| Wednesday, August 10, 2005 |
| The hand that rocks the cradle 2 |
From Robert Scheer in the LAT today (color me a "linker" this morning...):
Mortgaged to the House of Saud
August 9, 2005
THE ONLY EVIDENCE you need that President Bush is losing the "war on terror" is this: On Sunday, the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia said that relations with the United States "couldn't be better."
Tell that to the parents of those who have died in two wars defending this corrupt spawning ground of violent extremism. Never mind the ugly facts: We are deeply entwined with Saudi Arabia even though it shares none of our values and supports our enemies.
Yet on Friday, Bush's father and Vice President Dick Cheney made another in a long line of obsequious American pilgrimages to Riyadh to assure the Saudis that we continue to be grateful for the punishment they dish out.
"The relationship has tremendously improved with the United States," Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al Faisal told a news conference in Riyadh. "With the government, of course, it is very harmonious, as it ever was. Whether it has returned to the same level as it was before in terms of public opinion [in both countries], that is debatable."
Well, score one for public opinion. It makes sense to distrust the mercenary and distasteful alliance between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. We protect the repressive kingdom that spawned Osama bin Laden, and most of the 9/11 hijackers, in exchange for the Saudis keeping our fecklessly oil-addicted country lubricated. The question is: what will it take to decouple the United States government and the Saudi kingdom? Clearly, this administration won't take a single step away from their bosom friends in Riyadh -- the relationships run far too deep, whether we're talking about the Bushes, or Dick Cheney, or Condi Rice or even Collin Powell -- the Bush team (past and present) are soaked in Saudi oil. Oil soaks everything in the current administration, from its curious relationship with Vlad Putin to the shared paranoia between Washington and Caracas (Russia -- believe it or not -- is the world's largest crude oil producer -- and Venezuela supplies the U.S. with 14 percent o our oil supply).
And don't look to Congress either, judging by the recent energy bill: their only concern is lopping off healthy slabs of fat-laden pork for the greedy political mouths who slobber the fundage back into their political campaigns.
If we had a different administration -- one with a more Kennedyesque outlook -- we wouldn't be looking for a way to get the decrepit shuttle system to lead us to Mars, we'd be looking for a way to make viable new sources of energy a reality, and our bad marriage tothe Saudis history.
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