Just more negotiations it is, and a forced handshake. At the Washington Times, Frank Gaffney calls the Annapolis folly a “gang rape”

Steve Emerson’s investigative project has been enormously revealing in the web of non-profits, corporate exploitation and other charitable ways muslims are funding jihad. From what I read alot of the money comes from Saudi sources.

Either way, they are not alone in their support and I agree that there are alot of muslim leaders who wish only peace as well. It’s going to be a hard job for western leaders to know who wants peace and who doesn’t.

We all should remain vigilant at this time however and not give in to fear. Smarts is what it’s going to take when all is said and done.

If you rephrase the comment to ‘some Saudis are suspected of funding terrorism’, you’re in the right ballpark.

I was head of the Public Diplomacy section of the US Embassy in Riyadh from late September 2001 to October 2003. During that time, scores of FBI, CIA, Treasury and other investigators came through the embassy. They were all looking for that magic connection that linked Saudi names (or bank accounts) with terrorism.

What they found were a number of charity groups that while performing actual charitable work in some places and in some regards, were also filtering money to jihadists. The Saudi government cooperated with the US and UN to designate to groups (and a handful of individuals) as financiers of terror.

The US investigators did not–nor have they yet–identified any significant member of the Saudi government as a financier. They have suspicions of some individuals and a couple of the major charities, but nothing they can bring to any court, US, Saudi, or international.

There are certainly bad Saudis. I was in Riyadh when the residential compounds were blown up in May 2003. I’ve had the ‘honor’ of having my business card showing up on jihadi websites following visits to Saudi government offices. While I doubt very much that the Ministers are interested in jihad, there are definitely lower-level employees willing to pass on info about people they think are ‘corrupting’ the KSA.

I don’t take terrorism lightly. I’ve lost dozens of friends and colleagues to terrorism, from the Beirut embassy bombings, through Lockerbie, up to the bombings of US embassies in Africa.

Instead of lashing out at easy targets though, I’d rather focus on what the real issues and the real people are doing. That includes noting what Saudis are doing to fix problems they created for themselves decades ago.

I blog about Saudi Arabia–including what’s going wrong and what’s going right–at Crossroads Arabia.

I don’t get a penny from anyone for my blog–or for my opinions elsewhere. I write because I think US-Saudi relations are and will remain critical to the US. Oil is hardly a factor in those relations; a lot of other things are.

The idiot has a link to hear from you.

Personally I think it was a huge mistake for Clinton to have them and I think these peace talks might be a mistake for Pres. Bush as well. Living near Annapolis I will make sure I stay away. I have no desire to risk being killed by some muslim extremist who doesn’t mind blowing themselves up if it will kill Israeli supporters.

Yes, some Arabs are still bent on the destruction of Israel. That’s the Hamas/Hezbollah line for sure.

But the majority of Arabs realize that Israel is a fact. Some Arab states have made peace with Israel (Egypt and Jordan). Others have somewhat regularized their relations, at least when it comes to trade (Morocco, Tunisia, Qatar). Those Arab states that are members of the WTO have dropped their secondary and tertiary boycotts of Israel, though most still maintain their primary boycotts. Boycotting Israeli companies is not quite the same as wishing for the ‘total destruction of Israel and death to the Jews’.

The Saudi peace initiative of 2002 (prior to the US invasion of Iraq and the relaunching of Iranian power dreams) set out a set of conditions under which Arab states could offer full recognition to Israel. The then-Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia then obtained the backing of the Arab League for that plan. This hardly suggests that the underlying motive is death and destruction.

I’d certainly agree that the Arab states have not done enough to rein in their media on anti-Israeli, anti-Semitic writings. The Saudis could move faster to rectify a 70-year history of extremist religious intolerance. But the facts in the region have changed over the past few years. The analyses offered above, unfortunately, have not.