Why do we continue to buy Saudi oil?

Posted by: Ummagumma at September 18, 2004 4:41 PM

Where are all those PC Leftist Journalists, those
Liberals screaming for 'Human Rights??' Or does this only apply for 'persecuted and oppressed Muslims'...

Posted by: Morgane at September 18, 2004 5:40 PM

The Saudis have a foothold in Canada,for a while now they have funded Whahabism seminars and Mosques that adhere to their version of Islam.
The Federal Liberals allow a Canadian Christian to be tortured for almost three years based on the Foreign Minister not wanting to upset the Saudis and put the Christians life in danger.
The Saudis already let it be know that this Canadian was to get a beheading like the other 50 or so per year that they murder,with Shariah Law about to become legal in Canada for Muslims,the next step will be for the Saudis to fund terrorism and Jihad for an Islamic State in Canada.
Yes the Saudis love our oil money,but they are also Muslims that hate the infidels and Jews,I
have no doubt they will lie for Allah sake and
fund the slaughtering of Gods children for Islam.

NO ISLAM - KNOW PEACE

Posted by: ala-sux at September 18, 2004 6:34 PM

Saudi Arabia needs to be read the riot act by someone – possibly John Bolton. And these are the things he should tell them.

Here are 100 ways to bring Saudi Arabia (“Money can buy everything, except civilization” as an Armenian who spent years in Saudi Arabia building military cities commented laconically).

One, the days of Prince Bandar having private audiences, or Abdullah being invited to anyone's ranch, are over. Saudi Arabia will no longer be called an ally. It never was – not even at the time of Ibn Saud’s famous shipboard picture with Roosevelt. How could it? How could a Muslim state, fanatical in the inculcation of hatred toward Infidels, conceivably ever be a real ally of an Infidel nation-state?

Second, every effort will be made, public and private, to tell the truth about Saudi Arabia whatever propaganda campaign the Saudis pay for. The treatment of Christians, the virtual slavery in which many from Thailand, India, the Philippines are held – all the stories that have been suppressed will now get the full attention of the American government, and of journalists. It will not be hard to find people who worked in Saudi Arabia, were ill-treated in Saudi Arabia, even saw others killed in Saudi Arabia – and will be happy to tell about it.

Third, those who long ago took Saudi Arabia’s true measure, such as J. B. Kelly, will be given respectful attention. For example, the real role of Saudi Arabia as the bully of the peninsula – supporting the Dhofar rebellion in Oman, or in the Buraimi Oasis dispute with the U.A.E., or in attempting to bully Yemen – all of this will be a staple of the press.

Fourth, American servicemen who felt the contempt of the Saudis, who treated them as simply mercenaries whom they could order about, will be given full access not only to the service academies and the military press, but will soon get the attention that those, for example, who wrote a certain book about a candidate are currently getting.

Fifth, Saudi textbooks, the contents of the khutbas, or sermons, routinely delivered in Saudi Arabia, will be given exposure by every conceivable means – and there will be many journalists happy, at long last, to report the truth about Saudi Arabia.

Sixth, attention will be given to how the Saudis have spent their money since 1973. Why no art works? Why not a single Saudi scientist of note? How much was spent on arms? How much was spent on luxury goods? Do any Saudis work, and if so, for how long each day? As for the Saudi penchant for “Western decadence” – a kind that will not go over very well in some circles in the Muslim East, the C.I.A. could easily supply to various Internet sites all sorts of pictures of Saudi princelings – for example, the amateur videos taken from a certain café in Marbella, that shows the boatloads of Western call girls being taken out to the waiting yachts of Saudis, just after their wives and children had been offloaded to other boats. Oh, there are a thousand things that, in a war, one can do to demoralize the enemy, or to cause the collaboration of certain key elements in the enemy camp. The K. G. B. was not the only organization capable of blackmail.

Seventh, use all means to help those who, like Joel Motley, are suing the Saudis for their role in all terrorist attacks. For their money, and U.A.E. money, and Kuwaiti money, underlie all the mosques in the West, madrasas, armaments, everything that has only been possible since 1973 with the OPEC bonanza.

Eighth, Congressional committees will follow up on the 9/11 Commission, and study the subject of how, in the capitals of the West, the Arabs, and especially the Saudis, have bought influence. Systematic study of every American ambassador to Saudi Arabia or to other Muslim oil states, including study of their reports to the State Department and their attempts to inform – or deliberately misinform – the American government and the American public both while in office, and in their retirement as “international business consultants with a particular interest in the Middle East” as so many of them are called. James Akins, Eugene Bird, Andrew Kilgore, the ex-C..I.A. agent Raymond Close, and a host of others, should be called before Congress. Find out who is funding the Committee for the National Interest. Who pays for certain lectures? Who has received what, from whom, when? And perhaps in London (certain members of Parliament have already been exposed as being on the Arab take),, or Paris (well, we all know about Chirac, so scarcely need bother with him – but what about the lower level, the Roland Dumas level?), or Rome (everyone knows about Andreotti, but it was not merely a connection, unproved in a court but common knowledge, to the malavita, but his curious interest in promoting, at every juncture, the Arabs that bears looking into). As for the EU bureaucracy – well, why not find out a bit more about that den of iniquity, as Europe transmogrifies, hideously, into Eurabia.

Nine, if the Saudis can charge $35 or $40 a barrel for oil that costs less than $1 to lift, is it beyond the wit of the oil-consuming nations, that supply the educated manpower on which the Saudis completely rely, the West whose medical care and educational system the Saudis also rely, to do the same to them. Turnabout is fair play. Suppose, for example, every time a Saudi wished to visit the United States for medical care (the Mass General, the Children’s Hospital, the Mayo Clinic), he were to be charged not only the regular medical fees, but a “surcharge” that would be pegged as the same multiple of those medical expenses,as the price charged for a barrel of Saudi oil is a multiple of the real cost of lifting that barrel. A $5,000 medical fee would have a surcharge of 40 times that, or $200,000. Unfair? Unworkable? Are you sure? Why is it any fairer than the Saudis who manage to charge oligopolistic rents because they are the swing producer – and who charge 40 times the cost of production? Why should not all the advanced Western powers together agree that even visits by Saudis to the U.S., to England, to France, to Italy, will be a very severely limited commodity – and will have to be paid for very considerably. This “surcharge” might be seen as a way of paying for the real cost of security now made necessary by Muslim terrorists. And any other means to discourage Saudi visits to the West – and to make clear that the Saudis (and other financers not only of terrorism, but of mosques in the West) are now pariahs, and will be treated as such, locked into their own Muslim world which, like the propagandist Tariq Ramadan, of course they cannot really bear (as Ramadan cannot bear not to reside in the West, so has concocted Da’wa for a future Islamized Eurabia.

Ten through One Hundred: Use your own imagination, reader.

Posted by: Hugh at September 18, 2004 7:51 PM

Hugh, you're absolutely right.

Posted by: Kepha1 at September 18, 2004 8:26 PM

"His court hearing came as United States Secretary of State Colin Powell named Saudi Arabia as one of eight "countries of particular concern" for its "gross infringements of religious freedom."

This is probably the best we can expect from the boot-licking creeps in the State Department. But I am sure there have already been delivered to the Saudis back-channel assurances to the effect of, "Don't worry. We still love you."

Posted by: montfort at September 19, 2004 11:25 AM