[river rat]

Their Men in Riyadh: Ex-U.S. ambassadors who stick with the Saudis.
National Review, June 17, 2002, by Rod Dreher
......................................................

It's good to be the U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia -- or, more precisely, it's good to have been Washington's man in Riyadh. No other posting pays such rich dividends once one has left it, provided one is willing to become a public and private advocate of Saudi interests.

The number of ex-U.S. ambassadors to Riyadh who now push a pro-Saudi line is startling. Walter L. Cutler runs the Meridian International Center, which has been heavily supported by the Saudis. Richard Murphy wields influence as a pro-Saudi voice at the Council on Foreign Relations. Chas W. Freeman Jr. now runs the robustly pro-Arab Middle East Policy Council, and heads a firm that sets up joint international business ventures. And lower-level diplomats with Riyadh experience on their resumes can be found throughout U.S. foreign-policy circles.

Prince Bandar, the colorful Saudi ambassador to the United States, makes no bones about how it works. The Washington Post has quoted Bandar as observing, "If the reputation builds that the Saudis take care of friends when they leave office, you'd be surprised how much better friends you have who are just coming into office."

Not everyone feels all warm and fuzzy about this. "I think it's a disgrace," says Richard Perle, the former Reagan administration official. "They're the people who appear on television, they write op-ed pieces. The Saudis are a major source of the problem we face with terrorism. That would be far more obvious to people if it weren't for this community of former diplomats effectively working for this foreign government."

Hume Horan is a retired career diplomat whose service includes two stints in Riyadh. He says, "There have been some people who really do go on the Saudi payroll, and they work as advisers and consultants. Prince Bandar is very good about massaging and promoting relationships like that. Money works wonders, and if you've got an awful lot of it, and a royal title -- well, it's amusing to see how some Americans liquefy in front of a foreign potentate, just because he's called a prince."

An academic passion for sunny Araby hardly accounts for someone like Wyche Fowler, a former Democratic U.S. senator from Georgia who was dispatched as ambassador to Riyadh in President Clinton's second term. Fowler, a wily country boy who used to campaign on his rural background, seems to have had a good ol' time in King Fahd's court. "[The Saudis] are intelligent and quick," Fowler said in a recent interview, "and I enjoyed spending many hours drinking tea in the desert with them late into the night. They want to tell you about their family, and want to hear about yours. They would tell me a story about their father raising camels, and I would tell them one about my father raising cows."

When Fowler returned from Saudi Arabia, he landed several consulting contracts with international firms doing business in the region, and accepted the chairmanship of the Middle East Institute. This is a think- tank funded chiefly by Arab corporations and American corporations with significant business dealings in Arab countries. Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah is listed among a handful of "benefactors" on the institute's most recent donor list. And lately, Fowler has emerged as one of the most visible pro-Saudi spokesmen in the media. He has let fly with observations of the sort guaranteed to make Prince Bandar smile.


Etc, etc......

Balance of article at: http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m1282/11_54/86481294/p1/article.jhtml

Looks like the "Ambassador" is a whore..
Bought and paid for....

Semper Fi

[risk]

Very Conservative - Attila the Hun would have to ride his pony for 3 days to his right, to approach my left flank.

(From your profile.) This always makes me smile. Good deal, Mr. River Rat. And thanks for serving. It's an interesting balance of quotes you've selected there. I like the Twain and the Will Rogers just as well as I like your last comment.

And yeah, this scum is a pocketed Arabist. Good cite.

[getgoing]

"Looks like the "Ambassador" is a whore...Bought and paid for.... "

RR ck out this page from your link, a CHART of the dead citizens of Israel justified by "September 29, 2000 saw an explosion of Palestinian anger and has resulted in an Intifada, Arabic for 'a shaking off'. Every day, innocent Palestinian and Israeli people are being killed. These pages count, graph and give a context to these deaths.

From Sept. 29, 2000 to January 15, 2004: Israeli Dead: 840
Palestinian Dead: 2665

Below are links to pages that graph and detail, in half-month increments, the killings of Palestinians and Israelis. Each page includes a graph of Israeli and Palestinian deaths as well as other details."
http://www.mepc.org/public%5Fasp/resources/mrates.asp

MR.(SICK) Ambassador, get your money up front for this PR job, too...

"Saudi-American Forum: Can you talk about the comments you made on the lawsuit - the $1 trillion suit by 9/11 victims and families against top-ranking Saudis -- talking about how it would further unravel the Saudi-U.S. partnership?

Ambassador Chas Freeman: When I was asked by the lawyers for the National Commercial Bank whether I would be willing to write a statement in connection with the lawsuit, I immediately agreed in part because I believe in the importance in the U.S.-Saudi relationship. I believe this lawsuit is potentially, profoundly disruptive to that relationship. But, mainly, I believe the Constitution gives the executive branch responsibility for conducting U.S. foreign relations and that the United States can only have one government at a time. We may have a separation of powers domestically -- that may be how we reach decisions domestically -- but internationally we can only speak with one voice.

It seemed to me to be completely anomalous to have the executive branch praising Saudi cooperation with us in connection with our struggle against terrorism, obviously arguing with the Saudis for even greater efforts on their part on the one hand, while on the other the courts might accede the views of the plaintiffs that the Saudis are criminals who should be punished and they're incorrigible.

I think the action of a court would jeopardize not only the U.S.-Saudi relationship but more broadly our ability to conduct foreign relations and successfully to cooperate internationally against terrorism. So, I had two motives in joining this and in putting myself forward in public with the full expectation that I would receive the sort of slanderous ignorant attacks that I have received. I've always believed that if you consider yourself a friend of someone or the supporter of a cause, you should not duck that issue, even when standing up is going to cause people to take pot-shots at you."

CHAS. W. FREEMAN, JR.
President, Middle East Policy Council
1730 M Street, NW, Suite 512
Washington, DC 20036-4505
(t) 202-296-6767
(f) 202-296-5791
e-mail: freeman@mepc.org

Chairman, Projects International, Inc.
1800 K Street, NW, #1018
Washington, DC 20006
(t) 202-333-1277
(f) 202-333-3128
e-mail: cwfpii@cs.com