This is an interesting little nugget:
Our Friends the SaudisSounds like Arkancide, or maybe Saudicide.In a report on Gerald Posner's new book, "Why America Slept," Time magazine relates this anecdote about Abu Zubaydah, an al Qaeda terrorist who has been in U.S. custody since March 2002:
When questioning stalled, according to Posner, CIA men flew Zubaydah to an Afghan complex fitted out as a fake Saudi jail chamber, where "two Arab-Americans, now with Special Forces," pretending to be Saudi inquisitors, used drugs and threats to scare him into more confessions.
Yet when Zubaydah was confronted by the false Saudis, writes Posner, "his reaction was not fear, but utter relief." Happy to see them, he reeled off telephone numbers for a senior member of the royal family who would, said Zubaydah, "tell you what to do." The man at the other end would be Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdul Aziz, a Westernized nephew of King Fahd's and a publisher better known as a racehorse owner. His horse War Emblem won the Kentucky Derby in 2002. To the amazement of the U.S., the numbers proved valid.
As we noted last year, Aziz died at 43, a few months after Zubaydah's capture, part of a curious string of deaths of youngish Saudi princes.
Those Saudi's are a tricky lot, especially if you're a prince (or whatever) and the powers that be decide you need to go. One died in a plane crash, one died of thirst and Aziz was the heart attack (think I have that right). Too bad they didn't employee this method to bin Laden!
I'm glad we do have some friends in the Saudi Royal family, it'll make tracking those bastards easiser those times they decide to help.
Maybe since soon the oil market will be flooded with more oil from Iraq they'll be even more cooperative.