Foe. Oil or no oil, we need to identify who the enemies of free people include. Saudi Arabia harbors and finances more of our tewrrorist enemies than any other country. They make Iran look like cub scouts when it comes to supporting terror groups. Money and influence.
Does the label “Necessary Evil” fit? I think so.
To save on air fare only the heads of the detainees should be returned.
The Saudis, evil and delicious when toasted over an open flame.
The Saudis hate and despise America. But, they will do business.
I vote for “mortal enemy”.
Saudi Arabia: Friend or Foe? Depends. Do you see a loan shark a friend or as a foe? Is a dealer a friend or a foe? Is a bookie your friend or your foe?
Foe. Oil is second to their number one export - terrorism.
However, I'm more worried that we consider Pakistan an ally.
We have a separation of church and state in this country.
Should mosques that receive funding from the Saudi government be denied tax free status? Or does that only refer to our own government’s imposition of a single religious faith?
We’re on a hand-holding relationship with them, apparently.
I vote for foe though.
That would be the queeranus. They lied..... again......
They are only our ally against Iran/decendants of muuuhhHamhead (Pigs be inseminating him).
Your assessment is accurate, Saudi Arabia is NOT our friend.
I used to receive the Washington Post Weekly until they had several weeks with different supplements on saudi arabia trying to tell us how wonderful the “kingdom” is.
Prue b.s. propaganda and I canceled the subscription.
They had paid off the Post to push their crap. You had to be real stupid to not see through their plan to make this insane backwards sandpit craphole look like an ally.
If they're our allies in a War On Terror, they sure have a funny way of showing it. Notice all the politicos of both parties paid off in various ways by the Saudi ambassador. I believe that is the one that Rudi told to shove his charity check following 9/11. Well, I suppose every human being must have some redeeming quality, even the leftwing mayor.
September 14, 2007 Edition > Section: Foreign > Printer-Friendly Version
The Saudi Reign of Terror
BY YOUSSEF IBRAHIM
September 14, 2007
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/62636Six years after visiting its brand of terror on New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, Saudi Arabia has become a world-class exporter of Islamist violence.
The toll is grisly: Well over 3,000 Saudi citizens roaming the world and just as many schemers are actively involved at home are managing terrorist networks and planning and executing suicide bombings and jihadist attacks that span the globe:
More than 30% of the insurgents fighting the Lebanese army at the siege of the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp, which claimed a toll of well over 300 during the past three months, were Saudi fighters.
Between 20 and 30 Saudis intending to be suicide bombers cross into Iraq every single day. Several thousand more are there fighting, tasked with killing Americans and the aShiite Muslims they view as apostates.
The ranks of Al Qaeda have been fattened in the past three years, once again with Saudi recruits. More than 1,000 Saudis are currently training in a Qaeda camp in Syria, which itself is the subject of contentious negotiations between Saudi Arabia and the Syrians, who still refuse to arrest them or shut down the camp. Young Saudi men are also training in Al Qaeda camps in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran.
At least 700 Saudi nationals are held in Iraqi and another 100 in Jordanian jails, all of them charged with terrorist acts or intentions.
The killing fields that are stocked with Saudi jihadists now include not only Iraq, Lebanon, and Afghanistan, but Somalia, Malaysia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Sudan, the Philippines, Yemen, and, of course, Saudi Arabia itself.
The main funding source for every radical Islamist movement in the world today, from the Muslim Brotherhood to Hamas, has Saudi origins, and their funders include the country's billionaire businessmen and its royal family.
ABC's "World News Tonight," anchored by Charles Gibson, got it right on the sixth anniversary of the September 11 attacks with an impressive segment documenting how Islamist terror begins and ends with Saudi Arabia, its people, and its government.
It conjured an Orwellian image of a conveyor belt with human bombs placed on it running out of the House of Saud and reaching around the globe. Saudi-funded mosques and madrassas supplied ideological content, and wings of the Saudi ruling establishment stoked the fire of its infernal machine.
There is no shortage of evidence for ABC News's case. The numerous sources for it include the CIA, the FBI, the Middle East Media Research Institute, and, astonishingly, the Saudi press itself. The question, therefore, is why the Saudis keep doing it and why America looks the other way.
One reason, of course, is what has become known as the "Bush-Saud Family" factor, which has been documented in many books and articles. Whether it stems from misplaced friendship or financial benefit, it yields the same outcome: a lot of money for the American partner and a lot of clout for Saudis.
President Bush, his family, associates, and friends going all the way to his father's administration are deeply beholden to the generosity of the corrupt Saudi royal family. But in fairness, this corrupting process has penetrated deeper than just the Bushes or the Republican Party and reaches into every segment of the American ruling establishment over three decades.
Democratic administrations, including those of Presidents Clinton and Carter, and much of official Washington's diplomatic and journalistic establishment have all eaten at the Saudi table and benefited from the hundreds of millions of dollars spent by the notorious former Saudi ambassador to Washington, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, to gain influence here. His royal highness had the town wrapped around his finger. His money and displays of generosity at his $150 million worth of mansions in Virginia and Colorado, on private planes and sumptuous vacations, as well as through the Saudi "consultancy" contracts he arranged, touched all. That, too, has been amply documented.
The result is that while Washington hears the music, it is not listening to the words.
During the bloody unraveling of the Red Mosque takeover by Pakistani jihadists in Islamabad this summer, the director-general of Saudi TV network Al-Arabiya, Abdelrahman Al-Rashed, immediately wondered if there might have been any Saudis among them.
Why?
Because, he said, since those September 11 attacks, we, the Saudis, have become time bombs, "mentally and politically ready to be pawns in the hands of organizations with very dangerous political plans."
ymibrahim@gmail.com
September 14, 2007 Edition > Section: Foreign > Printer-Friendly Version
Just another liberal film, trying to distort the facts that the peace loving religion of Islam is our friends, attempting to stop the bad guys, most probably the religious right or such. Pure propaganda. Yet another I will not see. Break out an old movie DVD again for the Saturday night movie. Let’s see, John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, Ward Bond, mummm. Which to pick.
I was made aware of an amazing statistic this week:
Only 3% of all of our electrical power comes from Oil fired power plants.
To me, it means that we depend on SA only to run our cars, essentially.
I’m now a pretty big believer in the concept of setting a 5 and 10 year goal of replacing the ICE with either a hybrid or full electrical based form of personal transportation.
I think this is a doable thing for most forms of transportation outside trucking and rail.
I'm disgusted with the constant attempts to personalize the ideological battle we face -
We didn't have this pathetic hand-wringing during WW2 - attempting to cherry-pick the good nazis out of the bad ones - we realized that the ALL of the followers of the ideology were our enemies - and rightly so..