I'm not so sure they are. One of their main reasons for not supporting us on Iraq is their morbid fear of "destabilization" (defined as the royal family's potential ouster after their own people get a look at a reformed,
republican Iraq). I really think that one of the reasons we are so hot for Saddam's head on a pike is because it will constitute a "democracy bomb" dead-center in the Middle East, sort of like Berlin during the Cold War.
The Saudis will fall, and it will come entirely from within, with no blame to fall on us at all. Other Muslim nations (Iran and Syria, we're looking at YOU) would follow.
Quite an elegant concept, if you ask me. I'm sure things are going on deeply under the table to help bring it about. Personally, I would drink a toast of good Scotch while watching tape of the Saudi royal family hauled to the block and beheaded, followed by their vile mullahs.
Okay, maybe it's farfetched...but a variation on it worked during the Cold War.
And why are the Saudis apparently getting a free pass, I wonder? I don't like it any more than you do, but you know why they are getting a pass. We have to have oil. This country would go to her knees without it. We can't drill enough oil here to supply the nation thanks to the PC greenies and the RATS, but I repeat myself there.
If and until we are allowed to use our own oil supplies, we have to get it somewhere. That is the disgusting fact of life. It is NOT because of Bushs' oil friends either, it is because we need it as a nation.