THE HARMFUL IDIOTS UNLEASH JORDAN’S PRINCE HASAN AGAINST THE SAUDIS–A CORRECTION.

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Boy was I wrong!

In my analysis in the April 23 post, "Of (Arab) Blood and (Saudi) Greed." I discussed an interview given by once Crown Prince Hasan of Jordan in which he was said to have criticized Bandar bin Sultan, without naming him, for helping to unleash Sunni-Shia tension and strife to contain Iran.

In that same interview, which never aired, Prince Hasan was said to have criticized the use by the Saudi government of the holy places as sites for signing inter-Arab agreements. Prince Hasan was said to have accused the Saudi government of misusing these sites to achieve Saudi political ends.

A recent article in the April 30 New York Times (" A Saudi Prince Tied to Bush Is Sounding Off-Key") by Helene Cooper and Jim Ruthenberg reveals facts that, in the end, prove me wrong in my analysis. This article makes it necessary that I re-visit and correct what Prince Hasan’s alleged statements were all about..

With the New York Times article as background, Prince Hasan’s alleged statements to al-Jazeerah should be seen as a lame attempt by the harmful idiots to retaliate against Bandar and the Saudi government–and not anything else.

Why? Cooper and Ruthenberg reveal that the Bush administration is eminently displeased with Bandar and King Abdallah. The Administration feels that Bandar has misled it more than once. That same Administration, too, is displeased with the Mecca Accord–an achievement for Saudi diplomacy, but one that the Bush team felt had torpedoed Rice’s scintillating efforts to isolate Hamas.

To retaliate for losing full control over the now rich Saudis, the harmful idiots checked their colonialist play book for ideas. They came up with the accusation that Bandar, all alone, and without their aiding and abetting, and that of Jordan’s, had devised and implemented the sleazy policy of the Axis-of-the-Helpless (The U.S., Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, and Israel) to drive a wedge between Sunni and Shia to contain Iran.

Resorting to such a lame threat–to present Prince Hasan as, once again, the Hashemite pretender to the post of Defender of the Holy Sites–is a caricature of the club raised against Saudi Arabia by the Jewish Right’s Defense Policy Board on the eve of the Iraq invasion. Then, Kissinger, Perle and company on that Board not so indirectly floated the idea of breaking up Saudi Arabia. Now the harmful idiots are paralleling the Jewish Right’s stratagem by floating their own break-the-Kingdom idea, this time with Hashemite Prince Hasan as the tool. The Hijazis can’t wait.

About the use by the Saudis government of the Holy Places as sites to push along blood-sparing inter-Arab agreements such as the Mecca Accord...Oh well, maybe the Saudi government should’ve tried to use Amman instead. But then Jordan’s government, Prince Hasan included, would’ve had to seek permission from Israel. And the Saudis, for all their failings, still do have some self-respect.

All understand–including this newsletter– that Jordan needs the cargo the harmful idiots deliver. And, all understand that, to obtain the cargo, Jordan’s government has to service the idiots and the Israelis. But to criticize (the way Prince Hasan did–for the wrong reasons) a blood-sparing agreement among Arabs is stooping (way) too low.