New 9/11 evidence paints Saudis in a bad light

The global War on Terror was based on a mistake.

That’s the major new claim made in a new piece in today’s Atlantic magazine. As part of a new filing in a lawsuit brought by the families of 9/11 victims against the government of Saudi Arabia, new evidence points to deep Saudi complicity.

The 71-page document goes on to list all the ways Saudi officials helped al-Qaeda operatives in the run-up to the attack. It names two individuals Fahad al-Thumairy, an imam at a Los Angeles mosque and a Saudi diplomat, and Omar al-Bayoumi, who masqueraded as a graduate student “not rogue operators but rather the front end of a conspiracy that included the Saudi embassy in Washington and senior government officials in Riyadh.”

“The evidence assembled,” the piece continues, suggests that “the actions Thumairy and Bayoumi took to support the hijackers were actually deliberate, sustained, and carefully coordinated with other Saudi officials”. The reasons for invading Iraq seem less clear by the day…