Reply #25: That Is Certainly A Low -End Estimate, Sir

[The Magistrate]

The generally employed figure runs about ten percent. The area they inhabit is also where the lions share of the Saudi oil is, and this gives unrest among them a potential effectiveness out of apparent proportion to their number. The area was attached to Saudi rule by conquest, and fairly recent conquest at that: the royal house does not trust them, and resentments linger in the populace.

As for the other, it is of course an article of faith in some quarters that no one hostile to the United States ever does or did anything wrong, but must by virtue of that hostility be regarded as a sterling exemplar of humanity, fit to lie in the line with Ghandi and the Saints in Heaven. That Khomeni's revolution aimed at a unified Shia bloc led by Tehran, and that his agents employed subversion and violence towards that end is fact beyond serious dispute, as is his condemnation of the Saudis as unfit guardians of the shrines.