[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 13]
[House]
[Page 17558]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




             SAUDI ARABIA AND TERRORISM: THE PAINFUL TRUTH

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, a tragedy occurred in Russia this 
past week. Thirty Chechen rebels took control of a schoolhouse on the 
first day of school, and they killed at least 338 people, half of them 
children who were going to school for their first day. According to the 
reports, 10 of those people who were terrorists were Arabs; and we 
believe that they were probably from Saudi Arabia.
  One of the problems that we have had in the past is a lot of the 
terrorist activity has been emanating and originating from Saudi 
Arabia, ostensibly friends of the United States of America. Osama bin 
Laden is a Saudi. Fifteen of the 19 terrorists that flew the planes 
into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the plane that went 
down in Pennsylvania were Saudi Arabians.
  The Saudis have been funding for many, many years madrassas where 
Wahhabism is taught. Wahhabism is a radical fundamentalist Muslim 
religion that is being taught in the schools that teaches the children 
to hate Christians and Jews and teaches them to perpetrate violent 
acts.
  Well, the Saudis today said that they are going to try to change the 
educational system over there so no radical fundamentalism can be 
taught that would lead to this kind of terrorist activity.
  I would just like to say tonight, Mr. Speaker, that it is high time, 
high time, that the Saudis, whom we have been supporting with our 
dollars, buying our oil from them, for many, many years, it is high 
time that they stopped this terrorist activity which has been 
originating in their country.
  The Saudi royal family has been giving money to radical 
organizations. They have been giving money to families of people whose 
children blew themselves up while killing people in Israel and the West 
Bank and in what is called Palestine. The Saudi Government has been 
giving money to al-Qaeda in the past.
  Mr. Speaker, all I can say tonight is that the Saudis continue to 
tell us that they are our friends. They tell us they want to stop 
terrorism. Yet, time after time after time, we see terrorist activity 
taking place, and who has been involved? It is the Saudi people, and it 
is people who have been taught in the madrassas, who have been taught 
that radical fundamentalism that is called Wahhabism.
  Mr. Speaker, I would like to say to my colleagues tonight that this 
government, the Government of the United States through the State 
Department, must continue to tell the Saudis that they must take these 
people on, they have to stop this terrorist activity emanating and 
originating in their country, and they have to stop this type of 
teaching of the children. They have been allowing this teaching to go 
on for 25 to 30 years now.
  It is high time that this stopped, because the children who are 
growing up today are going to be the terrorists of tomorrow; and if 
they continue to let that happen in their schools, we are going to have 
to face this not only now, but our children and our grandchildren are 
going to be facing this kind of terrorist activity down the road.
  Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda, the Taliban, all of them have to be 
defeated. We are in a world war against terrorism, and we need every 
government of the world that believes in freedom and democracy and the 
things we believe in to be on our side. That includes the Saudis. They 
are going to have to take a hard line.

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