There was a news item just a few days ago stating that Bush and the Saudi's had supposedly inked a new agreement that would bring 15,000 new Saudi students to "study" at US universities - and that they were already arriving by the 1,000s?
"There was a news item just a few days ago stating that Bush and the Saudi's had supposedly inked a new agreement that would bring 15,000 new Saudi students to "study" at US universities - and that they were already arriving by the 1,000s?"
Well that was a few days ago. EVERYTHINGS changed now and they're staying away by the thousands.
I worked in Saudi Arabia for three years and I definitely was nervous about violating some aspect of Saudi law and ending up in some kind of legal jam there. I didn't particularly want to have an encounter with sharia law.
I would say that I and other Americans were pretty well treated there. They spent a lot of time trying to convert me and were always polite and gracious. While I was there the other kind of Muslims blew up the Khobar towers just a short distance away.
And, if you weren't American or European you could much more easily find yourself in a bind with the legal system and have a much bigger problem. They take your passport when you go to work there (there are no tourists) and give you an iqama (identity document). You swap it for your passport when you leave.
They posted notices like pre-civil war runaway slave notices for people fleeing from their employers with their photograph and details about their appearance, education, skills and behavior.
When a bunch of brass valves left our shipyard and were found in the flea market 30 miles away they took one Pakistani and one Philipino worker and beat them to make them confess. Neither one of these guys was young. Of course, only a Saudi could have pulled this off.
They arrested five Philipino office workers when the contents of the safe disappeared on base. The only one with the combination was the Saudi officer. These guys were all still in jail when I left. It can be a pretty spooky place.