bin Laden.
Sources
Globe and Mail opinion “Inside the House of Bin Laden” by Margaret Wente, July 22, 2004 https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/inside-the-house-of-bin-laden/article20434084/
Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osama_bin_Laden
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bin_Laden_family#Family_members
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bin_Laden_family
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wafah_Dufour
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Cheney
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosovo_Liberation_Army
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Bush,_House_of_Saud
Insider “Osama bin Laden’s niece says she will ‘never forget’ what happened on 9/11” by Taylor Ardrey September 12, 2020 https://www.insider.com/noor-bin-ladin-osama-bin-ladens-niece-issues-statement-911-2020-9
RT “Bin Laden’s niece ‘wonders what hating America looks like’ in Twitter attack on Ilhan Omar… and is immediately reminded” October 21, 2020 https://www.rt.com/usa/504177-noor-bin-ladin-ilhan/
“Did the Saudis buy a president? How much money has flowed from the House of Saud to the Bush family and its friends and allies over the years? No one will ever know—but the number is at least $1.477 billion” by Craig Unger March 12, 2004 Salon Magazine excerpts Salon.com has just published four excerpts from House of Bush, House of Saud. Part 1: The Great Escape Part 2: Did the Saudis buy a President? Part 3: The Arabian candidate Part 4: Lost in Transition
[“If the Saudis had been happy with the presidency of George H.W. Bush—and they were—they must have been truly ecstatic, in the summer of 2000, that his son was the Republican candidate for president. Indeed, the relationship between the two dynasties had come a long way since the seventies when Saudi banking billionaire Khalid bin Mahfouz and Salem bin Laden had flown halfway around the world to Texas to see James Bath, George W. Bush’s old friend from decades before. Even bin Mahfouz’s subsequent financing of the Houston skyscraper for James Baker’s family bank and the Saudi bailout of Harken Energy that helped George W. Bush make his fortune were small potatoes compared with what had happened since.”]
https://web.archive.org/web/20061006001557/http://dir.salon.com/story/books/feature/2004/03/11/unger_1/index.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20061006002800/http://dir.salon.com/story/books/feature/2004/03/12/unger_2/index.html
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