(Weekly Standard) Stephen Schwartz - Last week, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing, titled "Saudi Arabia: Friend or Foe in the War on Terror?" in order to air expert comment on the Saudi Arabia Accountability Act of 2005. The hearing examined a Freedom House report titled "Saudi Publications on Hate Ideology Invade American Mosques," issued last January. Daniel Glaser, Treasury deputy assistant secretary for Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes, allowed that the Saudis had shut down terror-financing charities inside their territory but let these operations continue their work abroad. At the most fundamental level, the Saudi response to terrorism remains weak. A five-part study of the emergence of terrorism and extremism in the kingdom, published in October in the daily Al-Riyad and released by the U.S. government's Foreign Broadcast Information Service, is notable for its curiously opaque language. Islamist extremism is described as a "dubious ideology" of a "misguided faction," not as murderous terrorism. The study argues that this problem "can only be remedied by discussion and advice."
2005-11-15 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive