Robert Scheer: Those Ungrateful Saudis

[laststeamtrain]

Those Ungrateful Saudis
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080115_those_ungrateful_saudis/
Posted on Jan 15, 2008

By Robert Scheer

Why is it that George W. Bush gets only a 12 percent favorability rating in Saudi Arabia? Even Osama bin Laden and Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad scored higher in a poll last month by the nonpartisan Terror Free Tomorrow group, which counts both Republican Sen. John McCain and Democrat former Rep. Lee Hamilton on its advisory board. What ingrates those Saudis are. Didn’t the Bush family save them twice from Saddam Hussein?

What more can this president do to curry favor with the Saudis? He forgave them for nurturing the Wahhabism that spawned al-Qaida, and he never embarrasses them with the fact that bin Laden and 15 of the19 hijackers who attacked America on 9/11 were born and raised in the kingdom. Nor did Bush let the inconvenient fact that the Saudi government had backed the Taliban until 9/11 intrude on his cozy relations with the royal family. That warmth, displayed at ranching cookouts in both countries, has now been reinforced by $20 billion in U.S. arms sales to the Saudis and their Persian Gulf allies, officially announced by Bush on Monday.

At first, the Bush administration feared that some pro-Israel members of Congress might be able to derail the arms sale deal, but they solved that one by offering Israel $30 billion in new weapons. That’s a good deal for the Israelis and for U.S. arms manufacturers, although not for U.S. taxpayers stuck with the tab. No problem—neither the media nor Congress notices the cost to taxpayers of anything carrying the label of “national security.” Heck, Iraq’s defense minister was just in Washington with his shopping list for new weapons and didn’t cause much of a stir when he said the United States will have to defend Iraq for at least a decade more. So much for the impact of the $1 trillion already wasted on the Iraq debacle.

At least the Saudis pay their own way and then some, when you look at how our main banks would now be kaput were it not for the almost daily bailouts from Gulf-based holding companies. It’s a good deal all around: The Gulf sheiks get their money by raising oil prices that drive up inflation, thus raising the interest rates on home mortgages, and then, when the banks foreclose on those homes at a loss, the oil money comes pouring in to make the banks whole again. A good deal for everyone, that is, except for the folks who lose the equity in their homes, but they don’t have a lobby that Congress or the president has to worry about.

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http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080115_those_ungrateful_saudis/

[nightrider767]

1. It's not so easy being a Saudi..

I'm no Saudi, but I'd like to interject a bit on their behalf.

I differ from you on a couple points. For one, I don't blame Saudi Arabia for our over-dependence on oil. I blame us. We're the biggest consumers and the biggest polluters in the world. And now the hens have come home to roost.

How many years have we seen this problem coming, 20, 30? This country will not do a thing to adjust to the realities of the world until the economy has competly collapsed. And that's where we're headed.


Saudi Arabia has a couple other problems. They probably own a couple trillion US dollars, and they're seeing that value sink every single day due to poor US economic fiscal policy. If the you see the Middle East and CHina on a buying spree, it's not to take control of the world, it's to dump dollars while they still have value.

The housing crisis was again caused only by us. Bush, since he hates people, instead of creating a real economy post 9-11 decided to build a fake one based on fake money. The money was released by the truckload into the real estate market and has kept this nation afloat with it's fake "wealth affect". Not happy with huge profits, lending companies went even further and gave money to people who should never have had it. They didn't care about defaults, because they packaged, then sold that bad dept all over the world.

It's not Saudi Arabia that's poison to the world, it's the Chimp and his crappy New World Order.