White House presses Congress on bill allowing 9/11 families to sue Saudi Arabia

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

POLITICS | Tue Sep 20, 2016 | 8:40pm EDT

White House presses Congress on bill allowing 9/11 families to sue Saudi Arabia

The White House said on Tuesday it is trying to persuade Congress not to press ahead with a bill that would allow survivors and families of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks to sue the government of Saudi Arabia for damages, in an apparent effort to avoid having a presidential veto overridden.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest, speaking during a press briefing in New York, repeated a promise that President Barack Obama would veto the bill, which has been passed by both houses of Congress, but said there was a push to change legislators' minds about the law.

"White House officials and other senior officials on the president's national security team have engaged members of Congress and their staffs in both parties in both houses," Earnest said.

Congressional aides have said the measure appeared to have enough support, two-thirds majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, for lawmakers to override an Obama veto for the first time since he took office in January 2009.

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Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-sept11-saudi-whitehouse-idUSKCN11R023

[Cicada]

1. And then Saudi citizens can sue US Govt for damages from US Iraq invasion

Saudi citizens who had relatives killed in Iraq or who had investments destroyed in Iraq can then sue in Saudi court for billions. Citizens in Turkey can then sue the U.S. Govt for billions lost in failed Turkish coup because US gave asylum to that Turkish professor in Pennsylvania. Will Turkish jurors decide against us? Sure. If we permit our citizens to sue Saudi govt in our courts then they can sue us in their courts. The damages we caused in Iraq might total a trillion dollars. Will it be hard to prove in middle eastern courts that Bush and Cheney knew there were no WMD? I could prove it in a US court (we told Hans Blix to inspect about a hundred sites our phony informants told us we're related to WMD and Blix found nothing in all 100 alleged WMD sites) so it would be easy to prove in any middle eastern court.

There are extremely good reasons for not permitting private lawsuits against foreign countries. The fact it will cost our government trillions of dollars is just one of them. This law will lead to great damage in many of our alliances and will cost us a fortune.