Democrats habitually see things as half-empty, believe the media because of their defective educations [lib perfessers indoctrinate Humanities students as a matter of a passing grade] and regard ambivalent situations through a lens of fear in the "Flight or Fight" reflex.
For twenty years, I worked for Democrats on and off and their reflexive retreat-gene kept asserting itself, until the only way they could win elections would be by flukes [Jimmy Carter over a bumbling Gerry Ford] or media fluff-piece selectiveness [Bill Clinton's draft-dodging overlooked, Ross Perot's zany paranoia unexamined, Billy Jeff's philandering uninvestigated.]
In this poll, 19% of self-identified Democrats believed the world would be better off were the US to lose the war in Iraq, and an astounding 20% of Democrats "don't know" if it would or wouldn't. That means that in this very random instance, forty percent of Democrats are simply unaware of the US as a bulwark of sanity against what will be an avalanche of terror and self-aggrandizing expansionist insanity among the very impressionable Middle East types. They see things in zero-sum terms and would regard a US defeat as a victory for Bin Laden and a justification for 911.
Why don't forty percent of Dems and over 20% of Independents recognize the danger to western civ were our oil supplies to fall under a tyrannical bunch of religious nutjobs? Could it be what Bill O'Reilly accurately calls a corrupt media which continues to encourage a witch hunt against a talk-radio host?
A corrupt media which when I was young, inveighed incessantly about the evils of Joe McCarthy and his Big Smear tactics and Blacklisting Hollyweirdos with connections to the Communist Party. But now this media and nutjob Democratic Senators are calling for Limbaugh's removal from Clear Channel. With customary inaccuracy, Dingy Harry Reid, a true coward and cut-and-runner who said the surge was not working before all the surge-troops had even been deployed, says Rush's audience is "diminishing." Over thirty million and diminishing? Don't think so, little Harry.
And what a brainstorm to trot out mental defective Tom Harkin, who campaigned on his non-existent Vietnam experience---a proven liar. Only Dingy Harry could have cooked up such a soup of moronic self-deception.
The Dems are counting on their stranglehold over the MSM & Hollyweird to get them into the WH in '08. That'll give them four years at least to cover the Roving Ambassador husband of Hillary, who will make Gary Hartpence [oops, Hart] look celibate in comparison.
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Showing posts with label Middle East. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Middle East. Show all posts
Thursday, October 04, 2007
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Islam versus The Islamists on TV. Round One to Islamists
Read this if you want to get your dander up about tax-subsidized PBS scotching a film on moderate Islamists after allegations that WETA, a far-left outlet of PBS based in DC [I was Associate Producer for a WETA project and can vouch for their far-left tilt] tampered with the project. Martyn Burke, the producer alleges:
• A WETA manager pressed to eliminate a key perspective of the film: The claim that Muslim radicals are pushing to establish "parallel societies" in America and Europe governed by Shariah law rather than sectarian courts.
• After grants were issued, Crossroads managers commissioned a new film that overlapped with Islam vs. Islamists and competed for the same interview subjects.
• WETA appointed an advisory board that includes Aminah Beverly McCloud, director of World Islamic Studies at DePaul University. In an "unparalleled breach of ethics," Burke says, McCloud took rough-cut segments of the film and showed them to Nation of Islam officials, who are a subject of the documentary. They threatened to sue.
"This utterly undermines any journalistic independence," Burke wrote in an e-mail to WETA officials." Burke also alleges that PBS demand that two conservative backers of the project resign from participation.
DePaul Prof McCloud has been caught in an untruth:
The project I worked on way back in the day was also threatened with litigation and, in my case, a five-minute rejoinder was tacked on to the end of the piece, which dealt with the Middle East.
Anyone familiar with DePaul knows that its association with Islamic affairs tends to be radical, due to a law school professor named Cherif Bassiouni.
PBS was able to escape accountability for its ultra-left bias a couple of years ago when a Bush appointee tried to clean house, but was nailed for a minor infraction by a whistle-blower. Like any government-connected bureaucracy, the lifers in CPB and PBS are almost to-a-man/woman Democrats or lefter than that.
• A WETA manager pressed to eliminate a key perspective of the film: The claim that Muslim radicals are pushing to establish "parallel societies" in America and Europe governed by Shariah law rather than sectarian courts.
• After grants were issued, Crossroads managers commissioned a new film that overlapped with Islam vs. Islamists and competed for the same interview subjects.
• WETA appointed an advisory board that includes Aminah Beverly McCloud, director of World Islamic Studies at DePaul University. In an "unparalleled breach of ethics," Burke says, McCloud took rough-cut segments of the film and showed them to Nation of Islam officials, who are a subject of the documentary. They threatened to sue.
"This utterly undermines any journalistic independence," Burke wrote in an e-mail to WETA officials." Burke also alleges that PBS demand that two conservative backers of the project resign from participation.
DePaul Prof McCloud has been caught in an untruth:
In an interview, McCloud said she showed a single video frame to a Muslim journalist who was not a Nation of Islam representative.
However, in a January e-mail, McCloud told Crossroads producers that she had spoken with Nation of Islam representatives and "invited them over to view this section." She also wrote that they were outraged "and will promptly pursue litigation."
Stewart, the WETA executive, said McCloud was admonished for "inappropriate" conduct.
The project I worked on way back in the day was also threatened with litigation and, in my case, a five-minute rejoinder was tacked on to the end of the piece, which dealt with the Middle East.
Anyone familiar with DePaul knows that its association with Islamic affairs tends to be radical, due to a law school professor named Cherif Bassiouni.
PBS was able to escape accountability for its ultra-left bias a couple of years ago when a Bush appointee tried to clean house, but was nailed for a minor infraction by a whistle-blower. Like any government-connected bureaucracy, the lifers in CPB and PBS are almost to-a-man/woman Democrats or lefter than that.
Monday, April 02, 2007
Kissinger's Back Pages Not Pretty
Vanity Fair has a long article on Henry Kissinger during the Nixon Years written by Robert Dallek who is an excellent historian with a slight tilt to the left, but thoroughly grounded in archives, including telephone transcripts of Kissinger's phone calls to the White House.
I am going to do a sidetrack here and give up a few bits of my little trove of Kissinger anecdotes. [The rest, while illuminative, are more boring than these, but basically follow the theme of authoritarian egomania] After joining the State Dept, I served in Vietnam and then Lyon, France, where I was Vice Consul in a two-man post with Peter Tarnoff, who told me a raft of Kissinger stories. Peter was Ambassadorial Assistant to Henry Cabot Lodge in Saigon in the sixties. Lodge had run for Vice President under Nixon in 1960 and told Tarnoff that he had been asked by Nixon who would be a good person to go to Vietnam and look things over for Nixon, in case he ran for Prez in '68. Tarnoff told Lodge he'd just read a massive tome On Thermonuclear War by a Harvard Prof named Henry K and, Tarnoff recommended him although Kissinger was a Rockefeller protege. Lodge arranged for HK to do on-site Saigon sleuthing to become a "Vietnam expert." Tarnoff became close with Kissinger as did Frank Wisner and Richard Holbrooke, two of Tarnoff's FSO pals in the Embassy. While in Saigon, Kissinger acquired the nickname "Henri le baiser" because of his addiction to Vietnamese bar-girls, whom I can attest are totally seductive.
Nixon was duly elected after the catastrophic Chicago Convention separated Humphrey from the anti-war McCarthy/RFK Dems. [I participated in those festivities as well.] Kissinger became his NSC advisor and Tarnoff by this time had come to the Paris Peace Talks as US advisor. When HK first arrived, he and Peter were in an elevator together and PT asked HK how it was. Peter told me that Kissinger grabbed him by the arm and started effusively gushing "Peter, the president listens to everything I say!" Peter said HK's eyes literally bulged as he said this.
Later, when the Daniel Ellsberg Pentagon Papers fiasco hit, Peter told me that Ellsberg had sent him Polaroid photos of himself in Thailand with small boys. Peter mentioned that other friends of Ellsberg told him they had received the same kind of Bangkok billets doux.
My own experience with Kissinger came while I was Political Officer in Jidda and he arrived during the "Shuttle Diplomacy" days after the Ramadan/Yom Kippur War [the dates coincided]. I was HK's "Control Officer" and when I extended my hand to shake his hand, he looked at me with disdain. A mere FSO. His assistant Peter Rodman treated me with less disdain, as my Arabic allowed me to bargain for him in the gold suk and the weapons suq where I bought him an Arab bunduqiyya, or muzzle-loading musket. Later Rodman would live next door to me in DC, but pretended not to remember me nor my services.
At the Jidda Embassy, Isa Sabbagh was the USIS chief and Kissinger would employ Isa as his personal translator during HK's Arab visits. Isa said that Kissinger would never fail to derogate the Israelis constantly in his conversations with the Arabs, however he always left the impression that the Israelis might have the bomb and could go crazy, so in that sense Isa believed HK was playing good cop to Israel's bad cop.
Another Embassy denizen was Ed "Skip" Gnehm who had served in Damascus and had additional gossip from that embassy on HK's meetings with Assad. Isa Sabbagh said that Hafez Al-Assad and HK got along like gangbusters, with HK telling jokes on how nasty and greedy the Jews were and Assad countering with jokes on how stupid and untrustworthy the Arabs were. The one bright light for Isa was HK's admiration for Golda Meir, whom he left the impression that he highly admired. As for Assad, HK constantly told people that Assad was the smartest leader in the Middle East, period.
Later, I was introduced to SecState Vance's Executive Secretary by Peter Tarnoff, the Executive Assistant to Cy Vance [who remembered Peter when Vance was in charge of the Paris Peace Talks]. She and I became very good friends and I began to get pillow talk from the Secretary's Office. But her most interesting revelations about Kissinger, who would talk to Vance on a frequent basis, concerned her interfacing with her predecessor, Mary Musallem, who had been Secretary to the Secretary of State for everyone since Christian Herter under Ike. Mary was an attractive statuesque blonde who told my friend that HK would make passes at her. When he was spurned, as always happened, he would push everything off his desk and tell Mary to put it all back on the desk precisely as it was before.
My friend Vance's Secretary also became friends with the Russian translator for the State Dept, who sat in on conversations as was legally required with Dobrynin. The translator told her that Kissinger would often take the final transcript of the conversation and alter it so that the historical record would show something different from the actual discussions. Always to Kissinger's benefit, the translator added.
Later, after leaving the State Dept., I did a stint at Georgetown CSIS and had Kissinger [and Brzezinski] as fellow Fellows, although vastly separated by rank and accouterments [I had a cubbyhole]. Zbig B actually was courteous and civil, whereas Kissinger was unapproachable.
Even later, as Foreign Editor of the Oil Daily, I accompanied Anne Louise Hittle, who worked for Kissinger at Kissinger Associates. We were stranded in Vienna together for an OPEC meeting and she recounted her experiences as Kissinger's amanuensis/exec. secretary [she also worked for L. Paul Bremer at K Assoc. as I recall]. Anne was extremely circumspect and only described him as having the biggest ego of any person she had met in her career. And she got a bit poetic, saying it was an ego beyond her comprehension, looking down upon mere mortals as chattels in a game.
Some of these memories may have been slightly off, but back in the day, a lot of things happened that won't see the light of historical day for a while. Good those telephone transcripts couldn't be altered.
I am going to do a sidetrack here and give up a few bits of my little trove of Kissinger anecdotes. [The rest, while illuminative, are more boring than these, but basically follow the theme of authoritarian egomania] After joining the State Dept, I served in Vietnam and then Lyon, France, where I was Vice Consul in a two-man post with Peter Tarnoff, who told me a raft of Kissinger stories. Peter was Ambassadorial Assistant to Henry Cabot Lodge in Saigon in the sixties. Lodge had run for Vice President under Nixon in 1960 and told Tarnoff that he had been asked by Nixon who would be a good person to go to Vietnam and look things over for Nixon, in case he ran for Prez in '68. Tarnoff told Lodge he'd just read a massive tome On Thermonuclear War by a Harvard Prof named Henry K and, Tarnoff recommended him although Kissinger was a Rockefeller protege. Lodge arranged for HK to do on-site Saigon sleuthing to become a "Vietnam expert." Tarnoff became close with Kissinger as did Frank Wisner and Richard Holbrooke, two of Tarnoff's FSO pals in the Embassy. While in Saigon, Kissinger acquired the nickname "Henri le baiser" because of his addiction to Vietnamese bar-girls, whom I can attest are totally seductive.
Nixon was duly elected after the catastrophic Chicago Convention separated Humphrey from the anti-war McCarthy/RFK Dems. [I participated in those festivities as well.] Kissinger became his NSC advisor and Tarnoff by this time had come to the Paris Peace Talks as US advisor. When HK first arrived, he and Peter were in an elevator together and PT asked HK how it was. Peter told me that Kissinger grabbed him by the arm and started effusively gushing "Peter, the president listens to everything I say!" Peter said HK's eyes literally bulged as he said this.
Later, when the Daniel Ellsberg Pentagon Papers fiasco hit, Peter told me that Ellsberg had sent him Polaroid photos of himself in Thailand with small boys. Peter mentioned that other friends of Ellsberg told him they had received the same kind of Bangkok billets doux.
My own experience with Kissinger came while I was Political Officer in Jidda and he arrived during the "Shuttle Diplomacy" days after the Ramadan/Yom Kippur War [the dates coincided]. I was HK's "Control Officer" and when I extended my hand to shake his hand, he looked at me with disdain. A mere FSO. His assistant Peter Rodman treated me with less disdain, as my Arabic allowed me to bargain for him in the gold suk and the weapons suq where I bought him an Arab bunduqiyya, or muzzle-loading musket. Later Rodman would live next door to me in DC, but pretended not to remember me nor my services.
At the Jidda Embassy, Isa Sabbagh was the USIS chief and Kissinger would employ Isa as his personal translator during HK's Arab visits. Isa said that Kissinger would never fail to derogate the Israelis constantly in his conversations with the Arabs, however he always left the impression that the Israelis might have the bomb and could go crazy, so in that sense Isa believed HK was playing good cop to Israel's bad cop.
Another Embassy denizen was Ed "Skip" Gnehm who had served in Damascus and had additional gossip from that embassy on HK's meetings with Assad. Isa Sabbagh said that Hafez Al-Assad and HK got along like gangbusters, with HK telling jokes on how nasty and greedy the Jews were and Assad countering with jokes on how stupid and untrustworthy the Arabs were. The one bright light for Isa was HK's admiration for Golda Meir, whom he left the impression that he highly admired. As for Assad, HK constantly told people that Assad was the smartest leader in the Middle East, period.
Later, I was introduced to SecState Vance's Executive Secretary by Peter Tarnoff, the Executive Assistant to Cy Vance [who remembered Peter when Vance was in charge of the Paris Peace Talks]. She and I became very good friends and I began to get pillow talk from the Secretary's Office. But her most interesting revelations about Kissinger, who would talk to Vance on a frequent basis, concerned her interfacing with her predecessor, Mary Musallem, who had been Secretary to the Secretary of State for everyone since Christian Herter under Ike. Mary was an attractive statuesque blonde who told my friend that HK would make passes at her. When he was spurned, as always happened, he would push everything off his desk and tell Mary to put it all back on the desk precisely as it was before.
My friend Vance's Secretary also became friends with the Russian translator for the State Dept, who sat in on conversations as was legally required with Dobrynin. The translator told her that Kissinger would often take the final transcript of the conversation and alter it so that the historical record would show something different from the actual discussions. Always to Kissinger's benefit, the translator added.
Later, after leaving the State Dept., I did a stint at Georgetown CSIS and had Kissinger [and Brzezinski] as fellow Fellows, although vastly separated by rank and accouterments [I had a cubbyhole]. Zbig B actually was courteous and civil, whereas Kissinger was unapproachable.
Even later, as Foreign Editor of the Oil Daily, I accompanied Anne Louise Hittle, who worked for Kissinger at Kissinger Associates. We were stranded in Vienna together for an OPEC meeting and she recounted her experiences as Kissinger's amanuensis/exec. secretary [she also worked for L. Paul Bremer at K Assoc. as I recall]. Anne was extremely circumspect and only described him as having the biggest ego of any person she had met in her career. And she got a bit poetic, saying it was an ego beyond her comprehension, looking down upon mere mortals as chattels in a game.
Some of these memories may have been slightly off, but back in the day, a lot of things happened that won't see the light of historical day for a while. Good those telephone transcripts couldn't be altered.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Noose Tightening on Pasqua and Chirac?
The belly-aching in the US media about Halliburton is non-stop, it seems, but at least the US media works to uncover seamy relationships between Government and business. In countries with no real First Amendment rights like France, the process of unraveling the sordid political bonds twixt political protectors and big oil is much harder to uncover. Take Oil-for-Food and Iraq, for instance.
When I was living there, the French government was discovered to have put a "table d'ecoutes," or bug, in the conference room of Le Canard Enchaine, a satirical journal much like the Onion or the Tatler, only much more widely distributed and respected as telling the truths which must not be uttered in the marketplace of public discourse. When the scandal erupted, the government simply threatened to raise the price of raw paper for newsprint, and in the press and electronic media, utter silence ensued.
But French courts are more independent than the supine French press, and now the rocks are beginning to be turned over and the exploits of former Senator and Interior Minister Charles Pasqua, whom all observers know as Chirac's fixer and bagman, ["tuyau" in the local argot], are being increasingly exposed. Over a year ago, Le Monde courageously buried Pasqua's indictment for Oil-for-Food below the fold deep in its daily. There was no follow-up anywhere by the tame and complicit French press, nor none overseas, as the MSM in the US views Chirac as an ally in its campaign to destroy GWB.
The Wall Street Journal has an opinion piece with a graph demonstrating how Total, a company notoriously in bed with the French political elites, no matter who wins the national election, is just one of many big foreign oil operations trying to pay off the mullahs to get into Iran's oilfields at the expense of US majors.
Read the piece, and the next time you drive into a Shell station, remember that you are helping the mullahs and their little madman Ahmedinejad in their campaign to destroy Israel and eventually, the Western Civilization most Americans treasure.
When I was living there, the French government was discovered to have put a "table d'ecoutes," or bug, in the conference room of Le Canard Enchaine, a satirical journal much like the Onion or the Tatler, only much more widely distributed and respected as telling the truths which must not be uttered in the marketplace of public discourse. When the scandal erupted, the government simply threatened to raise the price of raw paper for newsprint, and in the press and electronic media, utter silence ensued.
But French courts are more independent than the supine French press, and now the rocks are beginning to be turned over and the exploits of former Senator and Interior Minister Charles Pasqua, whom all observers know as Chirac's fixer and bagman, ["tuyau" in the local argot], are being increasingly exposed. Over a year ago, Le Monde courageously buried Pasqua's indictment for Oil-for-Food below the fold deep in its daily. There was no follow-up anywhere by the tame and complicit French press, nor none overseas, as the MSM in the US views Chirac as an ally in its campaign to destroy GWB.
The Wall Street Journal has an opinion piece with a graph demonstrating how Total, a company notoriously in bed with the French political elites, no matter who wins the national election, is just one of many big foreign oil operations trying to pay off the mullahs to get into Iran's oilfields at the expense of US majors.
Read the piece, and the next time you drive into a Shell station, remember that you are helping the mullahs and their little madman Ahmedinejad in their campaign to destroy Israel and eventually, the Western Civilization most Americans treasure.
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Hardy Perennial: Saudis Running Out of Oil---Not!!!
One of the most predictable news stories recurring every six months or so has surfaced again. It usually takes one of three forms: the Saudi Royal Family is on the verge of collapsing and will be taken over by the military, by religious fanatics, or by religious fanatics in the military. Take two: the Saudis are on the verge of running out of oil. Take three: the Saudis are going to force the price of oil down to help the USA elect a Republican president, or alternatively the Saudis are going to let the price of oil rise to punish the USA for its Middle East policies.
The Oil Drum is a variant of number two. The logic of the link above, despite impressive-looking graphs, doesn't hold much water.
First, Oil Minister Ali Naimi did say in November that the Saudis would go along with OPEC production cuts, a factoid the author neglects to mention. The reason for this might be OPEC solidarity, including Persian/Arabian Gulf regional politics. This Gulfie perspective includes the first visit in living memory of an Iranian highest-level official [President Ahmedinejad] to Saudi Arabia. Not even in the days of the Shah did an Iranian head-of-state or senior official visit Saudi Arabia. Indeed, I don't believe that this has happened for centuries. Of course, The Oil Drum neglects to mention this tidbit while sententiously intoning
So it may be a political move to keep a nasty war in Iraq from expanding, and increasing Saudi influence in the region by enticing the President of Iran to the Kingdom, using the production cuts as an agreed precondition, rather than an elaborate ruse cunningly contrived to cover over oilfield deterioration. A Saudi/Iran relationship automatically increases the influence of the Saudis in any overrall Middle East scenario.
Just a quibble, but one must remember that an entire cottage industry has developed over the decades of those who write like one commenter:
First of all, the "term of art" is "proven recoverable reserves." Recoverable means at a rate that is within the boundaries of current technology. Second, the tendentious paragraphs above neglect to mention that Saudi Aramco has found dozens of oilfields in the Rub' Al-Khali. The Saudis have another quarter-billion "probable" reserves, according to Al Jumu'ah. And another indeterminate amount of "possible" reserves, so draw your own conclusions. The only thing that doesn't make any sense is making a big to-do about something the Saudis have been doing for decades. [Note the semantics of "crow about it to all the world." The announcements of new finds in the Rub' al Khali have been taking place since the mid-seventies. As well as finds elsewhere in the Kingdom. The only reason the Saudis don't go into production is because of something these cottage-industry Saudi-bashers always overlook: economics.
The Oil Drum neglects to mention that Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world where the marginal barrel is the least expensive barrel. It costs around $3/barrel to extract a barrel of crude from Ghawar, which is a lake of oil over 120 miles in width. Why extract from the Empty Quarter at $30/barrel when Ghawar produces it for $3?
This cottage industry regularly churns out alarmist predictions about the Saudis, and by extension, the entire world's oil production industry, on a metronomic basis. Sort of like global warming or global cooling. Back when I was first in Saudi Arabia, global cooling was all the rage. Last time I was there, global warming was the favorite sky-is-falling trope/meme. The metronome again.
Finally, the writer neglected to mention two salient facts about the current industry. The Iranians are losing much of their production capacity due to inefficiency and incompetence and they need higher oil prices to finance their ambitious weaponizing of their developing nuclear capacity. Second, the Iranians have to import refined products, again due to poor planning and incompetent maintenance of their own refineries.
My bet is that the President of Iran might be visiting the Saudis to ask for an allocation of refined product from the Shell Export Refinery at Jubail, which I have visited on a couple of occasions. This would alleviate expensive imports from alternative sources, which are gouging the Iranians in expensive crude/refined product swaps at the moment.
The Saudis may be lowering their production, but they will retain a large cushion of excess capacity and the ability to increase production for decades to come. In any event, the Saudi production cuts are not the result of diminished production capacity, though some eventually will occur.
As for the world running out of oil, the head of the Iraqi Geological Survey at SOMO in Baghdad told me in 1988 that Iraq had 200 million barrels of proven reserves, but not recoverable at present prices [back then in the teens of dollars] and he also told me that the Mesopotamian Foredeep had not been extensively explored because his geological teams did not like going out into the desert! So Iraq could possibly have as much oil as Saudi Arabia, but no one really knows!
The Oil Drum is a variant of number two. The logic of the link above, despite impressive-looking graphs, doesn't hold much water.
First, Oil Minister Ali Naimi did say in November that the Saudis would go along with OPEC production cuts, a factoid the author neglects to mention. The reason for this might be OPEC solidarity, including Persian/Arabian Gulf regional politics. This Gulfie perspective includes the first visit in living memory of an Iranian highest-level official [President Ahmedinejad] to Saudi Arabia. Not even in the days of the Shah did an Iranian head-of-state or senior official visit Saudi Arabia. Indeed, I don't believe that this has happened for centuries. Of course, The Oil Drum neglects to mention this tidbit while sententiously intoning
The entire "production cut" may be a public relations exercise to disguise other processes.
So it may be a political move to keep a nasty war in Iraq from expanding, and increasing Saudi influence in the region by enticing the President of Iran to the Kingdom, using the production cuts as an agreed precondition, rather than an elaborate ruse cunningly contrived to cover over oilfield deterioration. A Saudi/Iran relationship automatically increases the influence of the Saudis in any overrall Middle East scenario.
Just a quibble, but one must remember that an entire cottage industry has developed over the decades of those who write like one commenter:
Saudi [sic] went deep into the heart of the Rub al-Khali to find this little patch of oil. The “Rub al-Kaali [sic] represents one of the most extreme areas in the world with summer temperatures shifting from below 0ºC at night to over 60ºC at noon. Dunes can reach heights of more than 300 metres.” Needless to say this is one of the most inhospitable places in the world to drill wells and to lay pipelines. Yet this represents the extremes Saudi will go to in order to produce just a little more oil. But they are said to have 264.2 billion barrels of proven reserves.
Proven reserves means they know exactly where this oil is. To produce it, they would just have to go to a spot they already have plotted on the map, sink a well and produce more oil. Yet they do not do this, they instead go deep into the Rub al-Khali, search for years, (they were exploring the Rub al-Khali when I was there over twenty years ago), until they find a tiny patch of oil, then crow about it to all the world. Something here just does not make any sense.
First of all, the "term of art" is "proven recoverable reserves." Recoverable means at a rate that is within the boundaries of current technology. Second, the tendentious paragraphs above neglect to mention that Saudi Aramco has found dozens of oilfields in the Rub' Al-Khali. The Saudis have another quarter-billion "probable" reserves, according to Al Jumu'ah. And another indeterminate amount of "possible" reserves, so draw your own conclusions. The only thing that doesn't make any sense is making a big to-do about something the Saudis have been doing for decades. [Note the semantics of "crow about it to all the world." The announcements of new finds in the Rub' al Khali have been taking place since the mid-seventies. As well as finds elsewhere in the Kingdom. The only reason the Saudis don't go into production is because of something these cottage-industry Saudi-bashers always overlook: economics.
The Oil Drum neglects to mention that Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world where the marginal barrel is the least expensive barrel. It costs around $3/barrel to extract a barrel of crude from Ghawar, which is a lake of oil over 120 miles in width. Why extract from the Empty Quarter at $30/barrel when Ghawar produces it for $3?
This cottage industry regularly churns out alarmist predictions about the Saudis, and by extension, the entire world's oil production industry, on a metronomic basis. Sort of like global warming or global cooling. Back when I was first in Saudi Arabia, global cooling was all the rage. Last time I was there, global warming was the favorite sky-is-falling trope/meme. The metronome again.
Finally, the writer neglected to mention two salient facts about the current industry. The Iranians are losing much of their production capacity due to inefficiency and incompetence and they need higher oil prices to finance their ambitious weaponizing of their developing nuclear capacity. Second, the Iranians have to import refined products, again due to poor planning and incompetent maintenance of their own refineries.
My bet is that the President of Iran might be visiting the Saudis to ask for an allocation of refined product from the Shell Export Refinery at Jubail, which I have visited on a couple of occasions. This would alleviate expensive imports from alternative sources, which are gouging the Iranians in expensive crude/refined product swaps at the moment.
The Saudis may be lowering their production, but they will retain a large cushion of excess capacity and the ability to increase production for decades to come. In any event, the Saudi production cuts are not the result of diminished production capacity, though some eventually will occur.
As for the world running out of oil, the head of the Iraqi Geological Survey at SOMO in Baghdad told me in 1988 that Iraq had 200 million barrels of proven reserves, but not recoverable at present prices [back then in the teens of dollars] and he also told me that the Mesopotamian Foredeep had not been extensively explored because his geological teams did not like going out into the desert! So Iraq could possibly have as much oil as Saudi Arabia, but no one really knows!
Friday, February 23, 2007
Rundown of The Decline of the West
I'm down with the flu, but think that Jules Crittenden is the voice of sanity in a
piece on just how messed up the situation is, with the Dems reverting to their default-mode of treacherous backstabbing, although now it's on each other when they are not stabbing American national interests in the back. Plenty of interesting and instructive links in the piece above.
The French went through just such a phase in their inglorious descent from world power to their current status as craven cowards and backstabbing feminized morons. The Decline of the West, with the Democratic Party as enabler and enthusiastic cheerleader, proceeds apace.
piece on just how messed up the situation is, with the Dems reverting to their default-mode of treacherous backstabbing, although now it's on each other when they are not stabbing American national interests in the back. Plenty of interesting and instructive links in the piece above.
The French went through just such a phase in their inglorious descent from world power to their current status as craven cowards and backstabbing feminized morons. The Decline of the West, with the Democratic Party as enabler and enthusiastic cheerleader, proceeds apace.
Sunday, February 04, 2007
Hagel Cranky on Stephanopoulos ABC Morning Show
The Dems have their own
problems, but two Republican Senators who may run for president were on the ABC Sunday Morning Show and though I missed most of McCain [except his somewhat impolitic endorsement of the Colts over the Bears in vote-rich Chicago], Hagel came across as querulous and defensive on his answers to GS's pointed questions about "what exactly are you for?"
Hagel almost resented the question, and when GS prodded him for specifics, started to retort in a three-octave range that made him sound like Dennis Kucinich. Truth is, Hagel has no answer to the NIE report that American withdrawal will leave Iraq and the whole region in a complete shambles and perhaps region-wide war.
And Hagel mentioned "McCain" several times in a somewhat disrespectful way, not calling him "Senator McCain," while giving other Senators their due as "Senator Clinton" and "Senator Biden." Not to mention Hagel's evasive answers to GS's points, which he answered by "read the [Levin/Hagel] proposal," without spelling out the specifics which would answer GS's queries. Methinks this gruff and unready persona won't play well in a national contest for pres, which GS asked Hagel about and which Hagel dodged. Could be a one-hit wonder.
And the Dems refuse to answer this elephant-in-the-living-room question. Yes, we are in the middle of a civil war [or several civil wars, as Iraq devolves into a Hobbesian war of all against all], but the implosion of an early American exit would bring in overt Iranian support for the Shi'ites, Saudi/Egyptian/Jordanian support for Sunnis, and a possible Turkish incursion into Kurdistan. The US "occupying forces" are now actually desired by most Iraqis, if only to avert an even worse situation. A recent poll studiously ignored by the ultra-left MSM demonstrates that most Sunnis and half the Shi'ites and all the Kurds support the US presence.
And a participant in the NIE exercise told me he spent months in hammer-and-tongs robust debate in the composition of the Estimate, classified Top Secret, only to see not only the unclassified but some highly classified material on the front page of the Washington Post on Friday morning. The Post, of course, emphasized the negative half-empty glass. For its ultra-left reasons, the Post avoided mentioning much about the catastrophe awaiting the region should the US heed the Kucinich/Edwards wing of the Democratic Party.
problems, but two Republican Senators who may run for president were on the ABC Sunday Morning Show and though I missed most of McCain [except his somewhat impolitic endorsement of the Colts over the Bears in vote-rich Chicago], Hagel came across as querulous and defensive on his answers to GS's pointed questions about "what exactly are you for?"
Hagel almost resented the question, and when GS prodded him for specifics, started to retort in a three-octave range that made him sound like Dennis Kucinich. Truth is, Hagel has no answer to the NIE report that American withdrawal will leave Iraq and the whole region in a complete shambles and perhaps region-wide war.
And Hagel mentioned "McCain" several times in a somewhat disrespectful way, not calling him "Senator McCain," while giving other Senators their due as "Senator Clinton" and "Senator Biden." Not to mention Hagel's evasive answers to GS's points, which he answered by "read the [Levin/Hagel] proposal," without spelling out the specifics which would answer GS's queries. Methinks this gruff and unready persona won't play well in a national contest for pres, which GS asked Hagel about and which Hagel dodged. Could be a one-hit wonder.
And the Dems refuse to answer this elephant-in-the-living-room question. Yes, we are in the middle of a civil war [or several civil wars, as Iraq devolves into a Hobbesian war of all against all], but the implosion of an early American exit would bring in overt Iranian support for the Shi'ites, Saudi/Egyptian/Jordanian support for Sunnis, and a possible Turkish incursion into Kurdistan. The US "occupying forces" are now actually desired by most Iraqis, if only to avert an even worse situation. A recent poll studiously ignored by the ultra-left MSM demonstrates that most Sunnis and half the Shi'ites and all the Kurds support the US presence.
And a participant in the NIE exercise told me he spent months in hammer-and-tongs robust debate in the composition of the Estimate, classified Top Secret, only to see not only the unclassified but some highly classified material on the front page of the Washington Post on Friday morning. The Post, of course, emphasized the negative half-empty glass. For its ultra-left reasons, the Post avoided mentioning much about the catastrophe awaiting the region should the US heed the Kucinich/Edwards wing of the Democratic Party.
Sunday, December 31, 2006
Hezbollah Racketeers Financing Hamas Rocketeers
The New York Post reports via the Jerusalem Post that
The article goes on to note that Hamas is accusing Israel of arming the Fatah Party of President Mahmoud Abbas via Egypt:
The Palestinians keep lurching down history's saddest narrative of missed opportunities to end up by electing a terrorist government. The one real chance for a state for themselves and a semblance of peace was passed up by serial embezzler Arafat because he believed three quarters of a loaf or more just wasn't enough. But a detached observer must give some credence to the argument that, like Castro, Saddam, Kim Jung-Il and a number of other entrenched socialist regimes in Africa, the corruption level of these workers' paradises does not permit change for the better.
Like billionaires Castro and Dear Leader, mult-millionaire Arafat thought the status quo of serfdom in an enclave better than a breakthrough to nationhood and peace. It would have hurt his investments, perhaps, and subjected him to humiliating processes such as genuinely free elections.
Ex-billionaire former Socialist leader Saddam Hussein was unavailable for comment.
the AP/Reuters-backed crime syndicate Hezbollah and its Iranian sponsors are rewarding Palestinian terrorists with thousands of dollars for each homemade rocket that hits southern Israel, according to Israeli intelligence. [Whether Hezbollah was printing these dollars in its south Beirut counterfeiting facilities or were getting Ben Franklins from Iran was still unclear. MY COMMENT]
The size of the payoffs depends on the number of Israelis killed or wounded, the Jerusalem Post reported yesterday.
Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based guerrilla group that fought a border war with Israel last summer, is smuggling cash from Iran into the Gaza Strip to pay off different terrorist organizations who launch homemade Qassam rockets into the western Negev region of Israel.
"Sometimes, they are paid before the attack and sometimes they submit a bill to Lebanon and the money gets transferred a short time later," a security official said.
The article goes on to note that Hamas is accusing Israel of arming the Fatah Party of President Mahmoud Abbas via Egypt:
Meanwhile, with Israel's blessing, Egypt has delivered a large arms shipment to forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, officials said yesterday - the latest Israeli attempt to boost the embattled leader in his bloody conflict with Hamas fanatics.
The Palestinians keep lurching down history's saddest narrative of missed opportunities to end up by electing a terrorist government. The one real chance for a state for themselves and a semblance of peace was passed up by serial embezzler Arafat because he believed three quarters of a loaf or more just wasn't enough. But a detached observer must give some credence to the argument that, like Castro, Saddam, Kim Jung-Il and a number of other entrenched socialist regimes in Africa, the corruption level of these workers' paradises does not permit change for the better.
Like billionaires Castro and Dear Leader, mult-millionaire Arafat thought the status quo of serfdom in an enclave better than a breakthrough to nationhood and peace. It would have hurt his investments, perhaps, and subjected him to humiliating processes such as genuinely free elections.
Ex-billionaire former Socialist leader Saddam Hussein was unavailable for comment.
Monday, December 25, 2006
Francis of Assisi a Middle East Negotiator?
Thomas Cahill has a new book on the Middle Ages and the table of contents destroys a lot of the secular mythology concerning the obscurantism and backwardness college history survey courses often portray.
Cahill's book on How the Irish Saved Western Civilization more or less ripped off without attribution Christopher Dawson's The Making of Europe: An Introduction to the History of European Unity, a book I read in the early '60s which has the theme that Cahill elaborates concerning the crucial rold of Irish monks in preserving the classical European heritage and then propagating it throughout Europe.
But the main theme of this blog is Francis of Assisi and Cahill's bleating column on how different things would be if a certain Italian cardinal had listened to the Friar and practiced Christianity on its highest levels.
The story line of Cahill's article is how a Fatamid [Shi'ite]sultan named Kamil was moved by Francis in a visit to Cairo, and then in Italy yadda yadda the evil Papal Curia yadda yadda.... Of course, the apologists for Muslim terror nowadays conveniently overlook little events such as kind Kamil's predecessor Al-Hakim who may have sparked the Crusades by banning pilgrimages, killing Christians [as well as Jews], making Christians wear outlandish outfits with outsize crosses, and finally destroying the Holy Sepulchre in 1009. That would be historical, and the Cahill's of this world usually print the legend.
Actually, a book by Idries Shah on The Sufis claims that Francis as a very young merchant went to Syria and became initiated into being a Sufi adept, adopting their cowl and robe for his religious order which he founded employing the Sufi quietist mode, as opposed to the whirling dervishes.
Shah's book tends to exaggerate the exploits and the extent of the influence of Sufism, and of course, the Catholic Church would never admit to introducing a foreign "cult" into their religious orders. So the real story may never be told, and it may be largely apocryphal.
But although Cahill does raise an interesting "counterfactual" what if?, the real story of the Crusades is so absurdly complex, with alliances among Roman and Orthodox Christians with Shi'ite Fatamids against Sunni Seljuk and other pre-Ottoman Turks that it makes today's Iraq look familiar and even uncomplicated!
Cahill's book on How the Irish Saved Western Civilization more or less ripped off without attribution Christopher Dawson's The Making of Europe: An Introduction to the History of European Unity, a book I read in the early '60s which has the theme that Cahill elaborates concerning the crucial rold of Irish monks in preserving the classical European heritage and then propagating it throughout Europe.
But the main theme of this blog is Francis of Assisi and Cahill's bleating column on how different things would be if a certain Italian cardinal had listened to the Friar and practiced Christianity on its highest levels.
The story line of Cahill's article is how a Fatamid [Shi'ite]sultan named Kamil was moved by Francis in a visit to Cairo, and then in Italy yadda yadda the evil Papal Curia yadda yadda.... Of course, the apologists for Muslim terror nowadays conveniently overlook little events such as kind Kamil's predecessor Al-Hakim who may have sparked the Crusades by banning pilgrimages, killing Christians [as well as Jews], making Christians wear outlandish outfits with outsize crosses, and finally destroying the Holy Sepulchre in 1009. That would be historical, and the Cahill's of this world usually print the legend.
Actually, a book by Idries Shah on The Sufis claims that Francis as a very young merchant went to Syria and became initiated into being a Sufi adept, adopting their cowl and robe for his religious order which he founded employing the Sufi quietist mode, as opposed to the whirling dervishes.
Shah's book tends to exaggerate the exploits and the extent of the influence of Sufism, and of course, the Catholic Church would never admit to introducing a foreign "cult" into their religious orders. So the real story may never be told, and it may be largely apocryphal.
But although Cahill does raise an interesting "counterfactual" what if?, the real story of the Crusades is so absurdly complex, with alliances among Roman and Orthodox Christians with Shi'ite Fatamids against Sunni Seljuk and other pre-Ottoman Turks that it makes today's Iraq look familiar and even uncomplicated!
Thursday, December 21, 2006
Saudis Jockeying for Post-US Withdrawal Era: The BackStories Part Three
A Slate article by Christopher Hitchens puts the quandary in which the US finds itself in the Middle East by polemically putting Saudi Arabia and Iran as the Sunni/Shi'ite bad cops waiting in the wings. This plague-on-both-their-houses typifies the polemic approach many Americans have towards the Arab/Persian world in general and the contestants in Iraq more specifically. But let's back up again and look at the Saudi side of the ledger.
Remember the Dynasty TV metaphor, and how the vast Saudi Royal Family is sort of that Carrington/Ewing Texas family bulked a thousand times as large and the Saudi fortune the Carrington/Ewing's fortune times a million [counting the Saudi proven crude oil reserves in the ground amortized at at least 25 trillion dollars, maybe $50 trillion in present-day terms.] The Saudi Royal Family is acutely aware that the value of its oil wealth will vastly diminish if the US, EU and its other major customers suffer large and sustained economic recession/depression as Japan did after its real estate crash in the late '80s. If the dollar collapses, the resulting instabilities that ensue might be worse than OPEC and the Saudis shifting into alternative currencies and stock/bond holdings would warrant. So just as the Carter Doctrine and Reagan Corollary were US pledges to uphold Saudi political security/stability under its present leadership, the Saudis conversely should consider keeping the US as its primary protector, unsatisfactory as it may appear given some US policies in the Middle East. That protection has been the template until now, but King Abdullah is sending signals that the US should alter its set-in-stone policies vis-a-vis Israel and the Palestinians---even though the Hamas semi-insurgency has put that process on hiatus.
Much more important to the Saudis and their Peninsular family brethren [remember that all the ruling families save Oman's is from the same Mesalikh branch of the Unaiza tribal confederation] is the ascendancy of Iran. The Arabian Peninsula has significant Shi'ite minorities [and in Bahrain a majority] who have in the past demonstrated their unhappiness. They have been mollified, but Iran has always from the days of the Shah and nowadays even more, attempted to meddle in peninsula affairs. Recall that the Shah sent troops to Oman to suppress the Dhofar insurgency in the '70s and that the present Iranian leadership allows its citizens to use Dubai as a vast shopping mall for luxuries unavailable in Tehran.
Looking to the north, as the Turks see their hopes of joining the EU put in stasis, or even receding, they will predictably perceive their eastern "Mountain Turks," i.e. Kurds, as their most significant internal/external security problem. The Turks and Kurds are Sunni, so at bottom, they are unlikely to succumb to Iranian subversion or blandishments. But the Saudis would do well to regard Turkey as a new player/ally in the region whose assistance might help the KSA and its peninsular allies achieve equilibrium in an era of diminished US presence in the region.
The Saudis look at the world as an onion-ring House of Peace surrounded by a House of War with many gradations of hostility or friendship between themselves and various countries, but the House of War [Dar al-Harb] appears dangerously near to being turned into a Sunni-Shi'ite struggle rather than a Muslim-Kafiir problem. And despite the US's current difficulties, including a new Congress some of whose members believe that Okinawa is a good offshore base for the Central Command and are ignorant of Al-Qaeda being a Sunni-based terrorist outfit, America's role will remain, even if diminished. And even thought the Democratic Party has a large number of members who feel the Saudis may be too close to the Bush family dynasty, the previous Democratic administrations have all regarded the Saudi Arabia as a central player in the Middle East and a reliable ally throughout Central Asia and Africa.
Although both the US left and the US right both harbor elements with an intense distrust of Saudi Arabia, the NYT and its MSM pilot fish do accord the Saudis a measure of respect as a dependable ally.
But that respect and support may be waning as the consequences of the post-Gulf War decision to base US troops in Saudi military cities still reverberate today. In hindsight, that policy appears to have been a colossal blunder that stirred up more religious opposition to infidel troops based in the Kingdom than the benefits of proximity to the Middle East heartland and Saudi security conferred. King Abdullah should bear this new American outlook in mind in selecting his new foreign minister, as the Saudi-American relationship should not be lightly tampered with even though some aspects have not worn well with time.
Although I have followed events in the Middle East and Saudi Arabia closely for over thirty years, I can't begin to fathom some of the intricate familial, tribal social, religious, and economic relationships that are the underlying dynamics of political processes in the Kingdom, let alone the region as a whole. I suspect that very few, if any, observers do.
As I said in my previous pondering about this Foreign Minister succession, Saud al-Faisal may be asked or ordered by the King to remain in the position if there is no consensus on a successor at the top of the Royal Family. But if King Abdullah gives the job to Saud's brother Turki, the King could anger Bandar's father, Crown Prince Sultan bin Abd al-Aziz. Saud was in the job for over thirty years and Turki may become a permanent fixture as well. As Crown Prince, Sultan might think that appointing a Foreign Minister other than his son Bandar would impinge on his own forthcoming kingship, as Abdullah is over eighty and has a heart condition. So leaving Saud in as a figurehead, although he might still wield a lot of power, would be the compromise solution.
Okay, I know some readers, if they even get this far, will say it's how many angels on the head of a pin and what is the difference in who is selected except in some marginal fringe benefits not central to the underlying relationship between the two countries.
But for what it's worth and it's an extremely close call, I would make the final judgment that the US-Saudi relationship might be better off if Bandar bin Sultan succeeds Saud al-Faisal as Foreign Minister, talented as Turki Faisal is and well-disposed toward the American "umbrella" of protection as he and other senior Saudis have been. More later on this.
And it bears repeating that the US umbrella appears even more necessary as a nearly-nuclear Iran starts to swagger and throw its weight around in the region.
Remember the Dynasty TV metaphor, and how the vast Saudi Royal Family is sort of that Carrington/Ewing Texas family bulked a thousand times as large and the Saudi fortune the Carrington/Ewing's fortune times a million [counting the Saudi proven crude oil reserves in the ground amortized at at least 25 trillion dollars, maybe $50 trillion in present-day terms.] The Saudi Royal Family is acutely aware that the value of its oil wealth will vastly diminish if the US, EU and its other major customers suffer large and sustained economic recession/depression as Japan did after its real estate crash in the late '80s. If the dollar collapses, the resulting instabilities that ensue might be worse than OPEC and the Saudis shifting into alternative currencies and stock/bond holdings would warrant. So just as the Carter Doctrine and Reagan Corollary were US pledges to uphold Saudi political security/stability under its present leadership, the Saudis conversely should consider keeping the US as its primary protector, unsatisfactory as it may appear given some US policies in the Middle East. That protection has been the template until now, but King Abdullah is sending signals that the US should alter its set-in-stone policies vis-a-vis Israel and the Palestinians---even though the Hamas semi-insurgency has put that process on hiatus.
Much more important to the Saudis and their Peninsular family brethren [remember that all the ruling families save Oman's is from the same Mesalikh branch of the Unaiza tribal confederation] is the ascendancy of Iran. The Arabian Peninsula has significant Shi'ite minorities [and in Bahrain a majority] who have in the past demonstrated their unhappiness. They have been mollified, but Iran has always from the days of the Shah and nowadays even more, attempted to meddle in peninsula affairs. Recall that the Shah sent troops to Oman to suppress the Dhofar insurgency in the '70s and that the present Iranian leadership allows its citizens to use Dubai as a vast shopping mall for luxuries unavailable in Tehran.
Looking to the north, as the Turks see their hopes of joining the EU put in stasis, or even receding, they will predictably perceive their eastern "Mountain Turks," i.e. Kurds, as their most significant internal/external security problem. The Turks and Kurds are Sunni, so at bottom, they are unlikely to succumb to Iranian subversion or blandishments. But the Saudis would do well to regard Turkey as a new player/ally in the region whose assistance might help the KSA and its peninsular allies achieve equilibrium in an era of diminished US presence in the region.
The Saudis look at the world as an onion-ring House of Peace surrounded by a House of War with many gradations of hostility or friendship between themselves and various countries, but the House of War [Dar al-Harb] appears dangerously near to being turned into a Sunni-Shi'ite struggle rather than a Muslim-Kafiir problem. And despite the US's current difficulties, including a new Congress some of whose members believe that Okinawa is a good offshore base for the Central Command and are ignorant of Al-Qaeda being a Sunni-based terrorist outfit, America's role will remain, even if diminished. And even thought the Democratic Party has a large number of members who feel the Saudis may be too close to the Bush family dynasty, the previous Democratic administrations have all regarded the Saudi Arabia as a central player in the Middle East and a reliable ally throughout Central Asia and Africa.
Although both the US left and the US right both harbor elements with an intense distrust of Saudi Arabia, the NYT and its MSM pilot fish do accord the Saudis a measure of respect as a dependable ally.
But that respect and support may be waning as the consequences of the post-Gulf War decision to base US troops in Saudi military cities still reverberate today. In hindsight, that policy appears to have been a colossal blunder that stirred up more religious opposition to infidel troops based in the Kingdom than the benefits of proximity to the Middle East heartland and Saudi security conferred. King Abdullah should bear this new American outlook in mind in selecting his new foreign minister, as the Saudi-American relationship should not be lightly tampered with even though some aspects have not worn well with time.
Although I have followed events in the Middle East and Saudi Arabia closely for over thirty years, I can't begin to fathom some of the intricate familial, tribal social, religious, and economic relationships that are the underlying dynamics of political processes in the Kingdom, let alone the region as a whole. I suspect that very few, if any, observers do.
As I said in my previous pondering about this Foreign Minister succession, Saud al-Faisal may be asked or ordered by the King to remain in the position if there is no consensus on a successor at the top of the Royal Family. But if King Abdullah gives the job to Saud's brother Turki, the King could anger Bandar's father, Crown Prince Sultan bin Abd al-Aziz. Saud was in the job for over thirty years and Turki may become a permanent fixture as well. As Crown Prince, Sultan might think that appointing a Foreign Minister other than his son Bandar would impinge on his own forthcoming kingship, as Abdullah is over eighty and has a heart condition. So leaving Saud in as a figurehead, although he might still wield a lot of power, would be the compromise solution.
Okay, I know some readers, if they even get this far, will say it's how many angels on the head of a pin and what is the difference in who is selected except in some marginal fringe benefits not central to the underlying relationship between the two countries.
But for what it's worth and it's an extremely close call, I would make the final judgment that the US-Saudi relationship might be better off if Bandar bin Sultan succeeds Saud al-Faisal as Foreign Minister, talented as Turki Faisal is and well-disposed toward the American "umbrella" of protection as he and other senior Saudis have been. More later on this.
And it bears repeating that the US umbrella appears even more necessary as a nearly-nuclear Iran starts to swagger and throw its weight around in the region.
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Pernicious Meddling by Democratic Senators on Lebanon
The Economist has a good backgrounder on Lebanon. This country is in the process of seeing the democratic reforms of the Cedar Revolution undone by the creeping "direct action" of a street mob in Beirut. And the Western media ignore this attempt by a minority of 40% to seize the government by a coup de pouce while they are in a tizzy of fits and snits because President Bush has put his speech on Iraq off until January.
Enter stage left a bumbling second-rate double-digit IQ misfit from Florida who happens to have stumbled into being re-elected by facing a less-than-competent Republican. The photo of Sen. Bill Nelson sitting with Bashar Assad is comic, in an opera bouffe fashion. As the term implies, both of these fellows are buffoons, but Assad is a murderous buffoon who killed Rafiq Hariri and is exerting every effort to halt the UN Investigative Committee's Inquiry by trying to overthrow the Lebanese government. I wonder if Bill the bland buffoon asked Assad the killer buffoon whether he had anything to do with it? Billy did admit to getting Assad to say he's interested in working with the US on the Iraq border and Iraqi internal security issues. But on the only issue that Bashar has any influence over, this criminal told Nelson that Lebanon and Syria's support for Hezbollah and Hamas were none of the US's business.
The Wall Street Journal has a serious article which makes a case for Congress getting more involved, but unfortunately, Nelson isn't the only buffoon wanting to visit Damascus. A real parade of fools, three more of the most mendacious slippery mike-hogging types in Congress, Sens. Dodd, Specter, and of course, J[ust] F[or] Kerry are eager to demonstrate their heft and gravitas by going to Damascus, getting the photo-op sitting next to the stick-insect [can't wait to see the bouffant Kerry and crew-cut baby-Assad photo], and then coming back to be interviewed by "serious" journalists like Baby-Face Russert and Earnest Brian Williams. And don't forget Matt Lauer.
These solons are ostensibly going to Damascus about Iraq, but the Arab world will interpret their visits as paying homage to Assad, thereby increasing this incompetent blustering nitwit's prestige and emboldening him to more excesses in Lebanon, the only place that Assad has real influence.
So serial recidivist megalo-mikehogs like Dodd, Nelson, Specter and Hairdo are going to visit an all-but-open-and-shut-case murderer of the country next door. And giving American foreign influence in the region an even less enviable profile.
President Bush and Condi Rice are going to have to exercise what little political clout they have left, and use it wisely, to restrain these nitwits on their self-promoting junkets.
Ah, but there's always Dennis Kucinich. That photo-op will be precious as this five-foot wonder stands next to six-six stick-insect Assad!
Enter stage left a bumbling second-rate double-digit IQ misfit from Florida who happens to have stumbled into being re-elected by facing a less-than-competent Republican. The photo of Sen. Bill Nelson sitting with Bashar Assad is comic, in an opera bouffe fashion. As the term implies, both of these fellows are buffoons, but Assad is a murderous buffoon who killed Rafiq Hariri and is exerting every effort to halt the UN Investigative Committee's Inquiry by trying to overthrow the Lebanese government. I wonder if Bill the bland buffoon asked Assad the killer buffoon whether he had anything to do with it? Billy did admit to getting Assad to say he's interested in working with the US on the Iraq border and Iraqi internal security issues. But on the only issue that Bashar has any influence over, this criminal told Nelson that Lebanon and Syria's support for Hezbollah and Hamas were none of the US's business.
The Wall Street Journal has a serious article which makes a case for Congress getting more involved, but unfortunately, Nelson isn't the only buffoon wanting to visit Damascus. A real parade of fools, three more of the most mendacious slippery mike-hogging types in Congress, Sens. Dodd, Specter, and of course, J[ust] F[or] Kerry are eager to demonstrate their heft and gravitas by going to Damascus, getting the photo-op sitting next to the stick-insect [can't wait to see the bouffant Kerry and crew-cut baby-Assad photo], and then coming back to be interviewed by "serious" journalists like Baby-Face Russert and Earnest Brian Williams. And don't forget Matt Lauer.
These solons are ostensibly going to Damascus about Iraq, but the Arab world will interpret their visits as paying homage to Assad, thereby increasing this incompetent blustering nitwit's prestige and emboldening him to more excesses in Lebanon, the only place that Assad has real influence.
So serial recidivist megalo-mikehogs like Dodd, Nelson, Specter and Hairdo are going to visit an all-but-open-and-shut-case murderer of the country next door. And giving American foreign influence in the region an even less enviable profile.
President Bush and Condi Rice are going to have to exercise what little political clout they have left, and use it wisely, to restrain these nitwits on their self-promoting junkets.
Ah, but there's always Dennis Kucinich. That photo-op will be precious as this five-foot wonder stands next to six-six stick-insect Assad!
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Saudis Jockeying for Post-US Withdrawal Era: The BackStories
Saudi Arabia has told Dick Cheney that an American drawdown of troops or withdrawal will result in the support of the Saudis [and left unsaid, other Sunni countries in the region like Egypt and Jordan] of the beleaguered Sunni tribal elements left stranded in a Shi'ite hegemony. The New York Times column by Helene Cooper says:
Okay, are you ready for an even weirder apercu into what is going on?
The fact is that the al-Saud family, the Sabah family in Kuwait, the ruling family of Bahrain, and the ruling families of the United Arab Emirates are all, are you ready for this? These families are all relatively junior:
MEMBERS OF THE MESALIKH BRANCH OF THE UNAIZA CONFEDERATION which is the main congeries of Sunni tribes in the Syrian Desert stretching all the way down to the Yemeni and Omani borders, more or less. By the way, there are other tribes, other confederations, and many "tribeless" Saudis and other Arab affiliations.
But when I was political officer in Saudi, my Arabic language skills and other assiduous strokings of the local greybeards allowed me a peek into what really drives the dynamics of this ancient group of inhabitants living there since the times of Sargon, the first Semitic conqueror of Mesopotamia 4200 years ago.
The dynamics are tribal, and the senior elder graybeards told me that the most senior tribal groupings to whom the Al-Saud, Al-Sabah, Al-Khalifah, and other peninsular rulers are in Iraq, way up at the head of the notional tribal table. And despite the trillions of dollars among the rulers of SAG, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar: They all owe fealty and allegiance and BayH [my Arabic is rusty] to the tribal leaders of Iraq. That's how it's been for thousands of years and although the tribal ethos has diminished, or some say disappeared, there is evidence that the exquisitely conservative and traditional King Abdullah still upholds those tribal traditions of honor and allegiance.
So there is the backstory, in part, of why the Saudis must come to the aid of their Sunni tribal elders in Iraq if summoned. It's an oath of a concept long forgotten in the West and even throughout the rest of the world, the Middle East included.
And there is more to the Turki al-Faisal story:
Prince Bandar bin Sultan was the natural son of Defense Minister Prince Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz and a Sudanese slave woman [or let's call her a household retainer]. He had no royal standing in the family because of his mixed origins until he proposed to Haifa, the sister of Turki Al-Faisal and Saud Al-Faisal, and she accepted, which was extraordinary since parental permission was usually requested before the girl accepted the proposal. This happened in the late '60s and Bandar sealed his newly-acquired royal status when at a majlis he asked King Faisal, father of his bride, what he should be called from now on, since he was married to the King's daughter. Faisal answered, "Prince" Bandar bin Sultan, conferring him with legitimate birth denied him by his own father.
Bandar thus gained parity with his two brothers and went on to become the Ambassador to the United States, while Turki headed Saudi intelligence and Saud the Foreign Ministry. Now Bandar is head of the Saudi National Security Council, which he revealed the existence of to me back in the mid-'70s after a long dinner and evening at his home in Dammam. I wrote it up in an Airgram to the State Dept and was commended for discovering something even the CIA had not known. Personally, by word of mouth, which is the only way to find out what is really going in Saudi Arabia.
So now Bandar, the consummate brash arriviste upstart, and Turki, the suave polished diplomat, are contending for the post that their brother is departing.
Remember the TV series Dynasty, back in the days of J R Ewing and Joan Collins and scheming and manoeuvering? Multiple the stakes by a thousand and the consequences of the outcomes by ten thousand, and then what is happening among the countries in the Middle East comes into perspective.
The Saudis have been wary of supporting Sunnis in Iraq because their insurgency there has been led by extremists of Al Qaeda, who are opposed to the kingdom’s monarchy. But if Iraq’s sectarian war worsened, the Saudis would line up with Sunni tribal leaders.
The Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Turki al-Faisal, who told his staff on Monday that he was resigning his post, recently fired Nawaf Obaid, a consultant who wrote an opinion piece in The Washington Post two weeks ago contending that “one of the first consequences” of an American pullout of Iraq would “be massive Saudi intervention to stop Iranian-backed Shiite militias from butchering Iraqi Sunnis.”
Mr. Obaid also suggested that Saudi Arabia could cut world oil prices in half by raising its production, a move that he said “would be devastating to Iran, which is facing economic difficulties even with today’s high oil prices.” The Saudi government disavowed Mr. Obaid’s column, and Prince Turki canceled his contract.
But Arab diplomats said Tuesday that Mr. Obaid’s column reflected the view of the Saudi government, which has made clear its opposition to an American pullout from Iraq.
Okay, are you ready for an even weirder apercu into what is going on?
The fact is that the al-Saud family, the Sabah family in Kuwait, the ruling family of Bahrain, and the ruling families of the United Arab Emirates are all, are you ready for this? These families are all relatively junior:
MEMBERS OF THE MESALIKH BRANCH OF THE UNAIZA CONFEDERATION which is the main congeries of Sunni tribes in the Syrian Desert stretching all the way down to the Yemeni and Omani borders, more or less. By the way, there are other tribes, other confederations, and many "tribeless" Saudis and other Arab affiliations.
But when I was political officer in Saudi, my Arabic language skills and other assiduous strokings of the local greybeards allowed me a peek into what really drives the dynamics of this ancient group of inhabitants living there since the times of Sargon, the first Semitic conqueror of Mesopotamia 4200 years ago.
The dynamics are tribal, and the senior elder graybeards told me that the most senior tribal groupings to whom the Al-Saud, Al-Sabah, Al-Khalifah, and other peninsular rulers are in Iraq, way up at the head of the notional tribal table. And despite the trillions of dollars among the rulers of SAG, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar: They all owe fealty and allegiance and BayH [my Arabic is rusty] to the tribal leaders of Iraq. That's how it's been for thousands of years and although the tribal ethos has diminished, or some say disappeared, there is evidence that the exquisitely conservative and traditional King Abdullah still upholds those tribal traditions of honor and allegiance.
So there is the backstory, in part, of why the Saudis must come to the aid of their Sunni tribal elders in Iraq if summoned. It's an oath of a concept long forgotten in the West and even throughout the rest of the world, the Middle East included.
And there is more to the Turki al-Faisal story:
Prince Bandar bin Sultan was the natural son of Defense Minister Prince Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz and a Sudanese slave woman [or let's call her a household retainer]. He had no royal standing in the family because of his mixed origins until he proposed to Haifa, the sister of Turki Al-Faisal and Saud Al-Faisal, and she accepted, which was extraordinary since parental permission was usually requested before the girl accepted the proposal. This happened in the late '60s and Bandar sealed his newly-acquired royal status when at a majlis he asked King Faisal, father of his bride, what he should be called from now on, since he was married to the King's daughter. Faisal answered, "Prince" Bandar bin Sultan, conferring him with legitimate birth denied him by his own father.
Bandar thus gained parity with his two brothers and went on to become the Ambassador to the United States, while Turki headed Saudi intelligence and Saud the Foreign Ministry. Now Bandar is head of the Saudi National Security Council, which he revealed the existence of to me back in the mid-'70s after a long dinner and evening at his home in Dammam. I wrote it up in an Airgram to the State Dept and was commended for discovering something even the CIA had not known. Personally, by word of mouth, which is the only way to find out what is really going in Saudi Arabia.
So now Bandar, the consummate brash arriviste upstart, and Turki, the suave polished diplomat, are contending for the post that their brother is departing.
Remember the TV series Dynasty, back in the days of J R Ewing and Joan Collins and scheming and manoeuvering? Multiple the stakes by a thousand and the consequences of the outcomes by ten thousand, and then what is happening among the countries in the Middle East comes into perspective.
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