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Well, I've always taken the Saudi situation to be a two way conflict.

On the one hand you have the Islamists. They think the Saudis are not strict enough in their enforcement of Islam and want to use Saudi Arabia's oil wealth to export holy war.

On the other hand are what passes for moderates, led by Bandar. They know they have a good deal, and do not want to have their societal perks and oil based cash flow taken away. Even more importantly they don't want to have to fight the Islamists.

Throughout the 90s, the deal between the two groups was that the Saudis would turn a blind eye to terror recruitment and funding as long as it didn't target Saudis. And before President Bush, the moderates knew that the US would do no more then give them a serious talking to over the terror issue - rather less of a threat then what Osama and Co presented.

Our invasion of Iraq changes things in rather alot of ways though. Most notably, Iraq as a friendly nation greatly weakens the oil weapon the Saudis have over us. Specifically this mean we can be much more demanding in what we want from the Saudis both in terms of anti-terrorism operations and also democratization.

One can already see this some minor, though significant, improvement in both regards already.

So the moderate faction in Saudi tried to use the weapons at their disposal to stop the invasion of Iraq. Their most powerful weapons being their bought and paid for friends in the America state department.

Interesting analysis which gets me thinking about several things. One thing that would be worthwhile would be to identify the origins and development of the Saudi lobby in the State Department and other branches of government--this of course has a long history going back to Jack Philby, which I suspect can be traced forward fairly easily to John Kerry via BCCI. This also gets me thinking about several other things, of which I'll toss out one as a question for you: how do you see the Saudi attempt to acquire nuclear weapons factoring into the scenario you describe?

I'm looking up some stuff on the Lance-Clifford-BCCI-Kerry thing now. Here's something interesting:

http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2004/01/why_wont_sen_ke.html

Don't forget the campaign loan paid by Jackson Stephens Worthen Bank (who arranged the first BCCI penetration through Bert Lance's National Bank of Georgia (which would end up being owned by Ghaith Pharaon, the Saudi moneyman behind Kerry's financial benefactor, David Paul, who in addition had ties to Roger Tamraz, of the first TransCaucusus pipeline (ted Rall, take note)

Also lots of stuff here:

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/