The Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States is Prince Bandar. Former President George H.W. Bush is a very good friend of his. His nickname in the first Bush White House was ‘Bandar Bush.’

The Carlyle Group is a hugely wealthy investment company. It manages $19 billion in assets and owns companies in government regulated industries like telecommunications, health care, and military weaponry. They don’t actually manufacture weapons, but they buy up weapons companies, make them profitable and then re-sell them for large amounts of money. Carlyle owned United Defense, the company that builds the Bradley armored fighting vehicle. The bin Laden family had at least $2 million invested in the Carlyle Group.

The Carlyle Group has included some of the most powerful people in the world as partners, directors, and advisors: Former President George H.W. Bush and his former Secretary of State James Baker; Frank Carlucci, Secretary of Defense under Pres. Ronald Reagan; and John Major, the ex- British Prime Minister. Other Carlyle associates have included heads of state from the Philippines, South Korea, and Thailand, as well as cabinet officials and ambassadors from the U.S. and other countries. Current President George W. Bush was on the board of directors of a Carlyle company.

Osama bin Laden was born and raised in Saudi Arabia. His father, Mohammed Awad bin Laden, was one of the wealthiest contractors in Saudi Arabia and established very close friendship with the powerful Saudi royal family which continues to this day.

The United States government began funding the mujahadeen in Afghanistan in 1979, under the Carter administration. The mujahadeen were Muslims who fought to repulse the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. One of the main leaders of the mujahadeen was a wealthy Saudi Arabian named Osama bin Laden.

Fifteen of the nineteen people who hijacked planes on September 11, 2001 were from Saudi Arabia. Not one of them was from Iraq.

Iraq has more proven oil reserves than any other country in the world except Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia is the largest supplier of oil to the United States. It has the largest proven oil reserves in the world. Saudi Arabia supplies the United States with one and a half million barrels of oil a day.

George W. Bush speaks frequently of the need to bring freedom and democracy to Iraq. However, he has never publicly demanded that Saudi Arabia allow free elections. Saudi Arabia is a kingdom where the rulers tolerate little if any dissent.

The Saudi government spent more than $170 billion on armaments in the 1990s. A large portion of this business went through U.S. corporations, including the Carlyle Group.

The Saudi Arabian government has often acted informally on behalf of the United States government. For example, when the Reagan administration needed help funneling money to the Nicaraguan Contras to overthrow the democratically-elected Nicaraguan government, it was the Saudis who provided $30 million in secret cash.

It’s estimated that Saudi Arabians have a trillion dollars invested in the U.S. stock market and another trillion dollars deposited in U.S. banks.

According to Amnesty International in its 2003 report on Saudi Arabia:

Gross human rights violations continued and were exacerbated [made worse] by the government policy of “combating terrorism” in the wake of the 11 September 2001 attacks in the USA... Hundreds of suspected religious activists and critics of the state were arrested, and the legal status of most of those held from previous years remained shrouded in secrecy. Women continued to suffer severe discrimination. Torture and illtreatment remained rife.

In 2000, the Saudi government publicly beheaded 125 people, many in a place known as “Chop-Chop Square” in Riyadh.

According to Richard Clarke, counterterrorism advisor to President Bill Clinton and President George W. Bush, Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi government had no connection to the terrorist attacks of September 11. However, Clarke has testified under oath that President Bush ordered him to find a connection between Saddam Hussein and the September 11 attacks.

Shortly after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in early August 1990, the Saudi government allowed the United States to station tens of thousands of troops in Saudi Arabia. This outraged many Saudis, who were deeply offended by non-Islamic military forces in the country that is home to Islam’s holiest sites. One of these outraged Saudis was Osama bin Laden.

In the days and weeks following the terrorist attacks of September 11th, the White House approved flights by at least six private jets and almost two dozen commercial planes that flew 142 Saudis, including 24 members of the bin Laden family, out of the United States. The FBI was unable to extensively question any of these individuals about information they might have about the September 11th attacks.

James R. Bath was a friend of future President George W. Bush and served with Bush in the Texas Air National Guard. Bath sold one of his first planes to the bin Laden family and later managed money for the bin Ladens in the United States. Around the same time, Bath invested in George W. Bush’s first oil exploration company, Arbusto.

Saudi Arabia is a very unequal society. It has a large Islamic fundamentalist movement that is opposed to the Saudi royal family. Since the early 1980s, many US government officials have worried about a revolution in Saudi Arabia. President Reagan pledged that he would not allow Saudi Arabia to become another Iran, alluding to the uprising that toppled the U.S.-supported dictator and brought to power the Islamic fundamentalist leader Ayatollah Khomenei.

The morning of the September 11th terrorist attacks, the Carlyle Group was holding its annual meeting at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Washington, D.C. Among those in attendance were James A. Baker (Secretary of State for the first President Bush and the representative of George W. Bush during the 2000 election controversy in Florida), and Shafiq bin Laden, half brother of Osama bin Laden.

On February 6, 2003, President George W. Bush said: “Senior members of Iraqi intelligence and al-Qaida have met at least eight times since the early 1990s. Iraq has sent bomb-making and document forgery experts to work with al-Qaida” and “Iraq has also provided al-Qaida with chemical and biological weapons training.”

In their final report, the bi-partisan commission investigating the September 11th attacks addressed the question of links between Iraq and al-Qaida. “We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qaida cooperated on attacks against the United States,” they wrote. In an earlier staff report, they also wrote: “Bin Laden is said to have requested space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded.”

Vice President Dick Cheney became CEO of the Halliburton corporation after he served as Secretary of Defense during the first Gulf War. Halliburton chose him as CEO in part because of his close ties with leaders in the Middle East, particularly in Saudi Arabia. In his last year at Halliburton, Cheney was paid $34 million. Halliburton has received huge contracts worth billions of dollars during the current Iraq war.

The Project for a New American Century (PNAC) is a “think tank” of the office of the book with a book with a that believes the United States must protect its political and economic interests around the world by using aggressive military and economic power. They believe America should stand in the world unchallenged by any other country. PNAC members in the Bush administration included Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz. Immediately following the September 11 attacks, they began to push for attacking Iraq.