You covered it and I agree with what you wrote.

The veto override is just another example of window dressing legislation concocted in an election year by an out of touch, do nothing, dismissive, politically motivated bunch of bozos in our federal house and senate. They thought this bill through about as well as the formation of the TSA in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy that was 9/11. Beside the fact that it will be years, if not decades, of wrangling through various domestic court systems before any lawsuit would actually go forward against the Saudis. Even if a suit makes it out of our system, there is no guarantee it would get any consideration in the Saudi judicial system. The potential damage to the U.S. In international relations, leadership stature, and monetary loss is obviously beyond the comprehension and fast food mentality of our esteemed elected representatives and senators.



Saudi Arabia has ways to hit back at 9/11 lawsuit effort


DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Saudi Arabia and its allies are warning that U.S. legislation allowing the kingdom to be sued for the 9/11 attacks will have negative repercussions.

The kingdom maintains an arsenal of tools to retaliate with, including curtailing official contacts, pulling billions of dollars from the U.S. economy, and persuading its close allies in the Gulf Cooperation Council to scale back counterterrorism cooperation, investments and U.S. access to important regional air bases.

"This should be clear to America and to the rest of the world: When one GCC state is targeted unfairly, the others stand around it," said Abdulkhaleq Abdullah, an Emirati Gulf specialist and professor of political science at United Arab Emirates University.

"All the states will stand by Saudi Arabia in every way possible," he said.

When Saudi Arabia wanted to pressure Qatar to limit its support for the Muslim Brotherhood group in Egypt, it spearheaded an unprecedented withdrawal of Gulf Arab ambassadors from Doha in 2014 and essentially isolated the tiny gas-rich nation within the GCC.

When Sweden's Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom strongly criticized Saudi Arabia's human rights record last year, the kingdom unleashed a fierce diplomatic salvo that jolted Stockholm's standing in the Arab world and threatened Swedish business interests in the Gulf. Sweden eventually backpedaled.

On Wednesday, the Senate and House voted to override President Barack Obama's veto of the Sept. 11 legislation, with lawmakers saying their priority wasn't Saudi Arabia, but the 9/11 victims and their families.

Chas Freeman, former U.S. assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs and ambassador to Saudi Arabia during operation Desert Storm, said the Saudis could respond in ways that risk U.S. strategic interests, like permissive rules for overflight between Europe and Asia and the Qatari air base from which U.S. military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria are directed and supported.

"The souring of relations and curtailing of official contacts that this legislation would inevitably produce could also jeopardize Saudi cooperation against anti-American terrorism," he said.

Fahad Nazer, an analyst at intelligence consultancy JTG and a former political analyst at the Saudi Embassy in Washington, said he'd be surprised if Saudi Arabia cut back counterterrorism cooperation since it's been beneficial for both countries.

Still, relations with Washington had already cooled well before the 9/11 bill sailed through both chambers of Congress.

The Saudis perceived the Obama Administration's securing of a nuclear deal with Iran as a pivot toward its regional nemesis. There was also Obama's criticism of Gulf countries in an interview earlier this year, despite their support for the U.S.-led fight against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.

Obama had vetoed the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, or JASTA, arguing that allowing U.S. courts to waive foreign sovereign immunity could lead other foreign governments to act "reciprocally" by giving their courts the right to exercise jurisdiction over the U.S. and its employees for overseas actions. These could include deadly U.S. drone strikes and abuses committed by U.S.-trained police units or U.S.-backed militias.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told reporters in June that the U.S. has the most to lose if JASTA is enacted. Despite reports that Riyadh threatened to pull billions of dollars from the U.S. economy if the bill becomes law, al-Jubeir says Saudi Arabia has only warned that investor confidence in the U.S. could decline.

Joseph Gagnon, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said estimates put the figure of official Saudi assets in the government at somewhere between $500 billion and $1 trillion when considering potential foreign bank deposits and offshore accounts.

The kingdom had $96.5 billion in holdings of Treasury securities in August, according to the most recent number released by the Treasury Department. Saudi Arabia ranked 15th in its holdings of U.S. Treasury debt.

Gagnon, who previously worked at the U.S. Federal Reserve Board and Treasury, said there isn't much realistically the kingdom could do to move against the dollar or other U.S. assets "that would hurt us a tenth as much as it would hurt them." He said the U.S. would actually welcome downward pressure on the dollar and questioned what other markets are big enough to absorb what they could sell.

The U.S.-Saudi Business Council's CEO and Chairman Ed Burton says business between the two countries will continue, though potential deals could be jeopardized by JASTA.

"No business community likes to see their sovereign nation basically assailed by another nation," Burton said.

As one of the world's largest oil exporters with the biggest economy in the Gulf, Saudi Arabia also has other business partners to choose from in Europe and Asia, said President and CEO of the National U.S.-Arab Chamber of Commerce David Hamod.

"America is no longer the only game in town," he said. "No one knows how Saudi Arabia might respond to an override of President Obama's veto, but what's the point of calling the kingdom's bluff?"

The CEOs of Dow Chemical and General Electric had sent letters to Congress warning of the bill's potentially destabilizing impact on American interests abroad. Defense Secretary Ash Carter this week sent a letter to Congress saying "important counterterrorism efforts abroad" could be harmed and U.S. foreign bases and facilities could be vulnerable to monetary damage awards in reciprocal cases.

Such reactions may not come directly from Riyadh but countries connected to Saudi Arabia, said Stephen Kinzer, a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University.

He said the eight-decade-long U.S.-Saudi relationship is "entering into a new phase," in which ties will be mostly underpinned by arms sales, unlike during the era of warm relations under President George W. Bush.

Abdullah, the Gulf analyst at UAE University, said he expects to see a GCC that acts more assertively and independently of the U.S. in places like Yemen, Bahrain and Egypt.

"This is not just a threat. This is a reality," he said.

Rongone wrote:

Well, it looks like in their haste to get out of town and get on the campaign trail, our elected representatives in the legislature are coming to the realization that their veto override of this bill may have been a mistake. What's really funny is people like Mitch McConnell are saying it's Obama's fault because he didn't warn them of the possible serious repercussions of the bill. Thea's funny on a couple levels because Obama did warn them, and, if I'm not mistaken, the legislative branch has the sole responsibility for authoring bills and the content of that legislation. Once again, these career political morons in congress prove they really don't know what they're doing.


McConnell claimed Obama did not warn of the 'potential consequences' of 9/11 bill — here's proof he did

Obama warned in his veto message that the 9/11 lawsuit bill "undermines core US interests." Thomson Reuters

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Thursday condemned Congress' decision to override President Barack Obama's veto of a bill that will allow 9/11 victims' families to sue Saudi Arabia for any role it may have played in the attacks.

He pinned much of the blame for the override on Obama himself, however, saying that the White House was too slow to warn about the "potential consequences" of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, known as the 9/11 victims bill.

"Everybody was aware of who the potential beneficiaries were, but nobody really had focused on the downside in terms of our international relationships," McConnell said, claiming that the White House failed to "communicate early about the potential consequences of a piece of legislation that was obviously very popular."

In vetoing the bill, however, Obama laid out three concrete reasons he thought the legislation was a potential liability.

The first, Obama wrote, is that the bill would allow private litigation in US courts against countries that have not been designated state sponsors of terrorism. As such, it would undermine terrorism investigations by taking them "out of the hands of national security and foreign policy professionals and placing them in the hands of private litigants and courts."

"This would invite consequential decisions to be made based upon incomplete information," the president wrote.

Secondly, passage of the lawsuit bill "would upset longstanding international principles regarding sovereign immunity, putting in place rules that, if applied globally, could have serious implications for US national interests," the veto message reads.

That is because the ad-hoc removal of sovereign immunity in US courts for foreign governments without first designating them state sponsors of terrorism opens the door for other nations to act reciprocally.

"Enactment of JASTA could encourage foreign governments to act reciprocally and allow their domestic courts to exercise jurisdiction over the United States or US officials — including our men and women in uniform," Obama wrote.

Lastly, the bill "threatens to create complications in our relationships with even our closest partners," he wrote. Obama noted that exposing the US's foreign partners to this kind of private litigation, without the involvement of national security professionals, could make them reluctant to cooperate on "key national security issues, including counterterrorism initiatives, at a crucial time when we are trying to build coalitions, not create divisions."

Obama ended the veto message by reinforcing the extent to which he has "expanded upon" the Bush administration's efforts to compensate victims' families and enact national security programs to protect Americans from terrorism in the wake of the 2001 attacks.

"I have continued and expanded upon these efforts, both to help victims of terrorism gain justice for the loss and suffering of their loved ones and to protect the United States from future attacks," Obama wrote. "The JASTA, however, does not contribute to these goals, does not enhance the safety of Americans from terrorist attacks, and undermines core US interests."

Obama was not alone in his warnings about the potential ramifications of passing the bill. Arab states lobbied heavily against the bill in the run-up to the vote and have been quick to condemn the legislation's approval.

On Thursday night, the United Arab Emirates' minister of state for foreign affairs tweeted that the bill set "a dangerous precedent in international law that undermines the principle of sovereign immunity and the future of sovereign investments in the United States."

The Saudi foreign ministry called the legislation an "erosion of sovereign immunity" on Friday, warning that the bill "will have a negative impact on all nations, including the United States."

Stephen Kinzer, a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University, told The Associated Press that the bill would likely be seen in the Arab world as "yet another chapter in the more than century-long history of Americans trying to apply their standards and laws to the whole world."

"Certainly this bill doesn't win America any friends," added Adam Ereli, a former State Department spokesman and former ambassador to Bahrain.

The White House on Friday said the bill's passage was "an abject embarrassment" and said it would work with lawmakers to try to limit its policy effects.

What a bunch of BUFFOONS !