7 ms·

Senate Passes Bill Exposing Saudi Arabia to 9/11 Legal Claims

76 points by espeed 10y ago

hackuser 10y ago
Apparently, the bill has been substantially neutered: https://www.justsecurity.org/31156/senate-killed-jasta-passed-it/ https://www.justsecurity.org/31156/senate-killed-jasta-passe...
- gkya 10y ago
  >> various members of the royal family indeed helped to finance the attacks. IIRC the attacks were forcing some planes to run into two skyscrapers. What financing was necessary for it other than the plane tickets?
  - pquerna 10y ago
    That is a massively simplification and frankly very wrong. Several of the 9/11 Hijackers enrolled in flight schools: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hijackers_in_the_September_11_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hijackers_in_the_September_11_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning_of_the_September_11_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning_of_the_September_11_a... And were otherwise supported to operate inside the US for many months.
    - MichaelGG 10y ago
      Apart from getting in the country and finding a job, isn't that something that they could each finance personally, individually? Especially with a bit of credit, as they didn't have long-term credit rating concerns.
      - pquerna 10y ago
        From Wikipedia: >> The 9/11 Commission stated in their final report that the "9/11 plotters eventually spent somewhere between $400,000 and $500,000 to plan and conduct their attack" Still a non-trivial amount of financial support.
    - gkya 10y ago
      >> The 9/11 Commission stated in their final report that the "9/11 plotters eventually spent somewhere between $400,000 and $500,000 to plan and conduct their attack" but the "origin of the funds remains unknown." The Commission noted: "we have seen no evidence that any foreign government-or foreign government official-supplied any funding." I stand corrected. Although there's no evidence as to who did the funding. I couldn't ever get my head around there islamic terrorist organisations and their different countries, even tho we in Istanbul and in Turkey had a lot of problems caused by them.
  - spraak 10y ago
    Pilot trainieren und preparation? Edit: Lol at German auto correct. I meant: Pilot training and preparation
  - sythe2o0 10y ago
    Fake identification, presumably some sort of weaponry to threaten people on said planes, planning and organization to make sure they weren't found out.
    - MichaelGG 10y ago
      >some sort of weaponry An 8 pack of box cutters is $8.95. Going to school to learn to fly is within the reach of individuals - and only a few of them needed to learn how to fly. MS Flight Simulator is said to be good enough to learn quite a bit, too. >planning and organization The best way to get past security is just to try it out several times. Send 2 teams for every mission, hope not both are stopped. After all, when you get stopped all they're going to do is take your knife. In the worst case, they might call the cops and you're burned. People are seriously making this out to be a big deal. The only serious barrier is finding enough people willing to commit to the same goal and being somewhat disciplined and ready to die. Fake ID to enter the country is probably the only real thing that might require some money or connections. Then again, I don't know what passport inspection c.2001 was like. Fake ID to fly on a domestic flight is trivial. http://www.amazon.com/Box-Cutters-Utility-Knives-Breakaway/dp/B00TXVJA8K?ie=UTF8&keywords=box%20cutter&qid=1463790411&ref_=sr_1_5&sr=8-5 http://www.amazon.com/Box-Cutters-Utility-Knives-Breakaway/d...
      - mveety 10y ago
        > MS Flight Simulator is said to be good enough to learn quite a bit, too. MS Flight Simulator is fantastic to learn to fly. You still need left seat time in a real aircraft but it's great for fundamentals and navigation.
      - ksherlock 10y ago
        Mohamed Atta Marwan Al-Shehhi spent over $40,000 on flight training in a 4 month period.
        MichaelGG 10y ago
        OK so how many months of several people working and saving does that require? Can one not get student loans?
  - gcr 10y ago
    The royal family finances everything in that country, from science R&D to military to economics to ... Given that P(funding|royal family) is very high, I'm not surprised to learn that this was also partially funded by them. (I am absolutely not an expert in any of this. this is secondhand)
vonklaus 10y ago
This is so fucking absvrd it is almost as bad as giving Charlie Sheen a real estate empire and a trucker hat and letting him run for president on a platform of "winning so much America might get bored". A decade and a half later, e.g. 15 fucking years after a terrorist attack we would allow people to sue a nation state because they may have played a role. Well guys, better suit up for the inbound lawsuits you would be fielding from the entire world if this precedent was set, and if it wasn't a bizarre farcical attempt at mastubatory populism* by Chuck Schumer. Except it is just that. It will never happen, and it is rediculous. 9/11 was fucking absurd, and we still don't know what the fuck happened. I mean, I don't want to go 100% jetfuel can't melt steel beams, but tower 7 just didn't suffer any structural damage, at all. So, does it make sense for some families to sue 15 years later, a country, of which some people may have contributed to this? Nah. It took fucking 6-7 years [and I want to be super fucking clear that I believe this and it is not sarcasm] to compile a several hundred page manual on what the fuck happened to tower 7. Tower 7, as a reresher, was the tower that spontaneously dropped to the floor and did the worm even though it didn't get hit by that plane that crashed in pennsylvania. So, if you can't figure out why tall buildings are falling down after 3/4 of a decade, how the fuck are you going to let people sue a nationstate for the actions of individuals and not only prove that beyond a reasonable doubt, but then apply some sort of metric to this to quantify it financially. Shockingly, Chuck Schumer is up for reelection in 2016. Also, as an aside (and this was true when I did the math a couple months ago) more people died from the auto-erotic asphyxiation than were either killed or rendered severely handicapped from the Zika virus. WTF is going on. * Sean Penn said a phrase like this and I fucking love it. edit: While the downvotes make sense, I challenge someone to disprove the following: * This is strictly political posturing by Chuck Schumer and will never pass & was never inteneded to. * The concept of holding a country responsible for something like this, if applied to America, would certainly outweigh any positive it would have for the families of 9/11 victims. * Tower 7 was fucking pulled. I know it. The core of engineers know it. And the fundamental laws of physics demand it.
- jacobolus 10y ago
  Note that the standard in civil lawsuits is not “beyond a reasonable doubt”, but rather the “preponderance of the evidence”. It’s weird that people keep calling out Schumer, considering there were 24 Senators who cosponsored the bill (12 Democrats and 12 Republicans), with Cornyn (R, TX) the sponsor, and it passed the full Senate (on a voice vote): https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/2040/cosponsors?resultIndex=1 https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/204...
BillyParadise 10y ago
Admittedly I'm neither American nor an expert in international affairs, but if taken down to a personal level, I'd rather be taken to court than bombed into oblivion.
dreamsofdragons 10y ago
So does this not open the door to pretty much everyone suing the US? As far as deaths and destruction on foreign soil, nobody beats good ol America.
- sparky_z 10y ago
  I can't tell if you're genuinely asking or just making a snarky point, but no. It's a US Law pertaining to "foreign" governments, so I don't see how it could apply to the US Government. And it will be vetoed anyway.
  - jkestner 10y ago
    Obviously, but it would set a precedent for other countries to pass similar laws in retaliation. Same reason the U.S. keeps relatively quiet about China's corporate hacking.
    - krapp 10y ago
      Other countries could pass similar laws anyway, they don't because they know the US will just ignore them.
- clock_tower 10y ago
  It does, but only if they can come here and take the money. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_immunity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_immunity , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity_in_the_Unit... , and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Sovereign_Immunities_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Sovereign_Immunities_A... for some of the underlying concepts here.) I don't expect many countries to start suing the US -- good diplomatic and trade relations are too important. Saudi Arabia is in a unique position here: they're dependent on the US for defense, the royal family has a lot of Salafi and al-Qaida sympathizers (including people whose donations to really sketchy Islamic charities went to al-Qaida; I've heard that the director of one such charity bought bin Laden his satellite phone). So, we can sue them and make them comply with our terms; if they choose to exercise state immunity to exempt themselves from 9/11 lawsuits, we can compel them to change their minds, by force of arms if necessary. (By the way, Saudi Arabia is why mainstream opinion is horrified at Trump's idea of letting the Japanese have nuclear weapons. Japan can be trusted with nuclear weapons, for obvious reasons, but Saudi Arabia can't; and if we let the Japanese get the bomb, the Saudis will expect us to let them have it, too. At that point, what argument can we make? If we just came out and told them that they aren't grown-ups yet, they'd probably throw a tantrum.)
narrator 10y ago
They said they were going to sell their treasuries recently, so we might as well not let them do that while lawsuits are pending...

76 points by espeed 10y ago

Apparently, the bill has been substantially neutered: https://www.justsecurity.org/31156/senate-killed-jasta-passed-it/ https://www.justsecurity.org/31156/senate-killed-jasta-passe...

gkya 10y ago
>> various members of the royal family indeed helped to finance the attacks. IIRC the attacks were forcing some planes to run into two skyscrapers. What financing was necessary for it other than the plane tickets?
- pquerna 10y ago
  That is a massively simplification and frankly very wrong. Several of the 9/11 Hijackers enrolled in flight schools: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hijackers_in_the_September_11_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hijackers_in_the_September_11_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning_of_the_September_11_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning_of_the_September_11_a... And were otherwise supported to operate inside the US for many months.
  - MichaelGG 10y ago
    Apart from getting in the country and finding a job, isn't that something that they could each finance personally, individually? Especially with a bit of credit, as they didn't have long-term credit rating concerns.
    - pquerna 10y ago
      From Wikipedia: >> The 9/11 Commission stated in their final report that the "9/11 plotters eventually spent somewhere between $400,000 and $500,000 to plan and conduct their attack" Still a non-trivial amount of financial support.
  - gkya 10y ago
    >> The 9/11 Commission stated in their final report that the "9/11 plotters eventually spent somewhere between $400,000 and $500,000 to plan and conduct their attack" but the "origin of the funds remains unknown." The Commission noted: "we have seen no evidence that any foreign government-or foreign government official-supplied any funding." I stand corrected. Although there's no evidence as to who did the funding. I couldn't ever get my head around there islamic terrorist organisations and their different countries, even tho we in Istanbul and in Turkey had a lot of problems caused by them.
- spraak 10y ago
  Pilot trainieren und preparation? Edit: Lol at German auto correct. I meant: Pilot training and preparation
- sythe2o0 10y ago
  Fake identification, presumably some sort of weaponry to threaten people on said planes, planning and organization to make sure they weren't found out.
  - MichaelGG 10y ago
    >some sort of weaponry An 8 pack of box cutters is $8.95. Going to school to learn to fly is within the reach of individuals - and only a few of them needed to learn how to fly. MS Flight Simulator is said to be good enough to learn quite a bit, too. >planning and organization The best way to get past security is just to try it out several times. Send 2 teams for every mission, hope not both are stopped. After all, when you get stopped all they're going to do is take your knife. In the worst case, they might call the cops and you're burned. People are seriously making this out to be a big deal. The only serious barrier is finding enough people willing to commit to the same goal and being somewhat disciplined and ready to die. Fake ID to enter the country is probably the only real thing that might require some money or connections. Then again, I don't know what passport inspection c.2001 was like. Fake ID to fly on a domestic flight is trivial. http://www.amazon.com/Box-Cutters-Utility-Knives-Breakaway/dp/B00TXVJA8K?ie=UTF8&keywords=box%20cutter&qid=1463790411&ref_=sr_1_5&sr=8-5 http://www.amazon.com/Box-Cutters-Utility-Knives-Breakaway/d...
    - mveety 10y ago
      > MS Flight Simulator is said to be good enough to learn quite a bit, too. MS Flight Simulator is fantastic to learn to fly. You still need left seat time in a real aircraft but it's great for fundamentals and navigation.
    - ksherlock 10y ago
      Mohamed Atta Marwan Al-Shehhi spent over $40,000 on flight training in a 4 month period.
      - MichaelGG 10y ago
        OK so how many months of several people working and saving does that require? Can one not get student loans?
- gcr 10y ago
  The royal family finances everything in that country, from science R&D to military to economics to ... Given that P(funding|royal family) is very high, I'm not surprised to learn that this was also partially funded by them. (I am absolutely not an expert in any of this. this is secondhand)

vonklaus 10y ago

This is so fucking absvrd it is almost as bad as giving Charlie Sheen a real estate empire and a trucker hat and letting him run for president on a platform of "winning so much America might get bored". A decade and a half later, e.g. 15 fucking years after a terrorist attack we would allow people to sue a nation state because they may have played a role. Well guys, better suit up for the inbound lawsuits you would be fielding from the entire world if this precedent was set, and if it wasn't a bizarre farcical attempt at mastubatory populism* by Chuck Schumer. Except it is just that. It will never happen, and it is rediculous. 9/11 was fucking absurd, and we still don't know what the fuck happened. I mean, I don't want to go 100% jetfuel can't melt steel beams, but tower 7 just didn't suffer any structural damage, at all. So, does it make sense for some families to sue 15 years later, a country, of which some people may have contributed to this? Nah. It took fucking 6-7 years [and I want to be super fucking clear that I believe this and it is not sarcasm] to compile a several hundred page manual on what the fuck happened to tower 7. Tower 7, as a reresher, was the tower that spontaneously dropped to the floor and did the worm even though it didn't get hit by that plane that crashed in pennsylvania. So, if you can't figure out why tall buildings are falling down after 3/4 of a decade, how the fuck are you going to let people sue a nationstate for the actions of individuals and not only prove that beyond a reasonable doubt, but then apply some sort of metric to this to quantify it financially. Shockingly, Chuck Schumer is up for reelection in 2016. Also, as an aside (and this was true when I did the math a couple months ago) more people died from the auto-erotic asphyxiation than were either killed or rendered severely handicapped from the Zika virus. WTF is going on. * Sean Penn said a phrase like this and I fucking love it. edit: While the downvotes make sense, I challenge someone to disprove the following: * This is strictly political posturing by Chuck Schumer and will never pass & was never inteneded to. * The concept of holding a country responsible for something like this, if applied to America, would certainly outweigh any positive it would have for the families of 9/11 victims. * Tower 7 was fucking pulled. I know it. The core of engineers know it. And the fundamental laws of physics demand it.

jacobolus 10y ago
Note that the standard in civil lawsuits is not “beyond a reasonable doubt”, but rather the “preponderance of the evidence”. It’s weird that people keep calling out Schumer, considering there were 24 Senators who cosponsored the bill (12 Democrats and 12 Republicans), with Cornyn (R, TX) the sponsor, and it passed the full Senate (on a voice vote): https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/2040/cosponsors?resultIndex=1 https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/204...

BillyParadise 10y ago

Admittedly I'm neither American nor an expert in international affairs, but if taken down to a personal level, I'd rather be taken to court than bombed into oblivion.

dreamsofdragons 10y ago

So does this not open the door to pretty much everyone suing the US? As far as deaths and destruction on foreign soil, nobody beats good ol America.

sparky_z 10y ago
I can't tell if you're genuinely asking or just making a snarky point, but no. It's a US Law pertaining to "foreign" governments, so I don't see how it could apply to the US Government. And it will be vetoed anyway.
- jkestner 10y ago
  Obviously, but it would set a precedent for other countries to pass similar laws in retaliation. Same reason the U.S. keeps relatively quiet about China's corporate hacking.
  - krapp 10y ago
    Other countries could pass similar laws anyway, they don't because they know the US will just ignore them.
clock_tower 10y ago
It does, but only if they can come here and take the money. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_immunity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_immunity , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity_in_the_Unit... , and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Sovereign_Immunities_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Sovereign_Immunities_A... for some of the underlying concepts here.) I don't expect many countries to start suing the US -- good diplomatic and trade relations are too important. Saudi Arabia is in a unique position here: they're dependent on the US for defense, the royal family has a lot of Salafi and al-Qaida sympathizers (including people whose donations to really sketchy Islamic charities went to al-Qaida; I've heard that the director of one such charity bought bin Laden his satellite phone). So, we can sue them and make them comply with our terms; if they choose to exercise state immunity to exempt themselves from 9/11 lawsuits, we can compel them to change their minds, by force of arms if necessary. (By the way, Saudi Arabia is why mainstream opinion is horrified at Trump's idea of letting the Japanese have nuclear weapons. Japan can be trusted with nuclear weapons, for obvious reasons, but Saudi Arabia can't; and if we let the Japanese get the bomb, the Saudis will expect us to let them have it, too. At that point, what argument can we make? If we just came out and told them that they aren't grown-ups yet, they'd probably throw a tantrum.)

narrator 10y ago

They said they were going to sell their treasuries recently, so we might as well not let them do that while lawsuits are pending...