Per the article, they started to change policy a bit after some of the groups they were sponsoring started attacking the monarchy:
Astonishingly, the attacks of 9/11 had little effect on the Saudi approach to religious extremism, as diplomats and intelligence officials have attested. What finally changed royal minds was the experience of suffering an attack on Saudi soil. In May 2003, gunmen and suicide bombers struck three residential compounds in Riyadh, killing 39 people. The authorities attributed the attacks to al-Qaeda, and cooperation with the U.S. improved quickly and dramatically.
Fuck it pisses me off. The oil embargoes in the 70s were the pants on fire moments we should have put an ungodly amount of R&D into nuclear, fusion, solar, wind, and batteries. And built Metro lines.
Jimmy Carter tried to convince America to move to renewables, but was stymied by the Iran Crisis. Carter put solar panels on the White House, and Reagan removed them. Reagan's Veep was Texas oilman George HW Bush, who'd called Reagan's tax cuts for the wealthy nonsense before being asked to join the ticket.
If the US can choose who rules North Korea, sell trillions worth of weapons to them, buy cheap oil from them, and install as many military bases as they want on their lands, then North Korea would've been the US closest ally no matter how many crimes against humanity they commit against their people.
Plenty of people were collecting and posting evidence like this in the early/mid 00s, a lot of it's probably still searchable if you want to comb through, I don't know, the archives of fark.com, suck. com*, plastic. com*, I dunno a hundred other dusty forgotten forums. In many ways the internet we have today is structured to hide a lot of realizations people had in those times about the changes that happened under the Bush admin. The jet fuel line is just the echoes of crank theories that got turned into a joke meant to silence that effort.
*dead websites only available on the internet archive, the links probably go to something fucked up now so please don't follow them
Why is this coming out now? Like we know... Why is this a news story, now? I am absolutely not a conspiracy theorist, but this makes me feel like one. Is something going to happen to Saudi Arabia... Are some powers at be trying to sway public opinion for some reason?
Because it's too late for anyone to do anything with this information. It's the same reason why they don't mind us knowing about the SS-level war crimes the US perpetrated in Vietnam - they know it's far too late for the majority of people in the US to care.
Bibi is ready to sacrifice everyone and everything to stay in power. He’s done, he knows it and is airing dirty laundry in retaliation as he throws his tantrum on his way to The Hague.
Very similar to Trump, nothing to lose. Hopefully someone does something about him quickly. Bull in a china shop
Just planting the seeds to manufacture consent for a future war/invasion/destructive action. I assume after Israel fully takes over Palestine, Israel won't have as much of a need to feign friendliness or even neutrality to countries like Saudi Arabia (Egypt is likely also on the hit list). The bad actions of enemy states are always useful to bring up at a later date to build a case for their destruction. For example, China's human rights abuses were allowed to happen for a long time with maybe a call-out here or there (planting the seeds), but the case intensified when China threatening the US's top world economic spot became even a remote possibility.
No shit...? The only reason that Saudi Arabia isn't a stretch of glass is because they were providing oil whilst Iraq was making moves to cut it off. Sate your bloodlust and destroy a regional inconvenience at the same time? That's a freebie.
Just like Israel, this revelation won’t affect our relations with them, because the US government cares about money, not people, and to them the massive boost that defense contractors got from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were worth the lives lost.
The 9/11 Commission Report recounted numerous contacts between Bayoumi and Thumairy, but described only “circumstantial evidence” of Thumairy as a contact for the two hijackers and stated that it didn’t know whether Bayoumi’s first encounter with the operatives occurred “by chance or design.” But the evidence assembled in the ongoing lawsuit suggests that the actions Thumairy and Bayoumi took to support the hijackers were actually deliberate, sustained, and carefully coordinated with other Saudi officials.
The 9/11 Commission Gee Dubby and Darth Cheney fought against for a year? That they refused to testify under oath to? That they wanted Dark Lord Henry Kissinger to chair, and appointed him to do so before a hurricane of backlash slapped a hair of shame into their faces?
That 9/11 Commission? You say they fucked up some key evidence? No. It can’t be. They met for years. There must be a simple explanation.
After 9/11, President George W. Bush and his team argued that a nonstate actor like al-Qaeda could not have pulled off the attacks alone, and that some country must have been behind it all. That state, they insisted, was Iraq—and the United States invaded Iraq. In a savage irony, they may have been right after all about state support, but flat wrong about the state.
For more than two decades, through two wars and domestic upheaval, the idea that al-Qaeda acted alone on 9/11 has been the basis of U.S. policy. A blue-ribbon commission concluded that Osama bin Laden had pioneered a new kind of terrorist group—combining superior technological know-how, extensive resources, and a worldwide network so well coordinated that it could carry out operations of unprecedented magnitude. This vanguard of jihad, it seemed, was the first nonstate actor that rivaled nation-states in the damage it could wreak.
That assessment now appears wrong.
Yeah no shit. It was wrong at the time. Many, many people said so.
Like “it turns out basing our economies on destroying the planet might have been a bad idea.” Yeah. Howabout that.
Astonishingly, the attacks of 9/11 had little effect on the Saudi approach to religious extremism, as diplomats and intelligence officials have attested. What finally changed royal minds was the experience of suffering an attack on Saudi soil. In May 2003, gunmen and suicide bombers struck three residential compounds in Riyadh, killing 39 people. The authorities attributed the attacks to al-Qaeda, and cooperation with the U.S. improved quickly and dramatically.
Suspicion: The attack was actually planned and/or executed by the CIA or some US agency you've never heard of. RIP, 39 people, but America got the policy cooperation it wanted.