THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION USES SAUDI MONEY TO PAY OFF THE RUSSIANS

VeryVeryVeryRoughDraft

I just read that Bandar Bin Sultan is in Russia to plan for an upcoming visit by President Putin to Saudi Arabia.

The news item reveals that a "security agreement" between the two countries will be signed during the visit, scheduled for February 11 and 12.

Here's my take:

Put bluntly, Bandar bin Sultan is an extension of the Bush Administration. He wouldn't go to Russia without its approval. I'll go futher: the Bush Administration sent him there. The "security agreement" (and two other trade-like ones) will likely be a plum financial payoff to Russia. Why? To ease up on the U.S. in Iraq by persuading its regional allies (Iran and Syria) go slow on U.S. troops and the tens of thousands of mercenaries.

In other words, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is coming to the aid of the Bush Administation, buying it time--with Saudi money from the recent oil bonanza--to find a face-saving way out of the Iraq morass. Or, as a first step, the Saudi payoff would be a prelude to allowing for a Russian partnership with the U.S. in Iraq. Or, likely, the Saudi payoff would be part of a package where the U.S. would lessen pressure on Iran about its nuclear program in exchange for an ease up on the troops in Iraq.

Too early to tell what exchange will take place. Can Iran afford to see the U.S. stay Iraq? Is the Bush Administration moving the harmful idiots' assets in Israel to prepare for a withdrawl from the Syrian Arab Joulan?

Again, I remind the readers that this is a very rough take on events--but I wanted them to learn about it here first.

The Editor

P.S. , By googling the e-publication I referred to in the last post, the one that is firing up Sunni passions against Shia, I found out enough about it. As a consequence of what I discovered, I am now more confident that this e-publication is very likely financed by our harmful idiots, and possibly their Saudi assets. These dislike Turki al-Faisal for his opposition to the policies of the Christian/Jewish right team at the White House--for that team's repeated attempts to draw Iran into a regional conflagration that would fire up passions in the United States for an all-out war with that country.

“CATASTROPHIC”

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A HARMFUL NON-STRATEGY

It’s unclear where the Bush people are heading with the escalation. At best, they’re hoping for an Iranian retreat. But from what? To where? Their back is against the wall, isn’t it? The naval buildup in the Gulf, the dispatch of more troops, and the concomitant positioning of Patriot missile systems, are straightforward messages. They convey that the U.S. can make matters costly to the Islamic Republic while preventing it from doing the same to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait–and the world economy. That the Patriot should prevent Iranian missiles from reaching oil installations in the Gulf. I’m no military expert, but I haven’t heard or read anywhere that the Patriot is that reliable. Besides, this chicken game is too conventional for the Islamic Republic.

THE NOOSE FOR ARABS

Fear not. The harmful idiots are supplementing their conventional strategy with an unconventional one: Widen the rift between Sunni and Shia. The idea is to mobilize the Arab Sunni masses and vassals against Iran. Arab vassals are assisting. But the vassals keep on wavering, as they know that this sectarian rift will likely come back to haunt them. Hence in good part the Bush Administration’s decision to lynch an Arab Sunni leader–to coax the Gulf leaders into full cooperation. The noose around Saddam Hussein’s neck was an American message to the Gulf leader: to fail to cooperate with the Americans, fully, is to see a noose around their own neck.

And they have no one to protect them, these poor souls. Not their own people. Not the Chinese. Not the Russians. The lynching of Saddam Hussein was a chilling message to the uncertain slaves: Only the United States can protect you from a like fate. You’ve placed all your eggs in our basket; don’t you dare change things now. The noose.

The harmful idiots seem to know that they’re likely to fail. Hence the news that they have evacuated villagers around the Kurdish northern town of Sulaymaniyyah to build a base–to which to run and cut losses among the troops and the mercenaries should an extended Tet-like offensive prove too costly and uncontrollable. Up north, the harmful idiots will set up their other Israel and continue to monitor the Islamic Republic.

BANDAR NEGOTIATES FOR THE UNITED STATES

Bandar bin Sultan was dispatched to Tehran, not by Saudi Arabia, but by the harmful idiots. That’s my take. His mission: to negotiate some agreement. (The Arab press is reporting that Bandar has reached an agreement with the Iranians to have both countries taper off the whipping of the sectarian passions. I don’t buy this as the reason for his visit. Larijani had been to Riyadh, and that issue would’ve been addressed then.) What’s not clear though is what the negotiations between the U.S. and Iran would be really about. Iran’s back truly is against the wall. Iran is not about to let go of its nuclear program, though it should be willing to trim things at the edges. Besides, the Islamic Republic knows that the Bush Administration is not after its nuclear program, but after its government. It wants Iran probably divided into various states, to keep it weak and helpless. To the Iranians, the nuclear program is the future for the over-populated country. (Ask Johns Hopkins, that den of hateful right-wing idiots, orphan-ers of children.) And it is one safety valve against an eventual invasion by the United States.

Iran is not about to let go of Syria, with whom its ambassador to Damascus recently said it has a strategic relationship, not an alliance. ( Syria can suffocate Hezbollah.) Iran is not about to let go of Iraq, since it knows that continued US presence there will be a prelude to eliminating its very existence as an independent and united nation.

And Iran can make things costly for the U.S. inside Iraq, as it probably prepares for the face-off in view of the American escalation. (Iran almost certainly sees the escalation as meant against it, not for Iraq.) The recent revelation that President Bush has ordered U.S. troops to hunt down Iranian operatives inside Iraq reveals at a minimum that these do in fact exist. But it also highlights the possibility that their numbers are increasing by the hour, lying in wait, since they would be Iran’s equivalent to the armada the U.S. is amassing in the Gulf.

THE SECTARIAN RIFT SHOULD HELP IRAN

As for the harmful idiots’s strategy of widening the rift between Sunni and Shia: Iran in the end should benefit from that rift in Iraq, its most important asset. And the harmful idiots’ Arab vassals may see this rift come back to bite them in the ass. Iran will continue to sponsor like-minded Sunni groups, those willing to work with it. Still the Shia, in the end, could become its most important and only asset. But that’s an impressive asset, anyway. It spreads into Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain–the entire western shores of the Gulf. It even exists in Yemen.

Put differently, pushing the sectarian rift to contain Iran, then attack it, actually helps it consolidate its influence within the Arab Shia communities, and spread it. Get it? Get it? Get it?

Iran’s asset can begin asking for rights. In Saudi Arabia the Shia can head to the streets, bringing the lot of their community to the attention of the world’s human rights groups. Saudi police or Sunni vigilantes could kill Shia demonstrators. The eyes of the world, as a consequence, will be on the Kingdom. The rights of women should follow; then the rights of religious minorities. Of foreign labor. But most vexing will be the repression of the Saudi Shia and the rise within the Sunni of vigilantes, with the informal blessing of the state. Even the United States will find itself forced to champion Shia rights should repression be practiced against them.

ATTACKING IRAN WILL DESTROY LEBANON

Importantly, Iran can retaliate successfully in Lebanon. Here, as everywhere else, the harmful idiots have overplayed their hand. Should Iran be attacked, expect Hezbollah to pay armed visits to the Lebanese assets of the harmful idiots–to kick out of the country Saad Hariri, Amin Gemayyel...all of them. Expect total conflagration in Lebanon. Expect Lebanon’s Central Bank to order the closing of all private banks and the freezing of all financial transactions–a la Argentina. All to avoid a worse financial disaster–albeit with the promise of seven billion dollars coming Lebanon’s way from donor countries.

MINDSET

One problem the harmful idiots have and will not be able to overcome is their very mindset–an amalgam of Jewish right and Christian right thinking, which is truly hateful of Muslims and Arabs. And I’m not sure the Democrats are much better.

THE HARMFUL IDIOTS PASS THE ISRAEL ONUS TO SAUDI ARABIA

Saudi Arabia has put its fate into the hands of the harmful idiots, as illustrated by the removal of Turki al-Faisal from his ambassadorial position in Washington D.C. (See previous post.) And there’s plenty of evidence that it has been colluding against Iran. It may not have a choice, anyway. Remember the noose? Its problem stems in good part in its inability to read American politics correctly, or be creative. In the United States, it seems to be always at the mercy of the Jewish Right or the Jewish liberals, who weave in and out of the Jewish Right camp, both Israel-obsessed. And the Kingdom can do so much to please them. King Abdallah in 2002 produced an "Arab" initiative for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. But the Israelis ignored it. Now they’re clamoring for it.

But what was then is not now. Then, Saudi Arabia was facing the possibility of a heavy-handed retaliation by the United States for its failure to monitor the bin Laden people, and for the probable financing of bin Laden by Saudi princes. King Abdallah’s initiative was the Kingdom’s way of asking the Jewish Right and the Jewish liberals to ease up on it. But the initiative, still alive and being amended now and then in consultation with the Israelis, carries serious risks for the Kingdom. To negotiate in the name of the Palestinians, albeit with Abu Mazin at their side (he has next-to-zero credibility among the Palestinian public), is to accept responsibility for the Palestinians and for the Israelis–to increase the Kingdoms population practically by 10 to 12 million people. Is Saudi Arabia offering to pay the reparations Israel and the West owe the Palestinians for loss of home and the compensation for Lebanon for Israel’s endless wars on it and its Palestinians? These could be n the trillions of Euros! Is Israel to become a Saudi satellite, or vice versa? Saudi Arabia will be held responsible for each and every failure by the Palestinians and by the Israelis to abide by a Saudi-sponsored agreement, an “Arab cover” notwithstanding. This means that even an economic downturn in Palestine will be blamed on the Saudis–not only by the Palestinians but by the entire Arab Street. Not to mention that each and every killing of a Palestinian by the Israelis will also be blamed on the Saudis–or on those members of the royal family who have accepted to take on the Israel onus.

What a raw deal!

In other words, catering to the Israel-obsessed Jewish Right and the Jewish liberals carries with it repercussions in the region. Iran is not about to let go of the mobilizing value of the Israel-Palestine issue, nor the Syrian-Israeli. And both Iran and Syria are closer to Saudi Arabia culturally. And both have indirect influence within the Kingdom. Iran will have so much influence over the Kingdom’s Shia, as a result of the sectarian campaign in which the Saudis are eminently involved. And Syria is Arab. Or has this come to mean nothing to the Saudi leadership?

PROTECTION WITHIN THE U.S.

The Saudi decision makers, under an ever-present American threat to reveal corruption and financial scandals involving Saudi decision-makers, can’t leave themselves exposed in the United States. How to seek protection then, without having to carry the heavy onus of responsibility for Israel’s welfare, to keep the American Jewish Right and the Jewish liberals at bay?

Zein al-Irban (pseudonym) an immigrant politico, believes Saudi Arabia (and the other Gulf countries) would do well to seek out alternative political groups to free the Saudi leadership of the Israel onus and preserve its legitimacy at home:


(1) the African-American , as the horse inside the Democratic party;

(2) the Arab-American community--albeit not as politically influential as the African-American--to stay true to one’s culture ;

(3) the Hispanic community, growing and found in both parties; and

(4) the old-line Republicans–a la Chuck Hagel. The Republican party to which Bandar bin Sultan was accustomed is no more. The new one is a hub of Christian and Jewish imperial fascists, both from the extreme right and both–by definition–hateful of Muslims and Arabs.

ARAB CULTURE; ARAB LANGUAGE

I will add this to Zein’s ideas: To dodge the Sunni-Shia rift, a very dangerous rift, the Saudis would do well to invest in Arab literature as a way of igniting a renaissance in the Arab identity–the one which they themselves had sold down the drain, along with the self-hating Arabs and Uncle Toms on the harmful idiots’ payroll. Now that Islam is being used as an imperial tool in unconventional warfare, and Saudis are colluding in that campaign, a revival of language should go a long way in healing the wounds of division between the Arab Shia and the Arab Sunni.

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Note: The harmful idiots must really detest Turki al-Faisal, the outgoing Saudi ambassador. One e-publication they seem to sponsor (alone or with Saudis), which specializes in whipping Sunni passions against Shia, wrote that Turki was let go because he had failed to improve Saudi-US relations. Really? Wasn't it because he saw more insanity for the region in the Cheney plan?

Then, a day or two ago, the same e-publication featured an article about King Abdallah’s interview with a Kuwaiti paper about the Sunni-Shia rift. The harmful idiots’ e-publication featured Turki’s photograph, the only one it had in that article. Cheap.

Obviously then, the harmful idiots and their Saudi assets are involved in an anti-Turki al-Faisal campaign, to silence him. Turki can take a lesson from Bill Clinton. As Helen Thomas said on Democracy Now a few days ago, commenting on the ceaseless right wing vicious and dirty campaigns against Mr. Clinton: He took it like a man. I will add: He became African-American, and that community provided him with protection and drove the right wing crazy. He outsmarted the right wing--which was not that difficult. After all, they're idiots--who happen to be harmful.

DID TURKI AL-FAISAL RESIGN, OR DID THE HARMFUL IDIOTS REMOVE HIM?

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THE RESIGNATION


On or about December 12, 2006, we learned of the “resignation,” sudden, of Prince Turki al-Faisal, as Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Washington, D.C. He was said to have resigned in good part because of plotting against him by Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the former ambassador. It was said that Turki and his brother, Prince Saud al-Faisal, the foreign minister, believed in keeping the neighborly doors open to Iran, while Bandar had adopted the harmful idiots’ confrontation stance against the Islamic Republic. Such is the closest the press came to understanding the reason for the resignation.

Robin Wright in the Washington Post reported that Bandar had been visiting Washington, secretly, almost monthly, behind Turki’s back. She wrote: “Turki was kept so out of the loop that Bandar often did not inform him he was in town, much less tell him what he was doing.”

The New York Times on or about December 27 highlighted differences between Turki and Bandar about Iran–that Bandar adopted the Bush administration approach of confronting Iran, while Turki favored more diplomatic tactics.

I believe that neither newspaper knew to tell the entire story. Perhaps Turki, a former head of Saudi intelligence, had seen something disturbing. Perhaps he had seen that the harmful idiots were angling for civil wars across the Arab world, as part of a colonial divide-and-rule strategy. That the upcoming war on Iran was so enmeshed with Arab blood spilling profusely in Iraq, in Lebanon, in Palestine and–sooner or later–in the Kingdom itself. Only recently, Prince Turki described the consequences of a war with Iran as “catastrophic,” though he did not elaborate. (Financial Times, Jan. 19, 2007, at 2.) I will.

I suspect that there was more to Prince Turki’s “resignation.” I suspect he didn’t resign; he was fired. Not by the King. By the harmful idiots.

Why did the harmful idiots oust him?


THE HARMFUL IDIOTS SEEK TO WIDEN THE RIFT BETWEEN ARAB SUNNI AND ARAB SHIA.

Turki’s “resignation” had more to do with his opposition to war with Iran, and the concomitant policy by the harmful idiots of widening the wedge between the Arab Shia and Sunni. I have no direct evidence of this, only circumstantial.

It would take a lot of space and time to outline the harmful idiots’ new strategy in the Arab World: to push along the Shia-Sunni rift, inside and outside Iraq. To instigate an intra-Arab Sunni civil war in Palestine, and an intra-Arab Shia one in Lebanon. One illustration of their divide-and-rule colonial strategy was the assassination-style and savage execution of Mr. Saddam Hussein and his two aides.


THE LYNCHING OF AN ARAB (SUNNI) LEADER

The harmful idiots had Mr. Hussein and his aides in custody. And there were more charges to take to trial in the Kangaroo court they erected, with harmful idiot judicial advisers! Instead, they speedily handed the Arab Sunni men over to Maliki and his people. All Shia. All (uncertain) agents of the harmful idiots. And none amongst them had graduated from the Nelson Mandela school of politics and humaneness.

The harmful idiots knew what they were doing. It’s their style. Entrap the Iraqi leadership; entrap the Iranian. Sophomoric, but supremely bloody. They made skillful use of the hangings. One of the Arab web publications which I suspect they sponsor as part of their propaganda war featured, day-in-day-out, the hangings as its most prominent articles–with what looked like outrageous, made-up, and doctored photographs.

The harmful idiots knew that the hangings of Sunni by Shia paralleled the lynching by their forefathers of blacks--and the myriad of cries, shrill and helpless, these lynching still draw in the depth of the soul of each and every African-American. In other words, the harmful idiots called on part of their own history, the savage and the racist part, when they delivered Sunni men to Shia politicians. Maliki needed to boost his popularity in relation to Muqtadha among the Shia masses; the harmful idiots wanted to widen the rift between Shia and Sunni, to be “needed,” by the Iraqis-- to stay in Iraq. The hangings proved beneficial to both. They recalled to me what a member of the Israel right-wing cult once wanted me to appreciate: that the Sunni in Iraq should be made to feel that they needed the Americans and the Israelis to protect them from the Shia and Iran. Maliki and his henchmen proved willing to serve.

(Tells you something about the death penalty: it never is about justice.)


THE HARMFUL IDIOTS AND THE ISRAELIS WANT THE SUNNI TO NEED THEM.

I could recite a a number of reasons why the harmful idiots wanted the executions now and not later. Suffice it to say that the executions fit into their colonial policy to further along the drawing of blood between Shia and Sunni–to be “needed,” so to stay in Iraq. To prepare for the eventual assault on Iran. To dominate the region one hundred percent. To control a substantial portion of the future oil needs of China and Europe. To avoid raising taxes at home. To do Empire on the cheap, without sacrifices at home.

Did Prince Turki al-Faisal and his brother stand in the way of this suicidal policy? Indication is they did. In that they were (and are) swimming against the current of Arab Uncle Toms and plantation superintendents who are helping the harmful idiots along and pocketing our money.

PREEMPTING CIVIL STRIFE

My suspicion is that Turki and Saud al-Faisal stood in the way of the harmful idiots’ plan to further the Sunni-Shia rift. They did it not only for humane reasons. I’m confident they’re not naive. They did it for pragmatic reasons as well. The Kingdom has its own sizeable Shia population; Lebanon is majority-Shia; and so is Iraq; and so is Bahrain. And they’re all Arab, albeit a portion are of Iranian descent. But that only matters if you want it to matter. One could hear the Faisals’ Arab-centered approach on December 19, 2006, one week after Turki’s resignation. Prince Saudi al-Faisal, Turki’s brother and Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, declared that the Kingdom stood “equidistant” to all sects and parties in Iraq. In other words, Saud al-Faisal was declaring that all Iraqis were Arab, those who wanted to be and those who didn’t. (The kingdom already was entangled in Iraq, more than it liked to admit. Please refer to earlier posts.)

Then again, on or about January 7, 2007, Saud al-Faisal repeated his “stand equidistant” mantra this time in relation to the sects and parties in Lebanon. Once again, the Arab al-Faisals seemed to be expressing concern , even worry, about the harmful idiots’ sectarian policies, and their mobilization of their countless “assets” in Saudi Arabia and outside to implement these.

To be clear, the Faisals seemed to appreciate that war with Iran entailed civil wars among the Arabs. That the harmful idiots, by insisting on warring with Iran, were bringing the region closer to the abyss. And that the abyss should be one that divides Arab society from the inside–a supremely dangerous proposition. Worse, the harmful idiots’ armies would not be sufficient to extinguish the fires of sectarian warfare. Even worse, neither Sunni nor Shia would accept these armies anyway, or their Israeli proxy.


The harmful idiots couldn’t have been pleased with Saud al-Faisal’s reasonableness and common-sense. They wanted war, come what may. They therefore wanted Turki, his brother, out of their capital. So it seemed. The fact that Adel al-Jubeir, a probable Bandar protégé (he had worked with Prince Bandar when the latter was in Washington), was named ambassador, indicated that the harmful idiots got their way.

CHANCES OF SUCCESS; CHANCES OF FAILURE

The Faisal brothers stand no chance, anyway. The harmful idiots are working to stay in Iraq. For that they will do what it takes. For now, the Kingdom is theirs, not the Faisals’. Their insistence on creating a fait accompli, where war with Iran would become unavoidable, the product of any small “mistake,” is so severe that one of their vassals, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, twice seemed to complain about them. He alluded that the Bush Administration was standing in the way of Israeli-Syrian peace–once on or about January 6, and again, though less clearly, on or about January 9.

TO STAY IN IRAQ.

Staying in Iraq is what the Bush Administration is after, not peace. Its mind set seems to be very much that of the Arab-hating imperial Jewish right wing. Among these, no Arab is allowed to have any pride, or a nationalist feeling, or a peaceful existence. Divide-and-rule is the harmful idiots’ colonial mantra.

Soon , Kurds will be spilling Shia blood; Shia will be spilling Sunni blood, and Sunni will be spilling Shia blood. Baghdad, already Beirut-like (a hundred times worse, really) during Lebanon’s civil war, will be colored red. The blood of Arabs, so sought after by the alliance of the Jewish and Christian right, which has subdued the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and threaten to turn it into a Sunni-Shia proposition of mistrust, should spill, without end.