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Institute for Public Accuracy
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Saudi Bombing
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WASHINGTON
- May 14 - BEAU GROSSCUP, bgrosscup@csuchico.edu
Author of The Newest Explosions of Terrorism and
professor of international relations at California State University in Chico,
Grosscup said on an Institute for Public Accuracy news release on April 3,
2003: "The U.S. invasion of Iraq increases the likelihood of attacks
against the U.S." He said today: "It would seem that this is the
first shot fired from Al-Qaeda or other anti-Saudi monarchy elements since the
invasion of Iraq, though it's curious that they have not claimed
responsibility.... Just as the U.S. government backed Saddam Hussein during the
height of his atrocities and the Taliban were deemed useful and politically
acceptable business partners if they would make pipeline deals, so too might
allegations of Saudi Arabia's ties to terrorist groups be used as a
justification for military action against the Saudi monarchy if it doesn't
co-operate with western oil interests in the future."
WILLIAM HARTUNG, hartung@newschool.edu,
www.worldpolicy.org/projects/arms,
www.commondreams.org/views03/0513-06.htm
Director of the World Policy Institute's Arms Trade Resource
Center, Hartung said today: "The fact that one of the targets in Saudi
Arabia was a U.S. private military corporation called Vinnell raises serious
questions about the role of 'executive mercenaries' and corporations that
profit from war and instability. This is the second time in eight years that
Vinnell's operations in Saudi Arabia have been the target of a terrorist
attack. In 1995 a car bomb blasted through an Army training program Vinnell was
involved with." Hartung wrote an article for the Progressive
magazine about Vinnell entitled "Mercenaries Inc.: How a U.S. Company
Props Up the House of Saud."
PRATAP CHATTERJEE, pchatterjee@igc.org,
www.corpwatch.org/issues/PID.jsp?articleid=6029
Chatterjee is with CorpWatch and wrote the article
"Vinnell Corporation: 'We Train People to Pull Triggers.'" He said
today: "[Vinnell] has been controlled in the past through a web of
interlocking ownership by a partnership that included James A. Baker III and
Frank Carlucci, former U.S. secretaries of state and defense under presidents
George [H.W.] Bush and Ronald Reagan respectively.... In an interview with Newsweek,
a former U.S. Army officer who now works for Vinnell described the company's
first recruitment as putting together 'a ragtag army of Vietnam veterans for a
paradoxical mission: to train Saudi Arabian troops to defend the very oil
fields that Henry Kissinger recently warned the U.S. might one day have to
invade.' The article quoted another Vinnell employee, also a former U.S. army
officer, as saying: 'We are not mercenaries because we are not pulling
triggers... We train people to pull triggers.'"
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