, BBC News Online have outdone themselves, with this, at the bottom of their story King Fahd of Saudi Arabia dies (as pointed out by Guido Fawkes on his blog):
The monarch’s decision in 1990 to invite American forces into Saudi Arabia after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait was heavily criticised within the country.
Many say it contributed to the rise of al-Qaeda whose leader, Osama Bin Laden, is a Saudi-born businessman.
Ah yes, Osama bin Laden, sometime terrorist, is a “Saudi-born businessman” to the BBC, missing out just a few of his notable achievements along the way. I know we want the BBC to be robust in describing terrorists as terrorists, but I’m shocked at them wheeling out what is, to the cub journos at BBC News Online at least, such a heinous insult to describe Mr. bin Liner. Shocked!
Better yet, in a special two-kicks-for-the-price-of-one offer, they’ve stealth-edited the original (both stories dated 01AUG05, 21:26UK) to cover up their embarrassment, rather than leave any tell-tale clues. Until it gets updated you can catch the gaffe in its full glory courtesy of Google’s ever-useful cache.
The US’s relationship with Saudi Arabia is out under a much-needed spotlight here.
http://www.sauduction.com/
Re the BBC’s describing bin Laden as a simple businessman, I don’t honestly know whether I’m pleased that they’ve corrected this crass mistake, or annoyed that they are able to quietly remove traces of their crassness.
UH, didn’t OBL get his start fighting the Russians in the Afghani Mujahadeen?
John… actually, he got his start trying to foment a revolution in Saudi Arabia. He was booted out by King Saud (and not beheaded because he’s the adopted son of a Saudi oil billionaire), and sometime after that went on to Afghanistan.
That was always OBL’s biggest grievance against the US… the troops stationed in SA during and after the Gulf War put a major crimp in his continuing plans to overthrow the current decadent regime in SA and replace it with an even more outrageous Taliban-like regime. 9/11, according to OBL, was all about the US troops in the “holy lands” (ie: the lands he wanted to take over).
OT: Have you heard about the incident between the BBC and Afghan Lord? He is a blogger in Afghan who has received death threats from the BBC’s international office in Afghanistan. You should see what they said to him. All he did was ask them to look into who it may be, and they turned it around to blaming him for making threats against them! Ridiculous. He writes for me. Thanks.
Rosemary – As I recall this subject was mentioned some days ago under a previous topic comment. I wish we had a better format here to keep the various subjects in some sort of order.
Of course we must remember from the Leftist POV ‘Businessmen’ are far more evil than “militants”.
And … speaking of terrorism, here is how the bbc serves the taxpayers so accurately:
CEEFAX tonight (Saturday 13 August), page 120 reports “Hamas chiefs insist fight goes on”.
The third paragraph of this item says “The group has largely kept to a truce with Israel called in February by the Palestinian Authority’s president.
But dear bbc, here are the facts!
“Twenty-one Israelis were killed and 238 wounded by Palestinian terrorists during the first seven months of 2005….
During more than six of these months, the Palestinian Authority and the terror organizations had declared a truce.
July was the worst month in the last year and a half – with 436 incidents, including the firing of 142 mortar shells. In July of 2004, there were 426 incidents. In February of this year, when the truce started, there were only 129.
UBL a businessman? What a joke. He just inherited a fortune and squandered it on terror.