You couldn't write this stuff as a script for a farce.

Posted by: Abu_Lahab at June 5, 2008 10:03 AM

Yea, what Abu_Lahab said.

This is just embarrassing.

Posted by: undaunted at June 5, 2008 11:03 AM

Everyone should try to find, and to read (perhaps some samaritan can find it in a library, and somehow scan it and up-load it onto the Internet) the best essay ever written on Saudi Arabia and American misunderstandings about that country, misunderstandings encouraged, for decades, by a vast and well-funded Saudi lobby.

That essay is "Of Valuable Oil and Worthless Policies" by J. B. Kelly (the celebrated scholar of Arabia, on both oil policy -- "Arabia, the Gulf, and the West" and on the Frontier Question -- "Eastern Arabian Frontiers"), and author of the incomparable "Britain and the Persian Gulf, 1797-1880."

If anyone knows how to take this essay, published in "Encounter" in June 1979, and to up-load it so that it is in readable form on the Internet, that person would be performing a great and important service.

Posted by: Hugh at June 5, 2008 11:12 AM

Stuck on stupid. Where do they send the checks?
Can the FBI find its own arse with both hands?
/Bandar Bush. 'nuff said.

Posted by: MP at June 5, 2008 11:32 AM

My first response:

What? What!? What!??! WHAT?!?!

It's embarrassing, idiotic, stupid, counter-productive, and pathetic.

UGH.

Posted by: Mo Foe at June 5, 2008 11:39 AM

As an Army CID agent, we investigated contract fraud, and it used to be the law that NO military contract could be let to a non-US company.

Not sure when that changed but I imagine it was on Clinton's watch.

Posted by: undaunted at June 5, 2008 12:05 PM

Yes but... sometimes necessity trumps principles.
The military needs the fuel and this particular refinery can supply it. Not clear in the article is what other supply options the military has/had(?).
How many drivers here would refuse to buy from this company if they could buy their gas at say, $.90/litre rather than the $1.30+ they're now paying? Not that that would happen in a real market; I'm simply suggesting how flexible our ethical standards are in the real world.

Posted by: DaninVan at June 5, 2008 12:15 PM

No occupying force needed, our freedoms and principles are for sale and can be purchased by our opponents.

Posted by: tanstaafl at June 5, 2008 12:22 PM

A posting on the subject of Saudi fixers -- the cash-hogs or kashoggis or gaith pharaons, who make their money the way you would expect courtiers of the Al-Saud make their money, and then of course there are the Al-Saud themselves, including the two-billion-dollar man, Prince Bandar, the one who used to play tennis with Colin Powell, gave Powell's wife a Jaguar, and has been distributing hundreds of millions in walking-around-money, unmonitored and unstopped, in the corridors of power for several decades, until he was finally called home, just before the BEA scandal broke.

Here's an article on the subject from 30, 2008

Fitzgerald: Above the law, there are the Saudis

LONDON - Britain's head of overseas intelligence warned that Saudi Arabia likely would stop sharing vital information on terrorism if prosecutors pursued an investigation into alleged corruption in an arms deal, lawmakers disclosed Tuesday.
Ministers were told the inquiry into the BAE Systems PLC arms deal with Saudi Arabia could lead to a withdrawal of Saudi assistance on counterterrorism, according to the annual report of the Intelligence and Security committee. The committee scrutinizes the work of Britain's intelligence and security agencies….

"All relevant agencies were clear about the crucial importance of U.K.-Saudi co-operation in the fight against terrorism and the damage to U.K. interests -- and, potentially, U.K. lives -- if that co-operation were withdrawn," Goldsmith said….

The head of MI6, John Scarlett, told the committee that antagonizing Saudi Arabia risked losing vital intelligence.

"There were threats made to the existence of the co-operation (and) there was reason to take those threats seriously," he said. "Saudi Arabia is an absolutely key country ... they have turned themselves into a very important and powerful player in the world counterterrorism campaign."… -- from this news article

What "assistance on counterterrorism"? Every mosque, every madrasah, every Wahhabi preacher who replaces an Ahmadi one in the mosques of West Africa, or even in Europe (the Ahmadis, being milder, are good at converting people to Islam, but they are not good at keeping the Wahhabis from then taking over those mosques, and those converts, and turning them into the full-fledged, dangerous thing) that has been supported by the nearly $100 billion the Saudis have been allowed to spend in the Lands of the Infidels on spreading Islam also, of course, increases the number, and power, of Muslims.

And inevitably, many of those Muslims will wish to participate, directly or indirectly, in Jihad. The instrument of that Jihad need not necessarily be qitaal, or combat. Jihad can be pursued by other means than combat, or for that matter "terrorism" (what we have no trouble calling "terrorism" -- deliberate attacks on civilians to spread terror -- Muslims consider to be just another form of qitaal). Saudi Arabia does not offer assistance "in counterterrorism." It makes more likely, more possible, terror against Infidels, everywhere it spreads its unmerited money.

Perhaps MI6 operative has members so naive, or so malignant (like that Alistair Crooke fellow, the supporter and promoter of Hamas, who by now is quite possibly doing well as a "consultant" on the Middle East, and I'll leave it to you to guess who is paying his salary, and thereby earning his affection which, come to think of it, was already being offered to Hamas and similar groups even before his career as a "consultant" began) that they think the Saudis are "de-programming" terrorists successfully, and can help the Western world do the same.

Don't be ridiculous. All the Saudis do in their "de-programming" is bring in Al-Saud-financed clerics who tell the prisoners that the Al-Saud are loyal Muslims, that they are helping to spread Islam, that they are true to Islam, and any temporary assistance they get from the Americans or other Infidels is merely a case of using those Infidels for Muslim purposes, not of actually offering them real alliances or friendship.

And what the clerics say is, of course, true: the rulers of Saudi Arabia may be corrupt and many of them decadent beyond belief, but they are attempting (possibly even in a spirit of making up for that decadence) to spread Islam, to make Islam dominant. That kind of deprogramming has nothing that can be of assistance to real Infidels, who cannot possibly point to any Islamic texts that might lessen the hostility felt by captured Muslim terrorists for Infidels, always and everywhere.

Or perhaps the whole thing is merely blague, and MI6 is being blamed for what was a commercial decision. We want to make sales of planes and arms to Saudi Arabia, says BAE, and that's more important than that silly principle -- my god, get with the program -- that no one (including Saudi officials) should be above the law. In Great Britain, all kinds of members of the Al-Saud are seen to be above the law, this year, last year, five years ago, and five years hence: Above the Law.

[Posted by Hugh at January 30, 2008]

Posted by: Hugh at June 5, 2008 2:13 PM

This adds new meaning to sheer insanity.

Posted by: Spirit Of 1683 at June 5, 2008 3:38 PM

The icon falls from grace....

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article4076339.ece

Posted by: Cornelius at June 5, 2008 7:55 PM

I can't get faithfreedoms site to come up on the net. Does anyone know if they have been hacked? Maybe they are just over-hauling their server...

Posted by: capner at June 5, 2008 7:59 PM

......

Posted by: Bosch Fawstin at June 5, 2008 8:00 PM

After being speechless when first reading this, see above, I got it together and posted this story in its entirety at my site, along with some words and an accompanying visual which I titled:
Bucked Over

Posted by: Bosch Fawstin at June 6, 2008 3:24 AM

"Then join our leaping lines that scumfish through the pines,
That rocket by where, light and high, the wild grape swings.
By the rubbish in our wake, and the noble noise we make,
Be sure, be sure, we're going to do some splendid things!"

--from "Road-Song of the Bandar-Log" by the prescient Rudyard Kipling

Posted by: Chatillon at June 6, 2008 9:36 AM

"As an Army CID agent, we investigated contract fraud, and it used to be the law that NO military contract could be let to a non-US company.

Not sure when that changed but I imagine it was on Clinton's watch."
Posted by: undaunted at June 5, 2008 12:05 PM

Yet people will try to blame President Bush. Military contracts are under congressional control and the FBI is part of the Supreme Court jurisdiction. The President do what he can to fix this, but due to the balance of powers, it's really out of his hands.

Posted by: Lil Green Lizard at June 6, 2008 9:18 PM