With friends like these.. . .

From Front Page Magazine:

It was supposed to be one of those international “ho-hum” conferences, dedicated to endangered species.

But in a surprise move, the government of Saudi Arabia turned it into an international confrontation, using its veto power to prevent an American conservationist group from presenting what it called “actionable information” that tied top Saudi and United Arab Emirates leaders to al Qaeda.

UN officials called the Saudi move to ban the U.S group, which had official United Nations observer status, “unprecedented.” The UN actually tried to facilitate the appearance of the U.S. group at last Friday’s meeting in Geneva of the 54th Standing Committee of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). That may have been a first in UN history.

The conservationist group, the Union for the Conservation of Raptors (UCR), said it was prepared to present “new evidence” of ongoing smuggling operations that tied top Saudi and United Arab Emirates leaders to al Qaeda.

[Snip]
In exchange for the bribes – which I am told totaled over a half-million dollars - the UN official authorized the shipment of smuggled falcons by the UAE and the Saudi government to royal hunting camps in Central Asia, where the Arab rulers “met with top al Qaeda officials and international arms dealers,” said UCR spokesman Alan Parrot.

[Snip]

The month long falconry camps are “al Qaeda’s boardroom,” Parrot said in his letter to the CITES secretariat.

“Those same royal falconry camps for which the U.S. CITES Secretariat makes administrative allowances that permit import/export licenses to be issued, provide ongoing material support to al-Qaeda’s leaders,” he wrote.

“Cars, cash, weapons, and medicine are transferred to al-Qaeda in these camps,” which “continue as the venue of first-choice for clandestine meetings between al-Qaeda and U.S. “allies” from Saudi Arabia and the UAE,” Parrot added.

The luxury hunting camps provided an extraordinary opportunity for top al Qaeda leaders, including Osama Bin Laden, to meet with top Arab princes and solicit money from them, while engaging in their favorite sport: hunting the Houbara bustard with peregrine and Gyrofalcons.

Former White House counter-terrorism official Richard A. Clarke told the 9/11 Commission that the United States was planning to bomb a royal falconry camp in Pakistan where Osama Bin Laden was present in the late1990s, but called off the raid because a senior government minister from the United Arab Emirates was also present.

Bin Laden and his top aid, Ayman al-Zawahiri, no longer come to the month-long hunts, but continue to send personal representatives who are “treated with extraordinary deference,” Parrot told me.

[Snip]

“We have direct eye-witnesses in the camps who are telling us that representatives of bin Laden continue to come into these camps, and walk away with luxury cars and cash even today,” Parrot said.

[Snip]

The United States has asked the United Arab Emirates for several years to cease funding the royal falcon hunting camps in Central Asia, because they are a known fund-raising venue for al Qaeda. Until today, the UAE has refused those U.S. requests. And now, in an unusual manner, the Saudi government has shown that it, too, has something to hide in these falcon camps.

The UCR says it has extensive documentation, including video-taped eye-witness testimony, that shows beyond any reasonable doublt the direct involvement of top Saudi and UAE officials with al Qaeda.

The Saudi's are not our friends. It may be in both our interests to act like we are friends, but we aren't. The UAE is not our friend either. Is there anyone out there who still thinks turning over the management of our major ports of entry to them would have been a good idea?