Things that make you go hmmm...

As you may have heard, this Saudi fellow named Omar al-Bayoumi reportedly got money from someone got money from the wife of Saudi Arabia ambassador to the US. al-Bayoumi may have used the ambassador's wife's money to help two of the 9/11 hijackers set up shop in the San Diego.

As far as we know, this is al-Bayoumi's excuse:

Before he vanished, al-Bayoumi offered a benign explanation of how he met with [the two hijackers] Almihdhar and Alhazmi. He told investigators that he just happened to be in a restaurant at the Los Angeles airport and overheard the two men talking in Arabic. He introduced himself and offered to help the two newcomers get settled and adjust to life in southern California. It was a chance meeting, he insisted to the skeptical agents. His offer of help was nothing more than the usual charity extended by one Muslim “brother” to another.

Islam does foster a culture of generosity and charity, but this is crap. So as of today, reasonable people can assume at the very least that al-Bayoumi lied to US investigators and is now on the lam--probably in Saudi Arabia. If the Saudi royal family really is a good budy of ours, they will track this schmuck down promptly and hand him over. Let's hope so.

Until then, folks great and small are going to wonder out loud how linked to terrorism the Saudi government is. But let's give the ambassador's wife the benefit of the doubt and she didn't know where this money went too. That's still pretty damning.

When you're funneling suitcases full of money (literally) to fundamentalists all over the world, you inevitably risk financing terrorism. Responsible individuals/organizations/governments/royals don't just worry about impropriety, they worry about the appearance of impropriety. To do that, the Saudi government would need to show some contrition for fostering Wahabiism/paying off bin Laden/etc.

But this was how NYT characterized the Saudi response on Friday:

For their part, Saudi officials have said they have assisted in important aspects of the investigation — for instance, providing confirmation of the identities of the Saudi hijackers.

This is a reporter's paraphrase, so a Saudi representative may have commented on an as-yet-unrevealed squad of crack commandos that Saudi Arabia sent into Afghanistan to root out al Qaeda (the way other allies did). But the fact that a Saudi representative asked to be given credit for admitting the identity of the 15 of 19 perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks on 2/05/02 speaks to the unserious attitude of the Saudi argument.

What we have here is an untenable situation that the Bush administration seems dead set on clinging to. Luckily, illogical policy fosters external irritants. One source of irritation is being needled by foreign heads of state. That's just what Russian president Vladimir Putin did last week:

"We should not forget about those who finance terrorism," Mr. Putin said, adding bluntly that most of the 19 terrorists who committed the Sept. 11 attacks "are citizens of Saudi Arabia, and we should not forget about that."
....
But Mr. Bush, instead of responding to the Russian's questions, simply brought the news conference to a close, saying: "We've got a plane to catch. Don't keep us waiting."

Putin is a waging a merciless meat-grinder war in Chechnya condemned by every country in the world, but he's able to spook Bush into ending a press conference.

Irritant #2: headstrong Senators. Senator Lieberman says, "The F.B.I. and maybe other parts of our government have seemed to want to almost defend the Saudis, or not be as aggressive as they should be about the Saudis."

This is part of why the administration doesn't want an investigation of the intelligence failures of 9/11. Hopefully this will force the dang issue.