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To: Beowulf9

I remember this from my time over there. The Saudis would make the drive across the causeway, party hard in Bahrain, then head back home and condemn people for doing what they just got done doing. Overall, Bahrain's not too bad a place, just a bit barren.


10 posted on 12/12/2005 7:16:46 PM PST by tarawa
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To: tarawa
I remember this from my time over there. The Saudis would make the drive across the causeway, party hard in Bahrain, then head back home and condemn people for doing what they just got done doing.

The ruling elites in Arab countries have always held themselves to a different (lower) standard of behavior. The piety the House of Saud has demanded of its subjects is notably lacking when they spend months at a time on the Spanish Riviera, where their appetite for booze and, um, working girls is reportedly so robust that it distorts local market prices.

Middle Eastern tyrants have long encouraged radical religion and funded Madrassas to keep the anger of their poor, illiterate masses directed at anyone but themselves. Conveniently, the tyrants also exercise rigid control over the local media, so that their people never see their debauchery. Only in recent years has the House of Saud -- notable but by no means alone in this -- seen the radicalism it has fostered come back to bite its own pampered butt.

Umm Qasr, on the Iraq side of the Kuwaiti border, was the Tijuana of Iraq before Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990. Well-heeled Kuwaitis would go there to engage in the sins of the flesh before returning to their homes and their pretensions of purity.

St. Augustine long ago articulated the principle that Muslims besotted with oil money have raised to a lifestyle: "Lord, grant me chastity, but not now."

18 posted on 12/12/2005 7:31:54 PM PST by ReignOfError
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