On the second anniversary of the darkest day in recent American history, U.S. relations with the kingdom of Saudi Arabia remain clouded by an undeniable reality: the conspiracy to attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, as well as other probable targets, was a product of Saudi society.

There can simply be no doubt about these facts:

- Al-Qaida is a product of, an embodiment of, indeed the quintessential expression of Wahhabism, the state ideology of the Saudi kingdom.
- All nineteen of the participants in the 9/11 atrocities were Wahhabis, of which 15 were Saudi subjects.
- Osama bin Laden is an exemplary representative of Wahhabism and of Saudi society, who, with other rich Saudis, financed al-Qaida and its associated groupings.
- Saudi/Wahhabi official institutions including the Muslim World League (MWL), the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), and the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO) have been complicit in the financing, recruitment, and operational aspects of al-Qaida terrorism.
- The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia refuses to accept responsibility for its subjects' involvement in terrorism.
- The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has failed to participate as a trustworthy partner with the U.S. in the antiterror coalition.

In other words, put bluntly, two years after 9/11, nothing has changed.

This is an appalling matter to contend with, for American citizens. A long tradition of apology for and accommodation with the bloody, repressive Saudi regime, by the American political and business elite, has left a hole in the history of the American nation.

This gap is unacceptable. The U.S.-Saudi relationship represents an inveiglement with corruption, repression, and terror as bad as or worse than that between our country and any left- or right-wing dictatorship in the past. Can we really imagine that if 15 out of 19 of the 9/11 murderers had been Cuban agents, even the Hollywood left that adulates Castro would call for a hands-off approach to the Havana regime? And if 15 out of the 19 had been representatives of one of the right-wing dictators of the past, like Pinochet, we can only imagine liberals calling for the most extreme sanctions against the regime with which it originated. But in the Saudi case, an uneasy silence prevails in the executive branch of government, and even in influential media.

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Since September 11th, a number of additional incidents have occurred, which illuminate the pernicious nature of the Saudi-Wahhabi order.

. . . .And although the Saudis tell us they will curtail extremist preaching by Wahhabi clerics, who are paid officials of the state, every Friday sermon in the kingdom features incitement to terror by hundreds of imams. Few clerics have been removed from their posts, and those who have been are mainly old men who failed to justify their paychecks by regular attendance at work.

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Back here at home, we heard that Princess Haifa bint Faisal, wife of the Saudi ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan, donated money that somehow wound up in the pockets of two leading participants in the 9/11 plot, thanks somehow to the activities of Omar al-Bayoumi, who appears to have been a Saudi government agent. Then the congressional report on intelligence failures leading to 9/11 appeared, and although it included transactions between al-Bayoumi and the terrorists, Princess Haifa was shielded from further scrutiny.

In my view, September 11th was not about us. It was about them. It was not about American power, hegemony, oil interests, Christianity, or relations with Israel. It was about the inevitable pressure from millions of Saudi subjects who possess satellite dishes and computers, who have been educated in modern technology and have seen the world, and who desire to live in a normal society that, while Islamic in traditions and essence, would more resemble Malaysia.