Posted on 12/12/2006 9:20:33 PM PST by neverdem
WASHINGTON, Dec. 12 — Saudi Arabia has told the Bush administration that it might provide financial backing to Iraqi Sunnis in any war against Iraq’s Shiites if the United States pulls its troops out of Iraq, according to American and Arab diplomats.
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia conveyed that message to Vice President Dick Cheney two weeks ago during Mr. Cheney’s whirlwind visit to Riyadh, the officials said. During the visit, King Abdullah also expressed strong opposition to diplomatic talks between the United States and Iran, and pushed for Washington to encourage the resumption of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, senior Bush administration officials said.
The Saudi warning reflects fears among America’s Sunni Arab allies about Iran’s rising influence in Iraq, coupled with Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. King Abdullah II of Jordan has also expressed concern about rising Shiite influence, and about the prospect that the Shiite-dominated government would use Iraqi troops against the Sunni population.
A senior Bush administration official said Tuesday that part of the administration’s review of Iraq policy involved the question of how to harness a coalition of moderate Iraqi Sunnis with centrist Shiites to back the Iraqi government led by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.
The Saudis have argued strenuously against an American pullout from Iraq, citing fears that Iraq’s minority Sunni Arab population would be massacred. Those fears, United States officials said, have become more pronounced as a growing chorus in Washington has advocated a draw-down of American troops in Iraq, coupled with diplomatic outreach to Iran, which is largely Shiite.
“It’s a hypothetical situation, and we’d work hard to avoid such a structure,” one Arab diplomat in Washington said. But, he added, “If things become so bad in Iraq, like an ethnic cleansing, we will feel we are pulled into the war.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
There are not enough virgins (male or female) in all of Islam to deliver on that threat....
A whole lot of "martyred" corpses are going to have to do without or resort to post postmortem self gratification.
I guess in some cases, rigor mortis can be your friend.
Semper Fi
Stoke the hate and let them kill each other. Rivers of Arab blood would be a good thing.
All-out regional war means western civilisation has major oil supply problems and sky-high crude prices.
the east has tested the west (with oil prices) and found the west to be weak and easily pay extortion
there will be no end to the " If the west does this or that "... even jumping through hoops for their entertainment
We can learn to be energy independent a lot easier than we can learn to live in a radioactive wasteland.
Might just have to choose at this rate.
President Bush is right to advocate staying the course. Who thought this was going to be easy? Not him. He said so in the address to Congress after 9/11. Everyone cheered him. His approval ratings jumped up into the high 80's percentiles.
Yet now when there's been a price to pay, and not much of a price in terms of casualties at all compared to other wars, with a professional military eager to go on despite this, everyone runs around like Chicken Little declaring we've lost or cannot win and must get out.
We can win this. We need to continue what we're doing. IF we can bring a stabilized Iraq to the Middle East, our troubles with terrorist groups like Al Qeada will diminish. The average Joe Muslim will have an alternative between fundamentalism and totalitarian dictatorship. Perhaps it will fail, and all the Iraqis will sink into a never-ending whirlpool of violence and hatred. But we've barely begun, and to declare failure before we've been defeated is, IMHO, un-American.
This is a shot across the bow of the Congressional Democrats who think they can just snap their fingers, say America is wrong and all the bad guys will sing Kumbaya with them.
We need to skip the war part and fast forward to the US occupation of Islamistan.
Seriously, the world needs for us to divvy up all the oil with relatively sane folks like the Russians.
Or discover a lost page of the Koran where fuel oil is on the not-to-do list along with graven images and bacon.
Actually, we just need access to the oil fields. Having said that though, China, Japan, and Europe are far more dependent than we on ME oil. They may reap the whirlwind for the troubles they have fostered or ignored.
If gas goes to $10/gal, I think the United States could and would cut consumption in half through change in habits, and we produce that much oil. I don't think the rest of the world has that margin of discretionary use.
I'm just speaking out of the frustration of being one of the few countries to try to attempt real positive change in the ME.
You might want to reconsider even that. Ask the folks at Shell, Yukos, etc.
Let's drill our own and be done with them.
If the Saudis paid for the Baker-Hamilton report, they got gypped.
The report calls for talks with IRAN. This story says the Saudis are flatly against U.S. talks with Iran. In part this is because Iran is a looming Shia threat. And in part it's because Iran is going for the nuclear bomb and the means to deliver it, and the Saudis are afraid talks with Iran about Iraq would end up derailing world-wide opposition to THAT, thus enabling Iran to become a nuclear power, unopposed by the U.S. and Europe.
Thinking the Saudis bought the Baker report, in the face of how unhappy the Saudis are with it, so unhappy they're threatening to become involved on the ground in Iraq to protect the Sunnis if push comes to shove, and are demanding that we not enter talks with Iran (as Baker urges), just MIGHT put YOU in the Silvestre Reyes school of international security knowledge...
How ironic - Muslims, that really know Muslims, are telling us that "Cut-N-Run" would be a major disater for all.
A war of brutal savagery would kill even OUR ALLIES in Iraq, both Sunni and Shia. Those who have been putting their lives on the line for a free Iraq. That is fine with a lot of you.
Not with me, and not with our leaders and military who work with these people side by side every day, and have already seen the violence kill numbers of their family members. The Sunni VP who sat with the President yesterday has risked everything to become part of the Iraq Government, and in return one after the other of his close family members have been gunned down. Sean Hannity and Ollie North interview soldier after soldier who are laying their lives on the line to work side by side building the Iraqi Army. They consider it their life's calling and are proud to work with these willing Iraqis.
Not to mention, any wide war in that area of the world would be a catastrophe for the Oil situation.
But go ahead with your blood lusts, DUmmies.
Not to mention, any wide war in that area of the world would be a catastrophe for the Oil situation.
But go ahead with your blood lusts, DUmmies.
The more I think about it the better this is. Get the US out of the major population centers and let these savages kill each other. This will be good in the long run. They will be to busy killing each other and not as many will be plotting to attack the US homeland. Meanwhile we can stay back and bomb with impunity.
This article contradicts the NYT premise:
Saudi Arabia Fires Security Consultant for Iraq Remarks
PHILADELPHIA, Dec. 6 -- Saudi Arabia said Wednesday it had fired a security adviser who wrote in The Washington Post that the world's top oil exporter would intervene in Iraq once the United States withdrew troops.
Saudi Arabia's government said last weekend that there was no truth in Nawaf Obaid's Nov. 29 op-ed column, which suggested that the kingdom would back Iraq's Sunni Muslims in the event of a wider sectarian conflict.
Obaid stressed in the column that the views were his own and not those of the Saudi government.
"We felt that we could add more credibility to his claims as an independent contractor by terminating our consultancy agreement with him," Prince Turki al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States, told the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia.
The article said that the kingdom would intervene with funding and weaponry to prevent Shiite militias from attacking Iraq's Sunnis and suggested that Saudi Arabia could bring down world oil prices to squeeze Shiite power in Iran.
"There is no basis in truth to the article by the writer Nawaf Obaid in The Washington Post of November 29, 2006," the state Saudi Press Agency quoted an "official source" as saying last week.
(snip)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/06/AR2006120601821.html
Absolutely. We should drill our own. But given the Islamist threat, we should also drill theirs. IMO.
Not if it interrupts the flow of oil from the region. The global economy would go down the dumper if there was any significant interruption. Russia would seek to benefit most because the price of oil would go through the roof.
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