Text 544, 287 rader
Skriven 2004-08-03 10:52:50 av John Hull (1:379/1.99)
Ärende: 59 Deceits - Pt 7
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Saudi Investments in the United States
Deceit 23-24
 
Moore asks Craig Unger: "How much money do the Saudis have invested in America,
roughly?"
 
Unger replies, "Uh, I've heard figures as high as $860 billion dollars."
 
What is the basis of Unger's claim? The $860 billion figure appears on page 28
of Unger's House of Bush, House of Saud. He cites two sources: The Saudi
Ambassador's 1996 speech to the U.S.-Saudi Arabian Business Council. In that
speech, Prince Bandar discussed the Saudi economy, but said nothing about the
size of Saudi investment in the U.S.
 
Unger's other cited source is a February 11, 2002, Washington Post story,
titled "Enormous Wealth Spilled Into American Coffers." The $860 billion figure
does not appear there, either. The article states:

     After nearly three decades of accumulating this wealth, the group referred
to by bankers as "high net worth Saudi individuals" holds between $500 billion
and $1 trillion abroad, most of it in European and American investments. Brad
Bourland, chief economist of the Saudi American Bank (one-quarter owned by
Citibank), said in a speech in London last June that his bank's best estimate
of the total is about $700 billion, with the possibility that it is as much as
$1 trillion.
      
     Raymond Seitz, vice chairman of Lehman Brothers in London and a former
U.S. ambassador to Britain, gave a similar estimate. Seitz said Saudis
typically put about three-quarters of their money into the United States, the
rest in Europe and Asia. That would mean that Saudi nationals have invested
perhaps $500 billion to $700 billion in the American economy.

In short, Unger's cited sources do not support his $860 billion figure. He may
have "heard" the figure of $860 billion dollars, but only from people who were
repeating the factoid which he invented.
 
According to the Institute for Research Middle Eastern Policy (a pro-Saudi
think tank which tries to emphasize the importance of Saudi money to the United
States), in February 2003 total worldwide Saudi investment was at least $700
billion, conservatively estimated. Sixty percent of the Saudi investments were
in the United States, so the Saudis had at least 420 billion dollars invested
in the U.S. (Tanya C. Hsu , "The United States Must Not Neglect Saudi Arabian
Investment," Sept.
23, 2003.)
 
Unger is asked "what percentage of our economy is that?" (Meaning the supposed
$860 billion.) 

He replies, "Well, in terms of investments on Wall Street, American equities,
it's roughly six or seven percent of America. They own a fairly good slice of
America." A little bit later, Moore states that "Saudi Prince Bandar is perhaps
the best protected ambassador in the US...Considering how he and his family,
and the Saudi elite own seven percent of America, it's probably not a bad
idea."

According the Census Bureau, the top countries which own U.S. stocks and bonds
are the United Kingdom and Japan. Foreign investors owned $1,690 billion in
corporate bonds in 2002. The Census Bureau lists the major national holders,
and then groups all the minor holders--including Saudi Arabia--into "Other
Countries." All of these other countries combined (including Saudi Arabia)
account for only 6 percent of total foreign ownership of U.S. corporate bonds.
Likewise, all "Other
Countries" combined account for only 7 percent of total foreign ownership of
corporate stocks. (And of course the large majority of U.S. corporate stocks
and bonds are owned by Americans.) Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract
of the United States, table 1203. 
 
According to the Bureau of Economic Statistics, total foreign investment in the
United States in 2003 was $10,515 billion dollars. This means that even if the
figure that Unger "heard" about Saudis having $860 billion is correct, then the
Saudis would only have about 8 percent of total foreign investment in the
United States. Unless you believe that almost all American assets are owned by
foreigners, then it cannot possibly be true that Saudis "own seven percent of
America."
 
[Moore response: Cites Unger's book, and a lawyer who filed an anti-Saudi
lawsuit and repeated the Unger figure. Does not address the fact that Unger's
sources do not support his claim. Points out that the capitalization of the New
York Stock Exchange composite is $12 trillion and that $860 billion amounts to
approximately 7 percent of that. But even if the Saudis owned 7% of the stocks
on the New York Stock Exchange, the NYSE does not include all of America's
wealth--which includes real estate, businesses which are not traded on the NYSE
because they are privately owned, and so on. The data show that the Saudis own
between 4% (420 billion) and 7% (700 billion) of total foreign investment in
the U.S. Moore's assertion that Saudis "own seven percent of America" is
completely false.]
 
Special Protection for Saudi Embassy
Deceit 25
 
Moore shows himself filming the movie near the Saudi embassy in Washington,
D.C.: 

     Moore as narrator: Even though we were nowhere near the White House, for
some reason the Secret Service had shown up to ask us what we were doing
standing across the street from the Saudi embassy….
     Officer: That’s fine. Just wanted to get some information on what was
going on. 
     Moore on camera: Yeah yeah yeah, I didn’t realize the Secret Service
guards foreign embassies.
     Officer: Uh, not usually, no sir.

 But in fact: 

     Any tourist to Washington, DC, will see plenty of Secret Service Police
guarding all of the other foreign embassies which request such protection.
Other than guarding the White House and some federal buildings, it’s the
largest use of personnel by the Secret Service’s Uniformed Division.

Debbie Schlussel, "FAKEN-heit 9-11: Michael Moore’s Latest Fiction," June 25,
2004.
 
According to the Secret Service website: 

     Uniformed Division officers provide protection for the White House
Complex, the Vice-President's residence, the Main Treasury Building and Annex,
and foreign diplomatic missions and embassies in the Washington, DC area.

So there is nothing strange about the Secret Service protecting the Saudi
embassy in Washington—especially since al Qaeda attacks have taken place
against Saudi Arabia. According to Article 22 of the Vienna Convention on
Diplomatic Relations, an international agreement which has been ratified by the
United States, every host country (including the United States) is obliged to
protect every embassy within its borders.
 
[Moore response: None.]
 
Alleged Bush-Saudi Conspiracy
Deceit 26

     Moore asks, "Is it rude to suggest that when the Bush family wakes up in
the morning they might be thinking about what's best for the Saudis instead of 
    what's best for you?" But his Bush/Saudi conspiracy theory is contradicted
by very obvious facts:  …why did Moore’s evil Saudis not join "the Coalition of
the Willing"? Why instead did they force the United States to switch its
regional military headquarters to Qatar? If the Bush family and the al-Saud
dynasty live in each other’s pockets…then how come the most reactionary regime
in the region has been powerless to stop Bush from demolishing its clone in
Kabul and its buffer regime in Baghdad? The Saudis hate, as they did in 1991,
the idea that Iraq’s recuperated oil industry might challenge their[s]....They
fear the liberation of the Shiite Muslims they so despise. To make these
elementary points is to collapse the whole pathetic edifice of the film’s
"theory."

Hitchens, Slate. This isn't to say that concerns about the wishes and interests
of the Saudi rulers play too large a role in American foreign
policy--especially in the U.S. State Department, which has been notoriously
supportive of pro-U.S. Arab dictatorships for many decades. I would much prefer
that the State Department and other American foreign policymakers spent less
time worrying about friendly relations with the governments of Saudi Arabia,
China, and other dictatorships, and
more time supporting the aspirations of people who want to free themselves from
dictatorship. But complaining about the historic pro-Saudi tilt in U.S. foreign
policy, a tilt which is partly the result of extensive business relations
between the two countries, is not the same as propounding a tin-hat conspiracy
theory that George Bush is a servile tool of the bin Laden family.
 
Interestingly, Fahrenheit omits one of the leading evildoers in Moore's grand
conspiracy theory. As he told an audience in Liverpool, England, "It’s all part
of the same ball of wax, right? The oil companies, Israel, Halliburton." The
oil companies and Halliburton are prominent villains in Fahrenheit, but there
is no mention at all of Israel. Indeed, a Bush quote about terrorism in Israel
is chopped to remove the Israel reference. That Moore ignores Israel in
Fahrenheit makes sense, given
Moore's stated intention of using the movie to defeat George Bush in November.
Most American Jews are Democrats; if they found out what Moore believes about
Israel they might be considerably more skeptical about Moore's claims regarding
other alleged global conspirators. (Moore is strongly anti-Israel; he has
called for the U.S. to cut off all aid to Israel, and to use the money to buy
weapons for the Palestinians. His latest book, Dude, Where's My Country, is
dedicated to the memory of Rachel Corrie, an American who traveled to Israel,
burned an American flag for some Palestinian children, and served as an
activist for a terrorist support group called the International Solidarity
Movement (ISM). The ISM which is run by the Palestinian Communist Party and
which advocates the extermination of the state of Israel. She died trying to
prevent an Israeli bulldozer from removing some shrubbery which was thought to
cover tunnels used by terrorist bombers to enter Israel. Thus Moore dedicated
his book to someone who deliberately sought to assist the terrorist murder of
civilians in Israel.) 
 
[Moore response: None]
 
Proposed Unocal Pipeline in Afghanistan
Deceits 27-30
 
This segment is introduced with the question, "Or was the war in Afghanistan
really about something else?" The "something else" is shown to be a Unocal
pipeline.

     Moore mentions that the Taliban visited Texas while Bush was governor,
over a possible pipeline deal with Unocal. But Moore doesn’t say that they
never actually met with Bush or that the deal went bust in 1998 and had been
supported by the Clinton administration.

Labash, Weekly Standard. 

     Moore asserts that the Afghan war was fought only to enable the Unocal
company to build a pipeline. In fact, Unocal dropped that idea back in August
     1998. 

Jonathan Foreman, "Moore’s The Pity," New York Post, June 23, 2004.

     In December 1997, a delegation from Afghanistan’s ruling and ruthless
Taliban visited the United States to meet with an oil and gas company that had
extensive dealings in Texas. The company, Unocal, was interested in building a
natural gas line through Afghanistan. Moore implies that Bush, who was then
governor of Texas, met with the delegation. 
      But, as Gannett News Service points out, Bush did not meet with the
Taliban representatives. What’s more, Clinton administration officials did sit
down with Taliban officials, and the delegation’s visit was made with the
Clinton administration’s permission.

McNamee, Chicago Sun-Times.

     Whatever the motive, the Unocal pipeline project was entirely a
Clinton-era proposal: By 1998, as the Taliban hardened its positions, the U.S.
oil company pulled out of the deal. By the time George W. Bush took office, it
was a dead issue—and no longer the subject of any lobbying in Washington. 

Isikoff & Hosenball, MSNBC.com. 
 
Moore claims that "Enron stood to benefit from the pipeline." To the contrary,
Enron was not part of the consortium which expressed interest in working with
Unocal on the pipeline.
 
On December 9, 2003, the new Afghanistan government did sign a protocol with
Turkmenistan and Pakistan to facilitate a pipeline. Indeed, any Afghani
government (Taliban or otherwise) would rationally seek the revenue that could
be gained from a pipeline. But the protocol merely aims to entice corporations
to build a new pipeline; no corporation has has agreed to do so. Nor does the
new proposed pipeline even resemble Unocal's failed proposal; the new pipeline
would the bring oil and gas from the Caspian Sea basin, whereas Unocal's
proposal involved deposits five hundred miles away, in eastern Turkmenistan. 
 
Fahrenheit showed images of pipeline construction, but the images have nothing
to do with the Caspian Sea pipeline, for which construction has never begun.
Nor do they have anything to do with the Unocal pipeline, which never existed
except on paper. 
 
According to Fahrenheit, Afghanistan's new President, Hamid Karzai, was a
Unocal consultant. This is false. Sumana Chatterjee and David Goldstein, "A
lowdown on the facts behind the allegations in 'Fahrenheit 9/11',"
Knight-Ridder newspapers, July 2, 2004. The origin of the claim appears to be a
December 6, 2001 story in the center-left French newspaper Le Monde. The story
does not cite any source for its claim. (The story is available on-line from Le
Monde's website; registration and payment are required.) Unocal has denied that
Karzai was ever a consultant.
 
(Deceits: 1. Governor Bush never met the Taliban; 2. The Unocal pipeline idea
was abandoned; 3. The new pipeline is different from the Unocal proposal; 4.
Construction has not begun. Bonus deceit: Enron.)
 
[Moore response: Regarding Karzai, cites the article in Le Monde, and two later
articles which appear to use Le Monde's information. Moore's translation is:
"He was a consultant for the American oil company Unocal, while they studied
the construction of a pipeline in Afghanistan." The actual sentence was "Après
Kaboul et l'Inde ou il a étudié le droit, il a parfait sa formation aux
Etats-Unis ou il fut un moment consultant de l'enterprise pétrolière américaine
Unocal, quand celle-ci étudiant la construction d'un oléduc en Afghanistan."
Translated: After Kabul and India where he had studied law, he completed his
training in the United States where he was briefly (literally: "for a moment")
a consultant for the American petroleum business Unocal, when it was studying
the construction of a pipeline in Afghanistan." Neither Le Monde nor Moore has
provided any evidence to substantiate the claim about Unocal and Karzai.
 
Regarding Enron, Moore cites a 1997 speech a professor, in which the professor
said that Enron would be interested in helping to build the Unocal pipeline.
There is no reason to doubt the professor, but the fact is that Enron was not
among the companies which Unocal chose to work with. There is no evidence
supporting Moore's assertion that Enron would benefit from the new Caspian Sea
basin pipeline.
 
Moore does not attempt to defend the other falsities which are detailed in this
section: that Unocal had abandoned the project in 1998, that the 2003 Protocol
involves an entirely different pipeline, and that the pipeline footage in the
movie has nothing to do with either the 1998 or 2003 proposals.]
   ----- 59deceits-p7.txt ends -----

John 

America:  First, Last, and Always!
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