The Gloves Are Finally Off:

by John Hawkins | August 5, 2002 9:31 pm

The Gloves Are Finally Off: If I were Crown Prince Abdullah and I read this[1] Washington Post article I would get really nervous…

A briefing given last month to a top Pentagon advisory board described Saudi Arabia as an enemy of the United States, and recommended that U.S. officials give it an ultimatum to stop backing terrorism or face seizure of its oil fields and its financial assets invested in the United States.

“The Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot-soldier, from ideologist to cheerleader,” stated the explosive briefing. It was presented on July 10 to the Defense Policy Board, a group of prominent intellectuals and former senior officials that advises the Pentagon on defense policy.

“Saudi Arabia supports our enemies and attacks our allies,” said the briefing prepared by Laurent Murawiec, a Rand Corporation analyst. A talking point attached to the last of 24 briefing slides went even further, describing Saudi Arabia as “the kernel of evil, the prime mover, the most dangerous opponent” in the Middle East.

…One administration official said opinion about Saudi Arabia is changing rapidly within the U.S. government. “People used to rationalize Saudi behavior,” he said. “You don’t hear that anymore. There’s no doubt that people are recognizing reality and recognizing that Saudi Arabia is a problem.”

Before you get too excited remember that things could change in the drop of a hat. Maybe the Saudis will get scared by this story and some of the other rumors coming out of Washington and they’ll give us access to their bases and then all will be forgiven…for a while. But there are a lot of signs that point to a coming break with the Saudis if you know what to look for. We’re filling our oil reserves up, we’re starting to bring in oil from the Russians, and we’ve also moved our military headquarters in the Middle East out of Saudi. Furthermore, once we take Iraq it’s quite possible that we’ll have a significant new oil source we can use to continue to decrease our dependence on the Saudis. Iraq will also give us a base of operations we can use to launch strikes against Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia itself as well as well as an oil supply that makes them less important. Furthermore, the dictators in the Middle East respect brute force and if we crush Saddam and his men and we start making demands they’ll be much more apt to listen than they are now. Crown Prince Abdullah has been paying more attention to the forces in his own kingdom who want to promote terrorism and radical Islam more than to us but that is going to change once Hussein is gone.

Bonus Theory #1: I wouldn’t be surprised if the Bush administration leaked this story deliberately to shore up support from Conservatives who were wondering if he was going soft on the ‘War on Terror’ after his initial anemic reaction to the Hamas attacks that killed five Americans and the story in USA Today that said senior Bush admin officials had assured Congress that there would be no Iraqi invasion until after the elections. I’m still hoping that story was a plant and we’re aiming to hit Hussein in late summer/early fall but this story is a nice little morale booster either way.

Wild Bonus Theory #2: There have been a lot of rumors floating around about a power struggle between Abdullah’s faction of the royal family and a much more radical / openly pro-terrorism group of the family. There have even been three princes who recently turned up at room temperature lately which fueled the speculation about the coming coup attempt. Well, what if the CIA were the ones helping to stir the pot? At first glance that may seem unlikely, but what do you think would happen if an open rebellion in Saudi Arabia occurred? Well, someone would have to protect the oil fields wouldn’t they? Even Europe would have to get behind that rather than risk that that the oil fields would be destroyed which would cause a significant upward spike in prices. Furthermore, we could give one side or the other (probably Abdullah) a little help and they win. But since we’d control the oil fields (after the Crown Prince publicly asked us too of course (**wink, wink**)) and since we’d control the cash flow in and out of the kingdom, guess who would be calling the shots? At that point, Abdullah would use the rebellion as an excuse to wipe out all the royal family with terrorist ties, the big name radicals, and a lot of influential Wahhabi clerics. Then we’d have a Saudi Arabia that was much less terrorist friendly than it is today. I’ll grant you that this is a wild theory, but it wouldn’t be the first time the CIA got involved in events on this scale and it would allow us facilitate much needed changes in a nation it would probably be very difficult for us to openly invade in the foreseeable future. One way or the other, Saudi Arabia will have to be dealt with unless they make a surprising turnaround and I wouldn’t be shocked if something like this were actually on the table.

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