Remora

Another article about Bush's ties with the bin Ladens, this time in In These Times (which is going to be publishing a review of mine in the next week. Okay, Limited Inc is biased towards these guys. In these Times? Hey, greatest little lefty mag in American, if you ask us).



The story would be uninteresting if it claimed, as others have claimed, that the Bushes have financial interests in common with the bin Laden family's interests. This, to my mind, is a rather sleazy guilt by association technique. Rosalyn Carter was once photographed with the Reverand Jim Jones, but that doesn't mean she was privy to the Guyana Punch Bowl massacre. I don't think the left should make semi-racist background noises about Saudi financiers. If you are an Arab with money, you aren't necessarily dirty. I am rather shocked at how easily the progressive mind can embrace that stereotype.

More interesting is the description of Bushypoo's ties with BCCI, the notorious suckers bank international that came apart, along with Clark Clifford's reputation, in the early nineties. Ah, Children, you don't remember Clark Clifford? Once a D.C. giant, laid low by the BCCI scandal. Like most D.C. giants, his reputation depended on his context -- that D.C. sterility, that D.C. second handedness, which even in Henry Adams' day was the outstanding quality of the town:

"Every hope or thought which had brought Adams to Washington proved to be absurd. No one wanted him; no one wanted any of his friends in reform; the blackmailer alone was the normal product of politics as of business."

But lets not be harsh -- our D.C. giants exude the morals of the blackmailer, without necessarily practicing his arts.

Well, to continue: the BCCI connection would make sense as a channel for money to and from various political "action" groups, like Osama bin Laden's. Most interesting part of the In these Times article is the last two grafs:

'Worst of all, bin Mahfouz [a BCCI 'principal', whatever that means]allegedly has been financing the bin Laden terrorist network�making Bush a U.S. citizen who has done business with those who finance and support terrorists. According to USA Today, bin Mahfouz and other Saudis attempted to transfer $3 million to various bin Laden front operations in Saudi Arabia in 1999. ABC News reported the same year that Saudi officials stopped bin Mahfouz from contributing money directly to bin Laden. (Bin Mahfouz�s sister is also a wife of Osama bin Laden, a fact that former CIA Director James Woolsey revealed in 1998 Senate testimony.)


When President Bush announced he is hot on the trail of the money used over the years to finance terrorism, he must realize that trail ultimately leads not only to Saudi Arabia, but to some of the same financiers who originally helped propel him into the oil business and later the White House. The ties between bin Laden and the White House may be much closer than he is willing to acknowledge."

What those connections are actually about is the impossibility of being rich and being unplugged into this world where everyone plugs in. And if you are rich and buying flight training simulators for your on the leash apprentices, you are still, as a wealthy man, doing business with the men and companies your apprentices, unleashed, are going to attack. The point here isn't that Bush was secretly financing bin Laden, but that the bin Ladens of the world are battling against the network in which they are as stuck as Brer Rabbit was in the tarbaby. It is this that made the 9/11 attack not only criminal, but vain in the deepest sense. The world isn't going back there.