Hey! How about the State Dept? Foggy Bottom has been way too foggy about its relationships with the Saudis and the promulgation of 'Arab Studies' and the promotion of those following it. Could we get a President to clean house there?

If the D and R party leaders just *openly* took cash, I wouldn't have a problem with it... at least admit you can be bought and paid for and put a price on yourself. It is the problem of going through legislation, arranging for sweetheart deals with paper thin organizations to get contracts and grants with kickbacks to Congresscritters, flying on junkets to lovely meetings to hobnob with Red Mafia oligarchs, working under the table with terrorist organizations like FARC, not putting enough money into breaking up smuggling organizations inside the US that fund terror organizations, and the ability to sinecure seats for decades that I find to be the problem.

That and Congresscritters prancing over to Syria to make nice with Assad and going to Egypt to talk up the Muslim Brotherhood that most get to me, and those were 'bi-partisan' endeavors, don't forget! Sort of like Congresscritters going to talk up Petain and Vichy France in 1941... which, I dearly hope, no Congresscritter did back then! I would not be surprised if it was otherwise, though. Of course arranging steel exports to Imperial Japan when it was already working hard at taking over China and threatening the US and UK wasn't much of a help, either. Had to sink and shoot down a lot of US made steel during the war.

Apparently there is a suicidal component of the ruling elite in a representative democracy that has ceased to be too representative. Perhaps the elite are looking to fire the current population and elect a new one more to their liking.

aj,

It is all out in the open for any one who wants to look. Which is why you know what you do and I am able to do blog posts on the subject.

As I said, the only thing we don't know is the price. If the past is any guide it is damn cheap.

Of course the Dems (like the Reps) are in cahoots with the Saudis, or petro dollars in general. Clinton and his $10 million for his library, Gore and his $300,000 speech fees--no pol wants to harm his or her retirement on Arab money by promoting more production. And you can suck up to US oil companies at the same time! A political home run!

And what, exactly, is anybody going to do about this? Do any of the three Presidential candidates have a position vis-a-vis the Saudis. None of them - unlike Bush - is best buddies with Prince Bandar, so maybe there's a chance that one of them might actually do something.

Nah.

Seriously misguided article in 'The American Thinker'.

The Saudis are not manipulating oil supplies to jack around the US consumer (or government). They have their own, legitimate interests. You might look at both this AP analysis from the Boston Glob, or my further development of it here.

The logic of helping the Saudis--whether in arms sales or assistance in developing nuclear energy--is sound logic, even if it involves a disfavored country. The US and Saudi Arabia do have mutual concerns, after all, starting with Iran.

The US is also concerned that if it does not offer assistance to Saudi nuclear power aspirations, there are others who will, with fewer concerns about safety or re-channeling the effort. France? Russia? India? Pakistan? N. Korea? All will happily step in to fill the void.

And then there's the matter of money coming into the US from the KSA. If the US is lending its support to the Saudi nuclear program, it's going to be selling everything from expertise to reactors. I know, it's only money...

It makes sense to the Saudis to shift to nuclear energy. They are among the biggest consumers of electricity in the world, if not the top. They want to shift from burning oil and natural gas to run both plants and electric generation to a more economical source, nukes. Whether it's their massive desalination plants--80% of the country drinks desalinated water--or their diversifying economy, they need huge amounts of electricity.

I find it both amusing and dismaying that we should expect any country to act against its national interest because of the pinch we feel from the price of a gallon of gas.

Saudi policy is to sell as little oil for as high a price as possible. That's perfectly logical for any commodity. They get no benefit from reduced prices, as they learned in the 1990s, with oil in the $10-$12/bbl range. That's when they ran a record deficit budget, with shortfalls in the billions.

But they're also aware that too high a price hurts them, too. Because they are so heavily invested--primarily private funds, but increasingly sovereign wealth funds--in the global economy, if it tanks, so do they. Suicide bombers notwithstanding, the Saudis have no great death wish.

Since the 1980s, btw, the Saudis have also had among the world's largest solar energy research projects. They see oil as a finite resource; eventually it's going to run out. In the meantime, it's a useful resource, both to sell, to process into other products, and to consume directly. It's entirely rational to want to preserve a waning, increasingly valuable resource.

===

Disclosure: I am, heaven forfend!, a former USIA/State Dept. officer. I've lived in the KSA for four years (1981-83, 2001-03) and blog about the country at Crossroads Arabia. I do not now--nor ever have--received a penny from any Saudi individual or entity. I believe that US-Saudi relations are too important to leave to ill-informed analysis.

"If there is oil on their side of the line there is most probably oil on our side of the line."

No, there is not oil on this side, and on that side, of some imaginary line. There is probably a single pool of oil that the imaginary line crosses over. The Cubans, on their side of the imaginary line, have tapped this pool & are draining it. When we finally wake up and start drilling, the oil will be gone.

For an easy & entertaining lesson in how this works, watch There Will Be Blood.

If we let those Cubans drink our milkshake I'm going to be royally pissed.

Perhaps it is time to re-constitute Alpha-66, for some anti-Castro action?

If oil stays above $120/barrel, the Saudis, Chavez, Iran, Russia, Sudan, etc. are all in deep trouble after a few years. Read why at the link (short summary : they are getting trapped into burning the candle at both ends).

"No, there is not oil on this side, and on that side, of some imaginary line. There is probably a single pool of oil that the imaginary line crosses over. The Cubans, on their side of the imaginary line, have tapped this pool & are draining it. When we finally wake up and start drilling, the oil will be gone. "

Absolutely true. They are eating into our pool.

However, at least the oil still contributes to global supplies, keeping prices from rising even higher, thus saving us money.

But they are eating into our pool. If the voters knew this, they would be PISSED.

I often see "No Blood for Oil" bumper stickers. That's not what the Iraq War is, of course, but it does raise a question in my mind: What exactly is the argument against seizing the Saudi oil fields by force?

If the present trend continues we might
be buying oil from Cuba in the near
future. If that isn't a humiliation
I don't know what is.

If the present trend continues we might
be buying oil from Cuba in the near
future. If that isn't a humiliation
I don't know what is.

"What exactly is the argument against seizing the Saudi oil fields by force?"

We would be no better than Saddam Hussein, who took Kuwait by force.

I don't think we should do that. We should, however, remove Brazilian ethanol tariffs. Let Brazil become OPEC's enemy.

Twitter,

I have read that Futurist piece from your link and it is very good.

Kestrel,

Kuwait posed no threat to Saddam Hussein: Kuwait hadn't funded and in other ways promoted an ideology centering on Iraq's destruction. Saudi Arabia pretends to be our ally while sponsoring Wahhabism, encouraging and funding terrorism against the West.

We tolerated this when we needed to counter Soviet influence in the region. Why do we tolerate it now?