State Department to US Senate on Saudi Arabia- "Take a Hike!"

The US State Department withdrew at the last minute from a Senate Judiciary hearing yesterday into Saudi Arabia's sponsorship of terrorism. It featured testimony by investigators and analysts of the Saudi kingdom who told the committee's chairman, Senator Arlen Specter, a Republican of Pennsylvania, and its ranking Democrat, Senator Leahy, of Vermont, that Saudi Arabia has been ineffective in curbing the propagation of anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, and anti-American ideologies.

The director of Freedom House's Center for Religious Freedom, Nina Shea, testified that the Saudis had also distributed extremist Wahabi "hate materials" at mosques here in America inciting violence against Jews and Christians. Committee members also showed video clips of Muslim clerics urging, over Saudi government-controlled television, that "throats must be slit" and "skulls must be shattered" in the fight against infidels. The video was translated and provided by the Middle East Media Research Institute. (MEMRI). Both the committee and the witnesses were reportedly quite ticked off at being treated in this fashion.

State Department Spurns Senators On Saudi Arabia - November 9, 2005 - The New York Sun - NY Newspaper

The boys at Foggy Bottom apparently reacted to this hearing like vampires to garlic, especially as Condi Rice has an upcoming visit to the kingdom tomorrow. Not that they like offending our `friends' the Saudis any time. Interferes with those nice, Saudi funded lobbyist and `foundation president' jobs after retirement. It pays, in hard cash, to be nice to the Saudis...just ask Brent Scowcroft. This has been going on for YEARS.

And the Saudis are our pals...just ask Dubbya.

It's truly an exercise in cognitive dissonance that President Bush can talk about a `war on terror' and `our friends the Saudis' in the same speech. It's a pity he either feels he can't or won't level with the American people, and I think it has a lot to do with the skepticism and dissension voiced among some of the American people towards the Bush Administration.

He would do a lot better to trust the good instincts of his fellow Americans.