[swilhelm73]

The reason for wanting nuclear weapons is obvious - it provides the country with them an awesome deterrent against even the most powerful conventional armies - as in the US.

The Islamists want a nuclear weapon so that they can more easily use Saudi Arabia as a base. The comparitive examples of Iraq and Afghanistan versus Pakistan and North Korea are as obvious to Islamists as they are to us.

I'd say the moderates in Saudi Arabia have little interest in acquiring nuclear weapons - but much interest in using the threat of developing them as a bargaining chip.

With Saudi Arabia's vast wealth, it certainly could develop nuclear weapons relatively quickly. One could expect help from not only the likes of North Korea but quite possible the PRC or even France.

It is possible if a bumbling Democrat comes into office and treats the Saudis with the state departments signature fawning deference that we could see such a program come to fruition, but I rather doubt it at this point as I can't see any Democrat winning the presidency.

Back to the original point though, it is fascinating that there is no interest in possible connections of various American officials, of both parties, to the Saudi government by the Left or the media.

Leftists have spent much of the last two years arguing Saudi Arabia is a greater threat then Iraq, and have shown even less interest in who the Saudis may be bribing then who was on Iraq's payroll.

[Fedora]

> Back to the original point though, it is fascinating that there is no interest in possible connections of various American officials, of both parties, to the Saudi government by the Left or the media.

I can think of several possible reasons for that--bribery, blackmail, financial blackmail (i.e., the Saudis have enough influence in our economy that they could cause a lot of chaos in the stock market), diplomatic concerns, protecting a covert operation, strategic deferrment of conflict with the Saudis until after other international problems have been dealt with, combinations of the above, other. . . What's your thoughts on the explanation for that?

> Leftists have spent much of the last two years arguing Saudi Arabia is a greater threat then Iraq, and have shown even less interest in who the Saudis may be bribing then who was on Iraq's payroll.

This raises something I'm curious about: what stake the Saudis had in Iraq's WMD program. During the first Gulf War, the Saudis saw Iraq as a threat and supported the coalition against them. This time around, they seemed--at least publicly--to resist the US campaign against Iraq, until war was inevitable and then they seemed to cave a bit and cooperate with us to the extent of Coalition use of Saudi bases (if I remember right). In between those events, were they temporarily allying with Iraq and piggybacking off of Iraq's WMD program?--that's my guess.