Discussion on Middle Eastern Political Strategies

We fought for freedom, and that was how we felt

then. Now I return to Saudi Arabia. We wanted to dismantle

the Ottoman Empire, and the way to do that

was to organize people under the banner of

religion. And our feeling during the

Cold War was that if we

funded religious extremism, it would

undermine communism, which is atheistic. We

supported, to some extent, at least silently,

and indirectly, the use of Wahhabi ideology

through the royal family to

ensure communism did not spread in Saudi Arabia

or other countries. And we did the same thing in Afghanistan.

We did the same thing in Afghanistan, as I mentioned.