Wednesday, April 24, 2002

Crown Prince Abdullah is now a political advisor for the President of the United States. In a bleak assessment, he said there was talk within the Saudi royal family and in Arab capitals of using the "oil weapon" against the United States, and demanding that the United States leave strategic military bases in the region.

This is, I think, the single greatest threat that Bush has faced so far. And may be the biggest threat in decades. Abdullah is clearly offering us an ultimatum. If we choose the side of the Arabs we are condemning an entire people to extermination. We would be no better than certain countries that rolled over and closed their eyes during the Nazi death camps.

If the President doesn't dress him down for this I will lose all faith in this administration. He is going to come here and tell us to allow his country and the other Arab states to wipe out Israel without any interference, and he expects Bush to roll over because he is going to make oil threats. He better be told in no uncertain terms that he is welcome to try the oil threat and we will inform him and Saddam Hussein at the same time "Good luck in your new relations with the Iraqi state, you'll be saluting them as you see watch our troops leave."

I'm sorry but, this just makes me sick. The religious and secular leaders in Arabia call for Jihad against all Jews and Christians and Westerners and we are supposed to sit quietly on our hands. I want a working Palestinian stae, I want peace with Arabs and everyone else, but how can we continue to call them our friends and make concessions to them when they treat us like this?

"It is a mistake to think that our people will not do what is necessary to survive," the person close to the crown prince said, "and if that means we move to the right of bin Laden, so be it; to the left of Qaddafi, so be it; or fly to Baghdad and embrace Saddam like a brother, so be it. It's damned lonely in our part of the world, and we can no longer defend our relationship to our people."

All that we have asked of them is to denounce, in no uncertain terms, suicide bombing and terror. In turn we get slapped in the face and threatened with an oil embergo and embrace of our enemies. Bush should say good riddance. And make very clear that his new friend Saddam will be hanging from a lamp post in Baghdad very soon.

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