The Vast Power of the Saudi Lobby

[yurbud]

A nice reminder of both why we are in the Middle East and the hypocrisy of supposedly spreading democracy in Iraq while turning a blind eye to what human rights group routinely call the most oppressive regime in the world.

Published on Tuesday, April 17, 2007 by The Providence Journal (Rhode Island)
The Vast Power of the Saudi Lobby
by John R. MacArthur


Somehow, though, I can’t shake the idea that the Israel lobby, no matter how powerful, isn’t all it is cracked up to be, particularly where it concerns the Bush administrations past and present. Indeed, when I think of pernicious foreign lobbies with disproportionate sway over American politics, I can’t see past Saudi Arabia and its royal house, led by King Abdullah.

The long and corrupt history of American-Saudi relations centers around the kingdom’s vast reserves of easily extractable oil, of course. Ever since President Franklin D. Roosevelt met aboard ship in 1945 with King Ibn Saud, the special relationship with the desert kingdom has only grown stronger. The House of Saud is usually happy to sell us oil at a consistent and reasonable price — and then increase production if unseemly market forces drive the world price of a barrel too high for U.S. consumers.

In exchange we arm the Saudis to the teeth and turn a blind eye to their medieval approach to crime and punishment.

Even during the Saudi-led oil embargo of 1973-74, an exceedingly hostile action against the United States supposedly justified by Washington’s support of Israel in the Yom Kippur War, the Nixon administration treaded very softly. Despite the illegality of the embargo — it arguably violated international law as well as a bilateral commercial agreement between the United States and Saudi Arabia — the White House and the State Department could hardly have been more diplomatic toward their Bedouin friends.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/17/571