Word: saudi
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...secret agency's work spilled into the open recently, only to be dismissed by almost everyone involved. Meeting last month in Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's private conference room, a group called the Defense Policy Board heard an outside expert, armed only with a computerized PowerPoint briefing, denounce the Saudis for being "active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot soldier, from ideologist to cheerleader." Such claims have been on the rise since Sept. 11, when 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis. Relatives of those killed in the attacks filed suit...
...Whether or not Saudi disinvestment proves to be as extensive as reported, the news certainly functions as a warning shot from Riyadh over the future of U.S.-Saudi relations. The September 11 attacks, in which 15 of the 19 hijackers were of Saudi origin prompted some Washington hawks to challenge the longstanding U.S. alliance with the House of Saud. In the weeks and months that followed, they painted the Saudis as double-dealing autocrats whose rigidly controlled society actively nurtured extremism, and who could not be relied on as an ally in the U.S. war on terrorism...
...Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Saudis are pushing for a peace-plan based on Israel's 1967 borders, and urging the U.S. to restrain Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon. The Saudi position, once again is motivated in part by the fear that the survival of the House of Saud requires placating the anti-American rage generated among ordinary Saudis by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and like many moderate Arab regimes, they're particularly alarmed at the potential domestic consequences of a U.S. attack on Iraq while battles rage in the West Bank and Gaza. But the most forceful advocates of attacking...
...steady stream of conservative columnists has been asking the question "Do We Still Need the Saudis?" (No, is the usual answer). Concerns over everything from the price of oil to the prospect that cutting Saudi Arabia loose might very well hand the country over to the likes of Osama bin Laden are given short shrift. Typical is the essay in the neo-con flagship journal Commentary, arguing for Washington to abandon the Saudis and foment a region-wide revolution against Arab authoritarianism in an effort to remake the Middle East on terms friendlier to the U.S. and Israel...
...would scarcely be surprising if such talk provoked some rather bearish behavior on the part of Saudi investors. But open calls for Saudi disinvestment and reports that hundreds of billions of dollars could soon leave these shores may also be calculated as a warning to the Bush administration that the Saudi elite won't be the only losers if the longstanding alliance is ruptured. As the Bush administration's internal debate over going to war with Iraq intensifies, we can expect to see plenty more dire warnings from both sides over the consequences of maintaining, or of severing, the traditional...