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To: russwinter who wrote (1773)	11/3/2003 9:05:44 AM
From: Ramsey Su	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 110194

After I read that article, I bought Baer's book Sleeping with the Devil. While it was not a particular good book, it did convince me that Saudi is a time bomb and we are ill prepared. The House of Saud is an unsustainable form of government. As we have demonstrated repeatedly, we support evil regimes until it blows up in our face.

To: russwinter who wrote (1773)	11/3/2003 9:45:31 AM
From: glenn_a	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 110194

Hi Russ. I was very proud of the CBC (Canada's excellent public broadcaster) for its recent Fifth Estate piece on unanswered questions from 9-11, which took a very similar approach to Baer's article. It originally aired on October 29th (last week), and while I never saw the program (I don't own a TV), a transcript of the program can be found here: cbc.ca The following page goes into some length of the historic ties between the U.S. (in particular the Bush family) and the Saudi elite: cbc.ca I very much agree with the statement of Baer's article where he says "Saudi Arabia today is a mess, and it is our mess. We made it the private storage tank for our oil reserves. We reaped the benefits of a steady petroleum supply at a discounted price, and we grabbed at every available Saudi petrodollar. We taught the Saudis exactly what was expected of them. We cannot walk away morally from the consequences of this behavior--and we really can't walk away economically." I've read a number of books on Saudi Arabia and the geopolitical construction of the Middle East, and they all make very clear the complicity of the West in the dictatorial regimes in the Middle East. One of my favorites is "A Brutal Friendship: The West and the Arab Elite" by Said K. Aburish (see the following link if interested): amazon.com Another of my recent favorites is "All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror", by Stephen Kinzer. I found it quite amusing when much of the alternative press wondered if the Bush administration had got its geography wrong when it bombed Afghanistan after the World Trade Center bombing, when nearly all the CIA-trained Arab pilots were Saudi nationals, a fact which Baer alludes to in his article. Don't know exactly how it happened, but the U.S. political elites have suffered massive moral decay. Or perhaps it was always so bad, but just not as visible. However, I do sense a day of reckoning is coming. Interesting that yet another Latin American country kick out an IMF-installed and US Govt-backed President in Bolivia, where the proximate cause was the sale of Bolivian natural gas to Chile for export to the U.S. Fascinating times indeed. Best wishes, Glenn