Speaker 1: You. I'm now listening to soft Core History.
Speaker 2: Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome back to soft Core History. I'm
your host for the week, Dan Chester, joined as always.
Speaker 1: By Robert Fox. What is going on?
Speaker 2: How are you?
Speaker 1: I'm doing all right and I'm pretty good today.
Speaker 2: I got a doozy for you today.
Speaker 1: Good topic.
Speaker 2: Got into a mood Jake, our former co host, Jake Goldman. Yeah,
now an oyster farmer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the true thing that happened.
Speaker 2: He left us to work the dum manual labor work
the oyster fields. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He recommended a documentary for me.
Speaker 2: Okay, and I got high on mushrooms on Friday night
and I watched it perfect, and it influenced this episode.
Speaker 1: It's I hope it influences the writing. That's what I
really hope the mushrooms influenced.
Speaker 2: Like my Hannibal episode.
Speaker 1: It's like a real non linear Yeah that when we
went to watch Oppenheimer and you took mushrooms and then
stayed up all night riding an episode on Animal until.
Speaker 2: Six in the morning.
Speaker 1: There. Yeah, yeah, that.
Speaker 2: Was such a good experience though, going to the bar
and then watching Oppenheimer just zooted out of my mind.
It was so fun.
Speaker 1: I just had beers and then went home and fell asleep.
I'm glad you had a good time. I had a
great time watching movies, one of my favorites.
Speaker 2: So the documentary was called Bitter Lake by Adam Curtis.
Have you heard about this?
Speaker 1: No, no, this is gonna be completely fresh.
Speaker 2: So it's a BBC documentary. He's also done a documentary
that came out a couple of years ago called hyper Normalization.
Speaker 1: Okay, bitter bitter Lake, bitter Lake. That's it's funny that
you say the BBC because it's an extremely British sounding
thing title bitter Lake.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Fdr King of Saudi Arabia. They meet in the forties
kind of open up shop to the Middle.
Speaker 1: East for like setting up shop there, like yeah, okay, Uh.
Speaker 2: We're gonna actually go into America's relationship with the Kingdom
of Saudi Arabia. Okay, and I thought it was appropriate.
You now, the royal rumble just happened.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia, Uh live season
kicking off?
Speaker 2: Yeah, lives about the kickoff. They're losing guys left and right,
are they are? They just brooks Now Patrick Reed left,
Oh he did. Yeah, they're starting to get like all
the year.
Speaker 1: Funny. The PGA was like, we don't want you back,
Patrick Reid.
Speaker 2: No, read's necessary. Yeah, we need him.
Speaker 1: He's got a jacket.
Speaker 2: He's got a jacket. But he's also kind of a villain,
so you need.
Speaker 1: He's a good heel. He is a very good heel,
So was Bryson. Bryson's a good hell. Which funny because
both Bryson and Reid, uh just remind me of like
nineties bullies, Like Bryson's the main bully and reads like
his fat bully friend. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's definitely the henchman.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, probably dies in the Dui in the movie.
Speaker 2: So I've done something similar to this before with like
our relationship with France, starting from the Revolutionary War, right
and just kind of built all the way up. So
I'm gonna go from actually Saudi Arabia and the seventeen
hundreds and just kind of the first state, the first
Saudi state, Okay, all the way up until to nine
to eleven. Okay, I'm gonna go all the way to
nine to eleven.
Speaker 1: Perfect U is the seventeen hundreds when they broke off
of the Turks. I guess, because I know the Turk,
I don't know if they control the whole thing.
Speaker 2: Well, I figured i'd give you a little background.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 2: So the majority of the episode, though, is going to
be about them the meeting, Okay, all the way to
nine to eleven. Okay, but this first half is just
gonna be a little background on Saudi Arabia.
Speaker 1: So the meeting all the way up until what the
meeting was about.
Speaker 2: The First Saudi state was established in seventeen twenty seven
outside of Riyad and expanded too much of present day
Saudi Arabia thanks to an alliance between tribal ruler Muhammad
bin Sad obviously Saudi Arabian SOD, and religious leader Muhammad
beIN Abdah Wahab, the founder of Wahabbism.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, wha, that sounds oddly familiar.
Speaker 2: In seventeen forty five, Are you familiar with Wahabism?
Speaker 1: I mean, I know Wahaba's schools are like, hey, America sucks,
we should kill it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's a branch of Islam that's a little
bit extreme. Okay, Okay, they might not think so. It's
also been the Islamic sect that the Kingdom of Sad
has adopted throughout the history, all the way up until
like NBS. NBS is currently trying to remove the old guard,
kill it out a little bit. He's trying to modernize.
He doesn't really get down with Wahabbism.
Speaker 1: Right, right, right, I feel like that's the whole subplot
of Siriana. Matt Damon's just yelling at a Saudi guy
like your number two export is fucking dates, dude.
Speaker 2: So Bensald's eldest son, Abd al Aziz took charge of
military operations and they went to war with the anti
Wahabi chief of Riodd for thirty years. Just gonna get
ahead of it. I'm gonna mess up some names.
Speaker 1: Look, they're not We're just Americans here.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna blame being from Delco in the Philadelphia area
for my I don't know pronunciation and accent there there's
but it's really because I'm a dumb ass.
Speaker 1: There's only like a small section of the world whose
names are mostly impossible for us not to fuck up.
Right you think you think if you did an episode
on the history of Poland, you'd be sticking the landing regularly.
Speaker 2: England a little better. Fucking it doesn't matter, love mea
John Smith.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I will say there are some countries that like
just do, for whatever reason, accidentally lend themselves to uh
like angle like English speakers like, I feel like Korea
is not too bad. Yeah, get a lot of moons
and stuff like that. They also adopt American names, yeahnt
that doesn't hurt either. The South Koreans do. Yeah, but yeah,
I mean Saudi Arabia, Poland honestly even Spanish names. Half
the time, I'm like, eh.
Speaker 2: What is this?
Speaker 1: French is way worse than you would think.
Speaker 2: Ben Saa dies in seventeen sixty five, so his son
elevates himself to his father's seat as ruler. Wahab would
remove himself from the public but still act as Azizu's
advisor and expand his teachings that would help the Wahabi
sect of Islam explode in the region and is very
much still in the picture for the older generation of
Saudi's to this day.
Speaker 1: So Wahabism or whatever is that still under the umbrella
of Sunni or Shia. I always forget which is who's who?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really just I ran verse everybody.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, but so's it's a undersect another thing. Yeah,
but it's not a third It's not like Mormon Catholic,
h fucking Presbyteria.
Speaker 2: No, no, yeah, yeah, okay, okay, it's just like all right,
we're Catholic. But then there's this we're in the Opus day. Yeah,
extremist like fraternity right right within it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Opus all right, Muslim opus day, I got it.
Speaker 2: Alasise captured Riad in seventeen seventy three. His son would
capture Medina in eighteen oh four. In Mecca in eighteen
oh six, Seeing the grow in Saudi power, the Ottoman
Sultan instructed his Egyptian viceroy to reconquer the area, which
he did in eighteen eighteen. The Egyptians occupied the area
until eighteen forty, and they gave power to local Saudis
who were loyal to the Ottoman governor in Garrison.
Speaker 1: So the Ottomans see that and they're just like, nope.
Speaker 2: Gotta squash that. Nineteen sixteen, with the sport of English
and French, Hassan bin Ali led a pan Arab revolt
against the Ottoman Empire, with the goal of creating a
single Arab state that would expand from Yemen to Syria.
The Al Sad faction was still around, but chose to
sit it out due to their long standing rivalry with
Bin Ali and Mecca. After the Ottoman Empire's defeat in
World War One, England and France went back on the
word of supporting a pan Arab state with Hassan. England
backs the Al Sades. There's more conflict, and Bien Saud
eventually wins power in the area in nineteen twenty seven.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of people are being mad at
England and France for that, but I get it. They
go they show back up after the war's over, and
they're like, listen, stuff was crazy. We were just agreeing
to shoot. We didn't even know. We didn't even think
we were going to.
Speaker 2: Be alive at the end of you We were really
just trying to take the Ottomans away from us. Yeah,
right here, we're going to kind of finance this revolution.
The the Ottomans stopped coming to us.
Speaker 1: It was actually really funny how badly they wanted to
like knock the Ottomans out of the war. And I
just don't think the Ottomans were that doing much like
that's whole that's Churchill's whole thing with fucking Gallipoli. It's
like he's like, we needed a in front, our fird front,
we needed prompt his biggest mistake in World War One. Yeah,
there's like a whole argument about that. And uh, he
has a couple actually yeah, he's a couplets. We got
a couple real uh annoyed comments on our latest sketch
about me like sort of but not really throwing Churchill
under the bus. It's like, calm down, calm down.
Speaker 2: You can't please anyone.
Speaker 1: No, no, I actually commented Mold the Times. I was like,
I said, possibly potentially.
Speaker 2: Because the minute you say anything good about Churchill, they're like,
actually he was worse than healer.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I was like, trust me, I'm pro Churchill. Calm down.
Speaker 2: A certain group of his supporters wanted to continue expansion
of Wahabbiism into Jordan, Iraq and Kuwait, but Bianzad knew
that meant direct conflict with England, so we told them
absolutely not.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can't really swing that.
Speaker 2: They revolt and he just wipes them out.
Speaker 1: In like nineteen twenty nine, there's.
Speaker 2: Just like this sect of his loyalist that just want
to go further and further right right right, And it's
just like, now we're not doing that.
Speaker 1: You're like, you know, it's cool, acting like we're in
the tenth century, but boy, I'd like to take it
back to the seventh.
Speaker 2: In nineteen thirty two, he united the divided area and
became the founder of Saudi Arabia. So the kingdom. Yeah,
the legit country that we know today.
Speaker 1: I kind of by the way, I guarantee you the
reason England and France went back on it is because
they're like, we need these oil havevers to not be
a united front, if at all possible, divide and conquer.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're like, we just want to war the first
war ever with oil. We really can't have a gigantic
petro state controlling Because this was like, well.
Speaker 2: That's the theory as to why they took out Gadafi,
because you wanted to unite, like the African Front. Yeah,
we wanted to get the African nations together.
Speaker 1: Well, good luck with that. I don't I feel like
Gaddafi's not the man to put that on his back.
Speaker 2: Hillary Clinton made sure I don't think she needed to.
Speaker 1: I just don't think it was. I don't think he's
the guy.
Speaker 2: A little before all that, great Britain was the first
country to recognize Saudi Arabia as an independent state, but
then the US followed suit. It been SAAD then granted
permission to the US company Standard Oil of California to
explore the area for oil in the country's eastern province.
Speaker 1: But they weren't getting enough out of Texas and California.
I guess not. They're like, you know what, what they
could just do it cheaper. Honestly, we just outsourced oil
for like one hundred years because it was cheaper probably.
I mean, it's a gold mine over there. Yeah, there's
so much. I know whether we have a ton too,
But I think it was just like, you know, we
could pay these guys jet. I think it really was just.
Speaker 2: Don't we like sitting on our reserves though? Just bleed
everyone else dry. Yeah, so we're the last country with oil.
Speaker 1: Yeah that makes sense.
Speaker 2: Is that kind of the game plan? That probably the
long term?
Speaker 1: Not against it? If that is, If that's your thinking,
I get it.
Speaker 2: Saudi affairs were handled by the US delegation in Cairo, Egypt.
In nineteen forty three, the US finally sent a resident ambassador.
As the US Saudi relationship started growing slowly, World War
two was beginning its first phase.
Speaker 1: Maybe I've said on the show before, but the tire rationing,
like the rubber driving rationing, they said it was for
rubber for tires or whatever, it was really for useless
gas that we need that shit. We got Shermans to
push down people. So I also think if you wanted
to like alt history like whatever, like oh, Hitlers Burger's mistake,
like why you would ever want to touch the Soviet
Union instead of just taking a hard right turn down
down to the Middle East and just be like, now,
the only country you can get oil from anywhere is
the United States of America, and our U boats are
going to make one hundred percent motherfucking sure that that
shit ain't getting out of anywhere.
Speaker 2: On February sixteenth, nineteen forty three, FDR declared that the
defense of Saudi Arabia is vital to the defense of
the United States, and thereby extended the len lease program
to the Kingdom.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we weren't just cashing checks to ship and ship
to Russia and the UK. It was going in fucking everywhere.
Speaker 2: Later that year, the President improved the creation of the
State Owned Petroleum Reserves Corporation, with the intent that it
purchased all Cassocks stock and thus gained control of Saudi
oil reserves.
Speaker 1: In the region. So we own all of it now,
all right.
Speaker 2: The plan was met with opposition and ultimately failed. Roosevelt
continued to court the government, and on February fourteenth, nineteen
forty five, he met the King aboard the USS Quincy
anchored on the Great Bitter Lake along the who Has Canal,
so it's by Egypt.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is stunning to me that FDR didn't have
a stroke sooner. Everything he's dealing with like this has
got to be like twentieth on his plate, and it's
still humongously important. Like how did he any smoker? By
the way, did he get anything done? I don't blame
him for getting jerked off by his cousin. Didn't have
time for anything else. He did a lot, just never stopped.
It just never stopped.
Speaker 2: I mean, between him and Wilson, there's an argument we've
had dictators in the US.
Speaker 1: Him probably especially to be honest, with the four terms
or winning four terms. I should say and all that
other stuff and not.
Speaker 2: Fascist but dictators.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, yea, yeah, benevolent.
Speaker 2: Well, I don't know if fucking Wilson was been that one.
Speaker 1: No, Wilson was just a dick.
Speaker 2: He was a dick.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Hey, let's just for for fun, say Wilson was
a dictator, he would rank so or his wife was,
you know when he was Yeah, yeah, yeah. Why the
first female dictator of the United States was Edith.
Speaker 2: I think Edith Wilson Ben Sad approved the US requests
to allow the US Air Force to fly over and
construct airfields in Saudi Arabia. Oil installations were rebuilt and
protected by the US. Pilgrimage routes were also protected, and
the US gained much needed direct route for military aircrafts
headed to Iran and the Soviet Union.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine if in the midst of World War two,
Hitler just stopped people from being able to pilgrimage, to
do their pilgrimages to Mecca. I feel like that what
ends up happening is like there's just a battle going
on in World War two, and like southern Europe, you know,
maybe around Ukraine, it's the Germans and the Russians, and
then all of a sudden, you essentially get like Paul Trades, No,
not even that, you get you get the boat pulling
up from Lord the Rings, and then the ghost army
just swarms out of it. It's just a billion Muslims,
just like absolutely not just fucking flying out of one boat.
Speaker 2: In nineteen forty five, after World War Two, Saudi citizens
began to feel uncomfortable with the US forces still operate
in the country. In contrast, the Saudi government saw the
US forces as a major component of its military defense strategy.
With the start of the Cold War, the US was
greatly concerned about Soviet communism and wanted to contain it
spread within the Arabian Peninsula, and Saudi security was at
the top of Washington's list of priorities.
Speaker 1: Now that makes sense, but I gotta say, I feel
like the Saudis were only ever a threat to cut
a deal with the Soviets instead of US, because there's
no world in which I could imagine the country that
contains Mecca and Medina from becoming an atheist, communist state.
Speaker 2: Fair. Absolutely no world, no world where that happens. The
Truman administration promised Ben Sad protection from Soviet influence, and
as a result, the US increased its presence in the region. Now,
this is a fun little tidbit. Nineteen forty eight, a
man named Muhammad scored a major breakthrough by secureing a
commission to build a palace for the future King Saud.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know who you talking about? Construction? I know who.
Speaker 2: Construction this was, of course, I know, Mohammed bin Laden.
Speaker 1: Yep, yeah, yep. People forget that Oslomon Laan was a
NEPO baby.
Speaker 2: Huge Nepo baby. Granted, you know, he's one of like
seventeen kids.
Speaker 1: Still what you don't You don't think all of Nick
Cannon's kids are going to be rich?
Speaker 2: Probably not. Actually, I don't know if Nick. I don't
know if Nick Cannon's got it like that.
Speaker 1: I think he well maybe not Saudi construction money like that.
But but Vanderbilt shure, he's good. He's good.
Speaker 2: I think you know, the bin Laden's in Saudi Arabia
at that time where the Vanderbilts, Okay, if i'd guess, okay,
just money wise, Yeah, we're.
Speaker 1: The only ones building anything pretty much. Yeah.
Speaker 2: His company, the bin Laden Group, participated in many large
infrastructure projects including building the housing for US military forces
in Riyad and at the Prince Sultan Air Base.
Speaker 1: Now, can I just put on I'm the stupidest person
on the internet hat for a minute.
Speaker 2: This is really just going to pivot into bin laden stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, but let's just put it. Let me
just put on my I'm the worst person you know
posting on Facebook for a minute. Yeah, he said he
got his first contract in nineteen forty eight. Yeap, what
country was nineteen what country was fund in nineteen forty year?
Speaker 2: Makes you think?
Speaker 1: Makes you think, makes you think, isn't that right? And
if you argue with my Facebook posts, I'll just call
you a sheep.
Speaker 2: So he became the Royal Families builder and was stacking
generational wealth in the process. In nineteen fifty, Aramco and
Saudi Arabia agreed on a fifty to fifty profit distribution
of the oil discovered in Saudi Arabia. In nineteen fifty one,
the Mutual Defense Assistance Agreement was put into action, and
this allowed for the US arms trade to Saudi Arabia
along with a US military training mission centered in Saudi Arabia.
So we got to sell them weapons. Baby let's go
about time. Ben Saud dies in nineteen fifty three and
his son takes power. Relations start to strain with Dwight d.
Eisenhower's new anti Soviet alliance pretty much combined in most
of the Kingdom's regional rivals and foes, heightening Saudi suspicions
of the US's intentions. Yeah, so everyone's coming together under
Eisenhower's fuck Communism movement.
Speaker 1: Fair enough. I also, by the way, like selling weapons
at that time. I know, like we get shipped on
for like arm sales now, but I feel like back
then we were just like we got a big stock pilot. Shit,
we just don't need anymore. Let's sell it. Why burn it? Yeah,
you know what I mean, Like, what are we gonna
do with these extra like eight million m one garns.
Speaker 2: That's like the whole plot to the movie War Dogs. Yeah,
Shonah Hill and Miles Teller, dude, just the whole find
a bunch of like old Soviet weapons, just sitting the
whole plot to uh Laulkins Laura War two.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like the Soviet Union collapses and all of a
sudden they don't need all these fucking tens and those
are real people. Yeah, yeah, movies inspired by real people.
Yeah yeah. But at the US, if they had a
World War two, we had a like whether it's the
whole thing, right, Like they haven't made a new purple
Heart since nineteen forty four or something like that.
Speaker 2: Right, it's the same thing.
Speaker 1: Like it's like, dude, with these Shermans are gonna be
outdated in like five years. These these you know, P
fifty one Mustangs or whatever are gonna be used. There's
they're already useless. Like there we get there's jet fighters. Now, like,
let's just go sell this dumb shit that we can
beat to someone who might need it.
Speaker 2: In October nineteen fifty five, Sad joined Egypt in their
pro Soviet strategy because they were a little suspicious Adviisenhower.
In nineteen sixty two, however, Egypt then attacks Saudi Arabia.
Speaker 1: It really do be your own Really, I didn't I
actually didn't know that.
Speaker 2: From bases in Yemen during the nineteen sixty two Yamini
Revolution because Saudi Arabia's anti revolution propaganda. What do you
mean they're anti Yemen? Well to this day, yeah, well
some things. The more things change, the more they say
the same.
Speaker 1: Egypt was really getting after it back.
Speaker 2: Egypt was bucking. Uh, we'll get to another major conflict
they get into.
Speaker 1: All assume I know what you're talking about, but oh.
Speaker 2: You probably should.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The Yam Kapor War, Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: This caused Sawd to seek US support. President John F.
Kennedy immediately respond to Saud's request by sending US warplanes
in July of nineteen sixty three to stop the attack.
At the end of the war, shortly before Prince Fasel
became king, the relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia
became healthy again. President Kennedy put on pressure to the
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to introduce modernized reform, which was essentially, hey,
you can't have slaves anymore.
Speaker 1: I don't think they listened.
Speaker 2: That's very funny. I find that very like they had
slaves up until Kennedy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and not like the kind of slaves they have now,
where they're like on the record slave right right right,
like on the books like these are our site. Like
now it's like you're a Filipino or a Sri Lankan
and you show up because you hear there's work, and
they just forget to pay you. They forget to pay you,
and they take your passport and the next thing you know,
you're buried under a soccer stadium.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they just use your bones right right right as foundation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's informal slavery.
Speaker 2: That's what they did to the Irish here.
Speaker 1: Not totally wrong. We did get a couple pennies for
our where our reparations for our trouble where God damn it,
it's Saint Patrick's Day.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, black people get a month, we get a day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that sounds fair. Honestly, I'm okay with that, fine,
okay with it. Not gonna litigate the amount of time
we need.
Speaker 2: In November nineteen sixty four, Fasil became the new king
of Saudi Araba after a conflict with his brother, and
that becomes a major deal in a second. Here, the
Nixon administration sought to rely on the Saudis and Iranians,
ironically as twin pillars to police American interest in the
Middle East. For regional security. You take up here, so
like two enemies, they are gonna be our guys.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but there's a little fun buffer area where the.
Speaker 2: Buffer well Iraq is Yeah, but it's just yeah, our powers,
the buffer, Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, it's part of the
twin pillar strategy. The US also attempted to improve relations
between the Saudis and Iranians. This included persuaded Iran to
remove its territorial claim to Rain.
Speaker 1: Do you think with this whole Sunni Shia thing? Like
Nixon or anyone? Obviously, Kennedy wouldn't do this, but like
Nixon or LBJ was just like, look, I get it.
We gotta live with Catholics. We don't like them. Okay,
they're full of shit, they're weird, we get it, but
we tolerate them.
Speaker 2: That would be something Nixon says, yeah.
Speaker 1: Or LBJ to be honest, like he was a good
old boy, Like.
Speaker 2: Listen, I I had to work with John.
Speaker 1: The goddamn pipist every day, carrying around his beads like
he's some kind of monk. I didn't get it. Boy,
can fuck though? Give him that? And then he whipped
out his dick. Yeah say hello to Jumbo.
Speaker 2: Not like me, but yeah, I mean, Kennedy was not
pushing Jumbo size stick.
Speaker 1: Kennedy wasn't pushing Jumbo, but I think his his coup
got more mileage than than lbj's.
Speaker 2: Honestly, I feel like JFK fuck like Leo, or at
least the reports of Leonardo DiCaprio, how he fucks.
Speaker 1: Which is what, Oh starfishing, starfish.
Speaker 2: But you know, throw the headphones in, put some music on,
not even listening to the woman.
Speaker 1: This, I will have to be pretty fast. I have
a meeting in five minutes.
Speaker 2: Just throws a record on.
Speaker 1: He's not trying to impress anyone's he is essentially going
through life masturbating with a partner. Yeah, yeah, using their body,
yeah to get off. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, there's a rise in oil prices during nineteen seventies
and nineteen seventy one, which enabled the Saudi government to
increase its US weapon purchases from fifteen point eight million
in nineteen seventy to three hundred and twelve million in
nineteen seventy two. Good lord, there's like, yeah, we'll take
everything you got.
Speaker 1: What do you need it for? Even it actually blows
my war that is coming, dude, It blows my mind,
especially in like modernish times. So the Egypt War blows
my mind. And then in Desert Storm, right, you know,
Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and he was kind of getting
ready allegedly to invade Saudi Arabia, and I it really is.
And I guess this happened a lot in Europe in
the Middle Ages and and and Renaissance and stuff like that.
But like it gives like when you attack Look, when
you attack Rome in medieval to total war, You're fucked.
You're fucked. Every other Christian nation comes down on your ass.
Speaker 2: Yeah, dude, shoot at the king. You best not on
miss you if you.
Speaker 1: I just don't understand how you can invade Saudi Arabia
and not immediately have your head cut off by your
entire population of Muslim citizens.
Speaker 2: Imagine if that somebody took the fucking Vatican. I mean,
it happened.
Speaker 1: It's happened. It's happened quite a few, I mean even,
But what the we do.
Speaker 2: In World War Two? Was there an army of Catholics
that rose.
Speaker 1: I mean kind of us. The Americans, like Hillary didn't
really fuck with Catholics, hedn't really fucked with Christianity. He
had like his own version. They did fuck with Catholics,
but not nearly as much because it was not politically
wise to do so at the time. You don't want
to lose half of Germany and all that other shit.
But yeah, they fucked with Catholics. I was gonna say though.
Italy though, did at one point say fuck you Vatican,
you're part of our country and then our hero. But
you know, Mussolini liberated the Vatican.
Speaker 2: Does Italy not get enough hate for what they did
in World War Two? No, because they flipped sides. They
did flip sides.
Speaker 1: But they were fascists for twenty years.
Speaker 2: I know, and just nothing really came of it. Here's
the thing, there's like no punishment given out.
Speaker 1: Imagine if there's a bully.
Speaker 2: They don't have like a reputation nowadays. It's like yeah,
remember know, no one compares anybody to Mussolini. It's always Hitler, right, But.
Speaker 1: Imagine if there's like a bully in your school. I
guess Mussolini was also seen as like stupid. Oh yeah,
although apparently, like Jamoke, I read something one day that
Mussolini had a I don't know if this is true.
I hope it's talk about a guy that fucked. Oh yeah,
he's just Italian. But h Musli apparently have two things.
One is Musli apparently I read this. I hope it's true.
I don't know. It's true that Mussolini had a meeting
with Hitler at one point and Hitler like told him
he believed that he was possessed by the spirit, the
spirit of an Aryan god or something like that, and
Musli left the meeting being like, oh my God, Oh
my God, whom my allies with? Holy shit.
Speaker 2: Then they tried to talk to the emperor from Japan
got like a similar story.
Speaker 1: No, Japan is just like, oh I am God. Yeah,
like no, no, I'm a god inside of me, I
am God. But the other thing with Italy, one of
the reasons they never get much hate is because, like,
imagine there's a bully at your school and he's always
starting shit with people, but he loses every fight. It's
not a good bully, right, And I'm talking losing fights
to like even the kids in the chess club.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like he's like.
Speaker 1: Good at your locker dirt, and then the nerd just
lays him out. That's why Italy doesn't get it, because
they're too they were too incompetent to be mad at
There was a World War two meme.
Speaker 2: I hope we pick up like an entire new audience
from Italy just from this conversation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree. There's a World War two meme that
was like, here's how you could tell what troops are
on the other side when you shoot at them. Essentially,
it's like, if you shoot at them and you get
just a rain of machine gun fire, you're shooting at Germans.
If you shoot at them and you get hyper accurate
rifle fire come back at you, You're shooting at British.
If you shoot at them and it's all quiet for
ten minutes and then artillery and air support rained downs
on you. You're shooting at America and if you're shooting
at them, and then they all immediately get up and
surrender their Italians.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's a left turn. People would probably
expect French right right, right, right, that would be the punchline.
I think the majority of the public would expect the Italian.
Speaker 1: It works, Yeah, it does.
Speaker 2: A low point in Saudi US relations came as FAISO
decided to launch an oil embargo against the US and Europe.
During the Fourth Arab Israeli War or the yam Kapor
War in nineteen seventy three, the Arab Coalition launched a
surprise attack during the Jewish holy day of Yam Kapor,
which coincided with the tenth day of Ramadan in nineteen
seventy three.
Speaker 1: This is why, like the Israel stuff is complicated. But
when people whenever people were like, what are so like
when they like complain about the Israeli military or Israel
being so militarized, Like that country's been invaded, been not
even Eiffel towered.
Speaker 2: Notice, I said fourth, Yeah, that country seventy three. It's
been a country for thirty years.
Speaker 1: That country has been invaded from all sides less than
four or five fucking times. Yeah, that's gonna happen when
you put it right in the middle of all of
its enemies. I get it. But the paranoia, it's in
living memory. The paranoia is justified. Put it in Boca Ratone.
It's like, it's not the it's not the Yeah, that
is great, but it's not like, you know, if the
Chinese were putting up like high tech missile systems on
the Great Wall because they were still afraid of the Mongolians,
Like this didn't happen that long ago.
Speaker 2: Faisal said, America's complete israel support against the Arabs make
it extremely difficult for US to continue to supply the
United States with oil or even remain friends with the
United States. During an OPEC meeting held in Kuwait on
October sixteenth, nineteen seventy three, the governments of Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar,
and the UAE announced a policy to increase the price
of oil by percent.
Speaker 1: Bet it got all the way up to a dollar gallon.
Speaker 2: And then on October twentieth, nineteen seventy three, the Saudi
government declared a total oil embargo against the US. The
oil embargo lasted until March nineteen seventy four, and American
oil companies operated in Saudi Arabia became subjected to direct
supervision of the Saudi government. So they just kind of
took it over.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well it's on their land.
Speaker 2: Officials from the Nixon administration threatened Saudi Arabia with direct
military intervention. The embargo was lifted March nineteen seventy four
after the US pressureed Israel into negotiating with Syria over
the Golden Heights.
Speaker 1: Yeah that makes sense, Like, hey, assholes, I'm not gonna
let a couple of hills sink my country's economy. You douchebags.
You're already here because of us. Right, we pretty much
established the state. Right.
Speaker 2: Three months later, Washington and Riad signed a wide range
in agreement on expanding economic and military cooperation nineteen seventy five.
The two countries signed two billion dollars worth of military contracts,
including an agreement to send Saudi Arabia sixty fighter jets.
The key part of the agreement was for Saudi to
price oil in terms of dollars and to invest billions
of its dollars in US Treasury notes, creating the Petro
dollar boom.
Speaker 1: Nixon's a funny president because he really like watergates the headline,
But he was like enormously influential, like the Nixon administration
has got to be.
Speaker 2: Because you kind of start operating on just like credits, right.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I don't know about all I can't
get into all that, but like between the Petro dollars
and I'm just saying things honestly open on opening up
China at like and put dry and thus driving a
wedge between China and the Soviet Union and all this
other shit that he did rolling back Vietnam, like ending Vietnam. Yeah,
like he did a metric fucked ton of shit and uh,
it's always funny. Uh.
Speaker 2: In the TV show The Watchman, just they have Nixonville.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just.
Speaker 2: All the the poor white trash or living which is
Richard Nixon statue.
Speaker 1: Nixon is for anyone. I don't think people realize this,
but like pre uh George W. Bush, Nixon was like
the ultimate presidential villain.
Speaker 2: I feel like most Americans only know Watergate and I
don't even really know what Watergate is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but even like at the time, like Nixon, he
was what's his name? Hunter S. Thompson was like vilified
Nixon left and right, and I mean Nixon was like
a being being a piece of shit was like Nixon
being like the premier piece of shit. President was like
a running joke in like the Simpsons. It's a running
joke in Futurama with like his talking head same people.
For sure.
Speaker 2: Gronan just really had it out for had it out.
Speaker 1: For Nixon man. Like Nixon was the like bad guy president.
Did he catch strays on the Epstein list? I can't
see how okay Epstein started going off when I mean
Nixon died.
Speaker 2: Now, no, not Nixon. Gronin Oh, I hope not. Okay,
I'm talking about yeah, the creator of the Simpsons.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know Nixon died ninety four. I'd be crazy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no shit.
Speaker 1: I saw a funny video though, was like, you know
who isn't in one Epstein file and it was just
a like Dick Cheney highlight reel of Dick Cheney smiling
didn't for the love of the game baby.
Speaker 2: In January nineteen seventy nine, the US sent F fifteen
fighters to Saudi Arabia as part of its anti communist campaign,
and the two countries sported anti communist groups in Afghanistan.
So this is where Afghanistan comes into play. After the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December nineteen seventy nine, relations
between Saudi Arabia and the US further strengthened as both
governments began to jointly assist Afghan resistant militias. The muja Hadeen,
led by one Osama bin Laden, which wadge guerrilla warfare
against Soviet occupation forces across Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: Was was Afghanistan was was been Laden in Afghanistan for
the same reason. Prince Harry was in Afghanistan, you know,
just needed to get a little bit of action before
he became rich and comfortable for the rest of his life.
Speaker 2: I'm sure the truth is somewhere in the middle. Like
he's always about faith and yeah, getting the superpowers out
of the Middle East, Like that's his mission. Statement is,
I don't care if it's the Soviets, I don't care
if it's the US. I just we need to get
these you know, powerful countries out of the Middle East
messing with our shit.
Speaker 1: Don't Europe my Middle East?
Speaker 2: Kind of Yeah. From nineteen seventy nine to nineteen ninety two,
the US, as part of CIA activities in Afghanistan, specifically
Operation Cyclone, Saudi Arabia and China, between six to twelve
billion dollars worth of financial aid and weapons to tens
of thousands of Musha Hadeen through Pakistan's Inner Services intelligence
so the ISI. Beginning in early nineteen eighty, bin Laden
acted as a liaison between the Saudi General Intelligence and
Afghan warlords. No evidence of contact directly between CIA and
bin Laden exists in the CIA archives.
Speaker 1: That's convenient, Well, I guess in the ones you can
look at, right right.
Speaker 2: But Steve Cole states that although bin Laden may not
have been a formal, salaried GIP agent, it seems clear
that bin Laden did have a substantial relationship with Saudi intelligence.
Speaker 1: Wasn't there kind of like a thing that he was
like kind of a joke in Afghanistan?
Speaker 2: Not at this point, Well, we're gonna get to his
fallen out with Saudi Arabia, Okay, But like I just
this part of the episode is just all about ben
Laden and his relationship with Saudi Arabia. So bin Laden's
first trainer was US Special Forces commando I'll lea Mohammed.
Speaker 1: So no contact with the CIA. He was just trained
by the US. Yeah all right, Yeah, it's not in
the CIA archives you can access just like it looks
like a duck walks like a duck. Look it waks
like a duck. Sure, there's some very interesting part of
the Vatican archives. No one's been allowed into either. They
have got down there. They have got chained up with silver,
locked in a magneto cage. Yeah, and he's he's getting
chained up more now than ever. Silver prices are through
the fucking floor right now.
Speaker 2: I thought it was a pump nump.
Speaker 1: Well either way, it's cheap. Yeah, so there's they're making
more silver chains.
Speaker 2: Our grandparents actually just got cleaned out. They saw a
little spike and then I think it's came back.
Speaker 1: I hope they so hope Grandma sold it at peak.
Speaker 2: I don't really understand buying digital gold or silver. Isn't
the whole point of gold and silver.
Speaker 1: To have it in hand? If you don't, I don't
care if anyone says I'm stupid for this. If you
are not holding the medal.
Speaker 2: So you can like shave it off in the post times.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you're not holding the medal, you don't have anything.
It's not like a stock. I understand a stock or
just you know, money in your bank account that you
never touch. But if you're gonna buy silver or gold,
you better have that medal in your fucking house or
a vault.
Speaker 2: Following the Soviet Union's withdrawal from Afghanistan in February nineteen
eighty nine, bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia as a
hero of Jahad.
Speaker 1: So not a joke yet, Okay, damn, you know what
I just realized too, with that gold spike, I could
have sold my wedding ring.
Speaker 2: You could have at least went to a pawn shop some.
Speaker 1: Thinking I could have sold my wedding ring, gone back
a week later and bought it back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, may profit.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait under Saddam Hussein on August second,
nineteen nine put the Saudi Kingdom in the royal family
at risk. With Iraqi forces on the Saudi border, Saddam's
appeal to Pan Arabism was potentially inside in internal dissent.
One week after the Saudi king agreed to US Secretary
of Defense Dick Cheney's offer of American military assistants, Bin
Laden met with the king and the Saudi defense minister,
telling them not to depend on non Muslim assistance.
Speaker 1: Dog. So Saudi Arabia's military, I think at the time
was like decent, but Iraq's military was for sure better
and battle hardened and probably better equipped if I had
to guess.
Speaker 2: And.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, you weren't going to win that war. But again,
Deck's just doing it for the love of the game.
And by the way, they did incur into Saudi Arabia.
I actually went down a Wikipedia rabbit hole the other day.
Iraqi troops in the early parts of the war when
America was in took a Saudi Arabian area on the
coast of I don't remember. It was on the on
the east coast of Saudi Arabia and held it for
a little while before and the Saudis were like asking
the Americans to counterattack, but we were busy getting ready
to hit some not like hit the main Iraqi force.
So we were like, yeah, you got it. Yeah, like
we'll give some artillery and air support, and yeah, the
Saudis had had to take it back, which they did.
But it was an interesting little bout, not go enough
to do an episode on, but I thought it was fascinating.
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Speaker 2: When they ask bin Lodin how he would defend the
fighters if Saddam used Iraqi chemical and biological weapons against them,
he replied, we will fight them with faith.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not planned. I don't think so. So Dick
Cheney's in one chair and he's like, we have satellite
gated missiles and tanks that literally can't be destroyed by
anything anyone within one hundred thousand miles possesses. We'll defeat them.
And then fucking Ben Ladden's just over there, like Allah will.
Speaker 2: Say, like, what do you he will protect us from
our skin melting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know what? Actually a law sent he sent
Dick Cheney.
Speaker 2: Dick Cheney, Yeah, Dick Cheney's his angel of death.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well it's a fucking it's the parable, right, like
oh no, no, no, I don't need this boat to
grab me out of the ocean. God will save me.
And then another boat comes by. No, no, no, it's fine,
go God's gonna get sent the boat. And then God's like,
I've sent you five fucking boats, dude, imagine getting five
Dick Cheney's it staying no every time. Ben Laden's offer
was obviously, you know, just laughed at. And the Saudi
monarchy invited the deployment of US forces into Saudi territory.
So really because or Saddam Osama was angry that, you know,
Western forces were in Saudi Arabia, But I really think
nine to eleven was all just him still being angry
about his pitch being rejected.
Speaker 2: And Dick Cheney, I think it's just a roundabout, like
there's a six degrees of separation of Dick Cheney to
Dick Cheney.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well that could that had to be salt in
the wound, right, Dick Cheney's pitch beats Osama's pitch, and
then Dick Cheney is vice president ten years later, m
hmm and really doing a lot of work co president
ten years from the you know, from the underground, Yeah,
yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: Bin Laden publicly denounced Saudi's dependence on the US forces,
arguing that it was an indignity that the kingdom was
being defended by an army of American unbelievers. Relations between
the two nations slidified even further.
Speaker 1: He literally offered thoughts and prayers.
Speaker 2: Yeah not enough, dude. We got fucking missiles that we
can launch from goddamn miles away and shoot up a
camel's ass.
Speaker 1: I can vividly remember nine to eleven, and I've never
hated Osama bin Laden more than I do right now.
Speaker 2: I watched it live in fifth grade. Yeah, they wheeled
in the TV. I saw the second plane hit live.
Speaker 1: I didn't get to see the plane hit, but I
did see both the towers.
Speaker 2: Fall and again everyone got picked up, but me. I
was the last kid at school.
Speaker 1: What were your parents doing working? Okay, that was low key,
like a great day at school.
Speaker 2: Though, a plane crash in Pennsylvania, so I kind of
understand why, Like other parents came and got their kids.
But my parents were like, nah, you're good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you don't know, man, you could have been a
landing spot. I mean, they weren't going for your high school.
But it's a pretty chill day. We didn't do work.
I was at this one was saying we didn't do
anything and no homework.
Speaker 2: We like played board games and shit, no homework.
Speaker 1: That night there was a TV. Actually, I remember, I
got so fucking angry. There was one class and in retrospect,
this was the smartest teacher of that day. But there
was one class I went into, and at this point
it was the afternoon, and we walk into that one ever,
the class had the TV out. We're just watching this
all day. We walk in, We're like, where's the fucking TV? What,
mister Buckley, We're not why are we watching nine to eleven?
And he was like he was like, nothing news happened,
and they don't know what they're talking about. They're just
saying things. Yeah, it's gonna be the same tomorrow as
it is right now. We're doing class.
Speaker 2: What a dick.
Speaker 1: We're like, God, damn it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the real dick here is that teacher Like, I
don't know what I don't know what's going on.
Speaker 1: And he was like, no one knows what's going on.
We don't need to watch him talk about how they
don't know what's going on. We're doing class. He probably
thought it was a good distraction. It wasn't. He was
one of my favorite teachers though, he was actually great teacher.
At one point, had he had detention with me my
senior year and he was wearing his like normal shirt
and tie, but then like wrestling shorts, Jim shorts, and
we were like, mister Buckley, while you're wearing those shorts,
and he goes like as a matter of fact as
you could possibly be. He was like, Oh, I had
diarrhea and I pooped my pants. Dude, I love that
kind of honesty. We were all like what and he
was like, yeah, I had diarrhea. I couldn't make it,
and I pooped my pants and I ruined my pants.
So I got to wear these shorts for the rest
of the day. Yeah, he gets one. They're allowed to
do it once.
Speaker 2: Relations between the two nations solidified even further when the
US sent nearly five hundred thousand soldiers to Saudi Arabia
to aid in protection against Iraq. Following Operation Desert Shield,
America kept five thousand troops in Saudi Arabia to maintain
their protection and trade relations.
Speaker 1: And bin Laden acted like they were setting up a
barracks in that little.
Speaker 2: Black box in Mecca Meteorite.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like like that was we were just taking like,
I want to know what's in it, man, There's only
one way to find out. I want to know. There's
only one way to find out.
Speaker 2: That's I mean, I'm not doing that. Yeah, I know
we're not going there.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, if we want to get really ignorant
with our special forces and just have fun, like with
the Maduro thing, we need to do two things, all right,
team of Navy seals to where we think the arc
of the Covenant is in Ethiopia, and I guess a
team of Delta.
Speaker 2: Nothing happens if we get that from Ethiopia. No. No,
we go into the Kingdom though, and we.
Speaker 1: It's back to Lord. It's Lord of the Rings, Ghosts.
Speaker 2: It's literally yeah, Paul trades though. Yeah in Dune three,
which hasn't come out yet.
Speaker 1: But you're not gonna like them.
Speaker 2: I'll tell you that. During the ground campaign of Operation
Desert Storm, the Iraqi troops were defeated within four days
and retreated back to Iraq. Bin Laden's continued criticism of
the Saudi monarchy led them to put him under house arrest,
which he remained in until he was ultimately forced to
leave the country in nineteen ninety one. So he gets
a citizenship also revoked. Okay, so his own nation turns
on him.
Speaker 1: So what's his even citizenship with that? There's a he
kind of like bounces around. I know he's got no passport.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think there's claims that he does get a
Bosnian passport at one point. Okay, but I mean he's
bounced around like Pakistan, Afghanistan, right right right. I feel
like he has kind of an open road in the
Middle East to go wherever he wants.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're not sticklers.
Speaker 2: In August nineteen ninety six, Ben Laden issued a fatwah
titled declaration of war against the Americans occupying the Land
of the Two Holy Places. Ben Lauden's view was that
the evils of the Middle East arose from America's attempt
to take over the region and from its support for Israel.
Saudi Arabia have been turned into an American colony.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally, which, by the way, we've done an episode
I think on that specific thing before whenever the thing
he wrote with the Franklin forgery, Yeah, where he quoted
a fake Ben Franklin quote in his great declation, because
remember that Bin Laden's like letter or fought while wherever
was going viral. I think it was right after ten seven,
and people were like, oh, I don't know, maybe he
was making some good points and like literally he quoted
a fake Ben Franklin quote about how Jews were starting
to control him. It's a fake quote. It's not real.
And my favorite part about that because we clipped it.
We clipped that part and we put it on YouTube,
shorts and Instagram and TikTok, and the amount of people
who said the most cognitive dissident thing I've ever heard,
which is, who cares if it's fake? If it's true?
Speaker 2: And you responded with great point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was like, touche, got me, checkmate.
Speaker 2: On February twenty third, nineteen ninety eight, Been Louden issued
another fatwe against the US, calling upon mass to attack
the country and its allies. It was entitled Declaration of
the World Islamic Front for Jahad against the Jews and
the Crusaders. Kind of a lengthy title. Maybe shorten that up, Bud, Yeah,
an editor.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you clearly didn't have who's going to edit him?
Speaker 2: Yeah, just a bunch of yes men around them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, truly, this is the biggest mistake.
Speaker 2: That's why he failed.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: During the Clinton administration, capturing Bin Laden was an objective
of the US government, like a major objective. In nineteen
ninety nine, the CIA, together with Pakistani military intelligence had
prepared a team of approximately sixty Pakistani commandos to infiltrate
Afghanistan to capture or kill Bin Laden, but the plan
was aborted by the nineteen ninety nine Pakistani Coupugh, so
we could have got this bitch two years before he
pulled it off.
Speaker 1: When did the capture mission become I think ninety nine? Okay,
so after he bombed the buildings in Nairobi, Kenya. Yeah,
so he had pulled off a pretty big terrorist attack
at that point. Actually, what's funny is in the movie,
in a movie that comes out right between the Nairobi
attacks and nine to eleven, the Silence of the Lambs
sequel Hannibal, which Jodi Foster did not come back for.
I believe Julianne Moore took over the role of Starling.
Agent Starling, You're gonna have to kind of lead this
because I've actually hand up never seen it. Okay, Anyway,
At one point, Starling is Clarice is just looking at
the FBI's ten most wanted list because Hannibal's on there
because he's escaped. At this right next to beIN loaden,
right next to beIN a loaden. I think he been
Latten's on it. I think he's right next to him.
But they showed they clear his day in that movie
show bin Laden, and it is pre nine to eleven.
Speaker 2: Do you think he just got burned by the CIA
and intelligence who Ben Lauden?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Probably. That was a terrible show on us USA,
right burn.
Speaker 2: Notice I enjoyed it was awful.
Speaker 1: Jared love it.
Speaker 2: Jared loved it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Friend of the show Jared Borslow F one influencer Jared, Yeah,
huge burn Notice.
Speaker 2: Fan cinematography is amazing kind of TV.
Speaker 1: I kind of enjoyed it. The acting not so much.
I love the main actor in it, do you Yeah,
you don't know why he's he cracks me up. He's
in Sacario. Really, I don't remember him in Sacario at all.
He's the guy with the glasses, the big glasses, oh
like in the car. Yeah, gotcha?
Speaker 2: Really, Yep, It's just they don't click together in my brain.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But I just always enjoy him. I think he's funny.
Speaker 2: In two thousand and foreign operatives working on behalf of
the CIA had fired a rocket propelled grenade at a
convoy of vehicles in which bin Laden was traveling through
the mountains of Afghanistan hit him one of the vehicles,
but not the one be Loaden was riding in, so
we almost gone again survived. On August six, two thousand
and one, George W. Bush received an intelligence report titled
bin Lauden Determined to strike the US. On the day
of the attacks, the National Security Agency intercepted communications that
pointed to bin Laden's responsibility in them, as did German
intelligence agencies. Bin Laden read a statement denying responsibility for
the attack in a video time stamped September sixteenth, two
thousand and one, but fifteen of the nineteen hijackers came
from Saudi Arabia. Right a two thousand and two Council
on Foreign Relations Terrorists, Financed and Task Force report found
that for years, individuals and charities based in Saudi Arabia
have been the most important source of fund in al Qaeda,
and for years Saudi officials have turned a blind eye
to this problem.
Speaker 1: I'm sure a lot of them were into it, to
be quite frank. Yeah, like the wing that MBS is
trying to push out.
Speaker 2: But if you're gonna wash some money, that'd be really crazy.
If like Live GoF was just this incredible money washing operation,
for a major American terrris attack.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like in an indirect way, Bryson to Shambo kills
thousands of Americans.
Speaker 1: Here's what I don't get though, If they're gonna do
another terrorist attack, why wouldn't it be on China, right,
the one actively genociding Muslims. That's a good point, right, Like,
I know that you don't like Israel, and I guess
by guilt by association, you don't like America.
Speaker 2: But like the what the Saudi's you know they're okay
with not okay with Israel, but they put up with Israel.
Speaker 1: It's just the juicing worth the squeeze.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what do you get out of it? And I
think that pisses off a lot of Muslim country is.
Speaker 1: It is literally a moral victory. Only you don't get
anything out of wiping Israel off the map. Strategically, you'd
probably just get glassed.
Speaker 2: A Saudi intelligence survey of educated Saudi's between the ages
of twenty five and forty one, taken shortly after the
nine to eleven attacks, concluded that ninety five percent of
those surveyed supported bin Laden's cause. In October two thousand
and one, the Wall Street Journal reported that Crown Prince
sent a critical letter to US President George Bush on
August twenty ninth, and said, a time comes when people's
and nations parked. We were at a crossroads. It is
time for the United States and Saudi Arabia to look
at their separate interest. Those governments that don't feel the
pulse of their people and respond will suffer the same
fate of the.
Speaker 1: Shah of Iran. Oh wait, the Crown Prince.
Speaker 2: This is the Crown Prince letter to George Bush. So NBS, No,
he wasn't there yet in two thousand, two thousand and one.
Speaker 1: He was my age.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's not the Crown Prince.
Speaker 1: Yet, he's always the Crown Prince.
Speaker 2: Well I guess, yeah, but yeah, it wasn't NBS. Okayo, Like,
teenage NBS is not sending letters to George Budd.
Speaker 1: Fifteen year old NBS is like, hey, man, fuck you.
Speaker 2: Some speculator that beIN Laden, who had his Saudi nationality
revoked in nineteen ninety four chose fifteen Saudi hijackers on
purpose to break up US and Saudi relations.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes sense. There's layers to it. A good
joke has more than one layer, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Saudis eventually cooperated on the US's War on Terror,
and then in two thousand and four, a eighteen minute
video was released by bin Laden and he went back
on all of his previous denials, saying he was personally
responsible for the September eleventh attacks.
Speaker 1: Yeah we know, Yeah, we fucking know.
Speaker 2: He accused George Bush of negligence in not preventing the
hijacks and said he was inspired to destroy the World
Trade Center after watching the destruction of towers in Lebanon
by Israel during the nineteen eighty two Lebanon War.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh, this is also I forgot to say about
the Nairobi thing. But this is his second attack on
the trade centers, because he did the death World Trade
Center bombing, said ninety three something like that. Yeah, but
that one was weak. Those base charges couldn't take the
building down. No, people forget, so they put the charges
up hot. Yeah, yeah, people forget. That's the other thing
that's funny too about Uh what was the thing like,
jet fuel can't melt steel deeel beams. Yeah, here's the thing.
It doesn't need to liquefy them. It needs to weaken
them again. Your shape. Yeah, we know this right right?
Did you know if Bettel doesn't belt, it doesn't get
weak at all?
Speaker 2: Guys like me though, Guys like me, we just asked questions.
Speaker 1: Just ask some questions that we don't want answers too,
because they question is the answer exactly?
Speaker 2: And I figured that was a good point to stop at.
Obviously relations have gotten better nowadays. Yeah, there's a bit
of like a twenty thirteen rift. Obama didn't have the
best relationship with Saudi Arabia.
Speaker 1: They're kind of going back and forth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it seems like it's in a good place now
with NBS trying to modernize. They're building that line city.
I think still are think the straight line city. There's
a reason a city has never been built in the
straight line.
Speaker 1: Again, the Royal rumble was there this weekend. Yeah, didn't
catch it. Roman reins one. Oh okay.
Speaker 2: Do you think they made him win because he looked
somewhat like the locals can't hurt? Yeah, I can't.
Speaker 1: I mean, Logan Paul's not winning it.
Speaker 2: No, they'd be pissed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, blonde haired, blue eyed, unless.
Speaker 2: There was like a Saudi investment in prime fair enough, Yeah,
didn't they just find like a bunch of investment. I
mean they're investment in everything in the US at this point,
like Saudi money's and everything. You can't really all the
blood money.
Speaker 1: You can't really like.
Speaker 2: Throw stones from a glasshouse at this point. No, it
is what everyone's compromised at this point.
Speaker 1: I'm just like, give give it to my school's nil.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, get them to UCF baby.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think Florida State and Texas A and M, right,
they have programs in Saudi Arabia.
Speaker 1: Texas A and M had a university satellite campus in Qatar. Okay,
I don't know about the other ones, but you gotta
think any school that's in any sort of like oil area,
you want one in that. Even what you're right, like
Texas Tech's quarterback Texas Tech is that's oil money paying
for that. Yeah, A and M very oily. I don't
know about UT, certainly, there's a lot of oil people
from UT. Got to think, uh, you know, I feel
like SMU is more of a finance situation, but they
got to have some old oil money too.
Speaker 2: For sure.
Speaker 1: Oh and actually you know, actually you know, a low
key candidate for U, Saudy oil money going into their
nil A low key school. People forget it's very oil connected.
That is heavy on nil LSU and those those dirty
fucks wouldn't blink once at that with Lane, Not with Lane?
Are you kidding me? Kiff and Dude Joey Freshwater. Lane's
gonna be partying in Riodd in the off season if
they give him money.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, like you, he wouldn't.
Speaker 1: Honestly, if they offered us do your show at theree
Odd Comedy Festival, Yeah.
Speaker 2: I'm there at this point. I'm been unemployed for what
going on six months now.
Speaker 1: Look, it's one thing, could use money for a very
wealthy comedian to go do that. But I have three
children and haven't had say a sh on Netflix or
No or anything like that.
Speaker 2: We're uh, we're pulling in thousands of listeners.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't have the luxury of principles. What's that
line from The Patriot of a Parent? I haven't got
the luxury of principles. I like to amend that slightly.
I am a middle class parent. I absolutely do not
have the luxury of principle. Yeah, and your wife doesn't work, Yeah,
so so id to love that? Yeah, it'd be funny
if Courty was like, can I come? Like you don't
want to? You don't want to come to this, They're like,
well we got the proper apparel. Yeah, yeah, the boys
can come. They'll probably a blasma.
Speaker 2: Did you have you ever had like a desire to
go to buy it seems I mean it's all fake right,
like it's.
Speaker 1: It seems like going to Vegas. Yeah, in terms of
both it's just Middle East Vegas aesthetics and weather.
Speaker 2: It seems like going to Vegas with parties.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like I ladies.
Speaker 2: There's no such thing as fifty thousand dollars sex a's normal.
Speaker 1: No, no, I uh dubai wouldn't. I would all I would.
I guess I would go if it was free. You
know what I mean. I'm not putting it on my
credit I'm not putting that on my own credit card.
Like it's not doesn't break the top ten.
Speaker 2: The planes are dope. Get me one of those like
first class seats that turn into the airways.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I am obsessed with those reels and
tiktoks that show you those first class cabins. It's a cabin,
so a fucking cap. I would be like I would
like my vacation to be this plane. Actually it's a
cruise ship. Yeah, I'll take a sky cruise. Ah.
Speaker 2: Man, if only blimps worked out well, could have had anyway,
what'd you learn today?
Speaker 1: I mean pretty much all of this. There are some
parts I could guess, like when you start talking about construction,
like you know, I don't know where this is going.
Speaker 2: Just guy named Muhammad, It could be anybody.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, but yeah, I know pretty much. I
didn't know anything about bitter Lake or a lake or
anything like that.
Speaker 2: Good doc would recommend again, I did an ask job
explaining what it's about. Yeah, but I'm probably gonna throw
on hyper normalization tonight.
Speaker 1: Okay, get into that. That's three hours long. Bitter Lake's
only two, so okay, it's very easy watch. I just
started the Chair Company, so I'm a little busy right now.
Speaker 2: Okay, who's today's hitler?
Speaker 1: Hmm? Be easiest, be easiest to just say Bin Laden.
But I'm gonna go a little deeper, and I'm gonna
say Ben Lodden's plan or been Lodden for his plan,
not the plan to take down the towers. That he
literally went into a pitch meeting.
Speaker 2: And said, I have got on my side.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, fuck, that is the most despicable thing I've
ever heard about, or something lot.
Speaker 2: Being unprepared, maybe showing up to the presentation just winging it.
Speaker 1: I mean, good lord, He's like, I care about Muslim
lives so much that hundreds of millions can die, or millions,
I guess can die, just so that we are the
only ones involved in our own business. Great fucking plan.
Speaker 2: Well, check out our Patreon Patreon dot com slash software history.
You get two additional episodes on the lower tier that
drop on Wednesday and Friday that are much like this.
At this point, we have a four year evergreen back
catalog that's worth your time and your money. We also
have an upper tier where we do a sports show
and I give out gambling picks for golf off to
the best startup.
Speaker 1: We're gonna heat up. WE'RENNA, We're gonaigure things at.
Speaker 2: We're getting some data, right, We're getting some data these
first three tournaments, so check those out. Really supports us. Again,
I've been unemployed for six months now, so can use
the money.
Speaker 1: Hopefully not for much longer. Well, hopefully for.
Speaker 2: Not much longer. I mean hopefully this just turns into
the full time gig.
Speaker 1: We're getting closer.
Speaker 2: That'd be cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're not that close, though, we're getting potentially closer.
They could could be a corner turned to tell your
friends about the show. Yeah, oh yeah, don't don't sit
on your ass. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Check out the YouTube. Subscribe to the YouTube.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Instagram and YouTube. Also, the shorts and the reels
have a bunch of sketches to share. Those.
Speaker 2: Get a couple of shorts that are gonna drop and
this week and next week as well. Still got those
in the can. But for Rough Fox, I'm damad Jester.
You just got saw served.