8/5/1990

Immediately after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in early August 1990, Osama bin Laden made an offer to Prince Sultan, Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Defense, to “use his family’s construction business to ring the border of Iraq with new fortifications and…supply thousands of Muslim veterans from the Afghan war to defend the oil kingdom. In return, Saudi Arabia had to forgo an American military presence. …He claimed that allowing non-Muslims into the kingdom violated a well-known passage in the Koran that says that ‘there shall be no two religions in Arabia.’ He repeated his offer to the director of the Saudi General Intelligence Department, Prince Turki al-Faisal. He presented a detailed alternative plan: an army of thousands of Arab Afghans fighting a guerilla/terrorist war against Iraq’s massive army. When his plan was rejected, his hatred of America and the Saudi royal family deepened.” [The 5th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.]

 – Richard Miniter, Losing Bin Laden, Pages 13-14