Al Gore and Al Quaeda

Al's bashing of his own country while overseas turns out to be worse than I thought. IBD and Sister Toldjah have some unseemly details of the former Veep's Speech before the Jiddah Economic Forum, an event staged by oil-rich Saudi royalty, Gore indicted the American government for its "terrible abuses" of Arabs.

Well, for those of us who think that America isn't all That bad, it turns out our pal Al was snuggled in the Bin Laden pocket. The Saudi BinLadin Group - which is Saudi Arabia's largest construction company - is run by Osama bin Laden's brothers and cousins. Jeddah, the site of the forum attended by Gore, is Osama bin Laden's hometown. Although family members claim they've disowned bin Laden, his mother told reporters after the 9/11 attacks that she received advanced warning from him that something big was about to happen.
A wealthy bin Laden niece also reportedly abandoned her lower Manhattan apartment three weeks before the 9/11 attacks.

Not nice people, but who would prefer the bin Laden's to the Bush Administration?

"The conference was dominated by the Saudis' desire to overcome the pressures of September 11 and strengthen U.S.-Saudi ties . . . The BinLadin Group, one of the forum's backers, has been battered by its association with Osama." In January 2002, ex-President Clinton addressed the JEF, which paid him $267,000 for his speech. According to London's Financial Times.
Other JEF speakers that year included President Bush's younger brother, Neil.

So the Jiddah Forum had speakers of all political walks of life, but Gore is the only one who saw fit to unleash anti-American rhetoric in such a volatile environment. Another interesting aspect of this story is the fact it has been largely ignored by the MSM, who have gone overboard covering the current VP Dick Cheney's hunting accident. Apparently, Joe Six-Pack is supposed to be more concerned with an 18 hour reporting delay of a hunting accident than with a former VP blasting the US in Saudi Arabia. Combine this with past criticism's from the Left of Bush's ties to Saudi oil and the hypocrisy comes into a grim perspective.


Dhimmi Watch had this to say;
There have been voices since 9/11 decrying the President's close friendship with the Saudis and declaring that had Al Gore or John Kerry been President, the U.S. would have stood up more firmly to the chief enablers of the global jihad, the House of Saud. We at Jihad Watch have frequently been critical of Bush's ties to the Saudis, but this article indicates that the alternative would have been no better in this regard (and of course, much worse in others). American politics needs a third response to Islamic jihad. It has not arisen yet.