DLR'sCock
04-25-2004, 01:15 PM
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0416/mondo5.php
The Royal Business
By James Ridgeway
The Village Voice
Thursday 22 April 2004
In this slick little Bush family saga, Bandar is the prince, and we're the paupers.
WASHINGTON, D.C.-Bit by bit, the Bush family's personal ties to the Saudi royal family and their intertwined social and business arrangements are emerging as the scandal over Iraq grows. Bob Woodward, for example, further elaborates the familial ties between Papa and Junior Bush and Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador in Washington, and his wife. The families, he reports in Plan of Attack, are locked together, with Bandar coming and going into the Oval Office, the Prince's wife inviting a lonely Bush daughter over for Thanksgiving dinner, and so on. Prince Bandar got the news of the coming war with Iraq before anyone else, and the president made sure the prince was a happy camper before going forward. Just to make sure the prince knew he was for real, Bush got Cheney to tell the prince, that, for sure, "Saddam was toast. " All in all, the Bush clan regards Prince Bandar and his wife are family, and vice versa.
Being adopted into the Saudi royal family is no small event in the transplanted Connecticut Yankee WASP's life. After all, there are an estimated 5,000-plus Saudi princes, each one of whom is given $500,000 at birth as a sort of start-up fee. The family propagates at the extraordinary rate of 35 to 40 princes a month. The founding King Ibn Saud kept four wives, four concubines, and four slaves, whose numbers he replenished frequently. He married into 30 tribes, deftly building the country by tying it together into a network of mothers and children.
The bedrock of the relationship between the U.S. and the Saudi royal family is Aramco, which began as a joint venture between the international oil giants Standard Oil and Texaco for exploration and development of the kingdom's immense oil and gas reserves, a business endeavor producing billions of dollars in revenues for the royal family. That money is turned right around and paid to American defense contractors for armaments of all types. Woodward says Bandar realized that Bush would need to show some economic progress before the 2004 election and that meant getting Saudi help in dropping the price of oil. "They're high," Woodward told 60 Minutes, referring to oil prices. "And they could go down very quickly. That's the Saudi pledge. Certainly over the summer, or as we get closer to the election, they could increase production several million barrels a day and the price would drop significantly."
Of course, the Saudis aren't talking about a drop in prices to Joe Six Pack, the prince's term for the American public. It means a drop in price to the American oil men in an effort to inflate their profits, because, after all, they are major supporters of Bush and have been pumping money into his campaign.
However, what the prince told Woodward, and what was going down in Washington after 9-11 are two different things. Flooding the market with oil can mean different things to different people at different times.
As Bush was ramping up for the Iraq war, OPEC feared that the U.S. would use its expected new-found control of Iraqi oil to hurt the cartel's power. In the fall of 2002, Saudi oil people in Washington were speculating (i.e., warning) that should the U.S. invade Iraq and then turn around and flood the market with Iraqi oil in an effort to wreck OPEC, Saudi Arabia was prepared to open the gates and together with Iran, the region's other big producer, flood the world oil markets, forcing prices downward. The last thing on anyone's mind was helping out consumers. As always, the suckers were paying top dollar for gasoline, home heating oil, and natural gas purchased from the big international companies, which still control international markets because of their clamp on refining and distribution.
If the Saudis decided to let the so-called free market take over, flooding the globe with crude and sending oil prices into a steep dive, then the U.S. would be faced with a true nightmare. Lower prices would finish off not only smaller international companies that had been enticed into the oil play by high prices, but could wipe out the domestic oil companies in the U.S. , causing sheer political hell for President Bush in his little oil bastion of Houston.
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Bush-Saudi Relations an Election Focus
The Associated Press
Friday 23 April 2004
WASHINGTON - It is no secret that President Bush, like his father, has deep personal ties with Saudi officials. The real question is whether those loyalties will cost the president at the ballot box this year.
Bush's Democratic opponent on Thursday accused him of being too cozy with Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan to insist that the oil-rich Saudis do more to help lower the cost of gasoline in America.
The Bush camp and Bandar himself deny any undue influence. Bandar said he has talked about oil with Bush just as he has with Bush's predecessor, Bill Clinton, and other U.S. presidents going back to Jimmy Carter.
The U.S. dependency on foreign oil -- and the fact that Saudi Arabia has more crude than anyone else -- has compelled all presidents to befriend the Middle Eastern country. As Bandar told CNN earlier this week, "Oil prices and Saudi Arabia and American politics are intertwined."
That, precisely, is why John Kerry's gambit could prove effective, said Saudi Institute analyst Ali al-Ahmed.
"Any association between the Bush family and the Saudi royal family is only going to undermine the credibility of the president," al-Ahmed said. "I think Bush either has to dance around it somehow, or join Kerry in his rhetoric -- especially if Kerry is going to receive support from many people in the United States who do not like Saudi Arabia very well."
In an Earth Day speech Thursday, Kerry criticized a meeting in which, according to a broadcast report, Bush and Bandar discussed increasing oil production as the election nears. Kerry said that flew in the face of Bush's 2000 campaign pledge to lean on OPEC nations about making more oil.
"I don't know if it was a deal, I don't know if it was a secret pledge, I don't know if it was just a friendly conversation among friends," Kerry said. "The fact remains that whatever it was, the American people are getting a bad deal today."
Kerry was clearly looking to exploit the long-standing relationship between the Saudi government and Bush's family. Bush's father, former President George H.W. Bush, was especially friendly with Saudi officials, an alliance that grew warmer during the early 1990s before and during the Persian Gulf War.
The Saudi ambassador was on hand when the elder Bush's official portrait was unveiled at the White House in 1995, and he was a guest at a surprise 75th birthday party in 2000 for former first lady Barbara Bush in 2000. The former president also has vacationed at Bandar's home in Aspen, Colo.
Bandar has been a guest at the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas. Last year, he presented the first family with a C.M. Russell painting, a gift worth $1 million that will be stored in the National Archives, along with other presents from well-wishers destined for a Bush presidential library.
Bush called on his father in April 2002 to smooth over rockiness in U.S.-Saudi relations after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, which were carried out by 19 terrorists -- 15 of them Saudis. After meeting in Texas with the president, Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah took a nearly two-hour private train ride with the elder Bush and got a private tour of the Bush presidential library.
Bush's father was closer to the Saudis than his son. While friendly, the president has lent strong support to Israel in spite of Arab complaints.
Good relations with the American public at large also matter to the Saudis. After the Sept. 11 attacks, the Saudi government spent $17 million on public relations, advertising and lobbying to promote U.S.-Saudi friendship.
Yet many U.S. critics contend the Saudis have not done enough to crack down on terror financing in their kingdom.
Bandar, a familiar figure in Washington, has met Kerry on official and social occasions, too, said Stephanie Cutter, the senator's spokeswoman. "I would not describe it as a close relationship," she said.
Philip Wilcox, a former U.S. diplomat who is now president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, said personal ties between U.S. and Saudi officials go back to at least 1945, when President Franklin Roosevelt met with King Abdul-Aziz, who had united Saudi Arabia and was its first ruler.
That history, Wilcox said, is why U.S. politicians must walk a fine line with the Saudis -- both in cultivating ties and criticizing them.
"These competing interests cannot all be reconciled," Wilcox said. "Saudi Arabia is a friend and ally. (Oil) is their livelihood. They're not an extension of the United States, or a client of ours. We shouldn't expect them to reduce their national income just to provide cheap energy for us."
The Royal Business
By James Ridgeway
The Village Voice
Thursday 22 April 2004
In this slick little Bush family saga, Bandar is the prince, and we're the paupers.
WASHINGTON, D.C.-Bit by bit, the Bush family's personal ties to the Saudi royal family and their intertwined social and business arrangements are emerging as the scandal over Iraq grows. Bob Woodward, for example, further elaborates the familial ties between Papa and Junior Bush and Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador in Washington, and his wife. The families, he reports in Plan of Attack, are locked together, with Bandar coming and going into the Oval Office, the Prince's wife inviting a lonely Bush daughter over for Thanksgiving dinner, and so on. Prince Bandar got the news of the coming war with Iraq before anyone else, and the president made sure the prince was a happy camper before going forward. Just to make sure the prince knew he was for real, Bush got Cheney to tell the prince, that, for sure, "Saddam was toast. " All in all, the Bush clan regards Prince Bandar and his wife are family, and vice versa.
Being adopted into the Saudi royal family is no small event in the transplanted Connecticut Yankee WASP's life. After all, there are an estimated 5,000-plus Saudi princes, each one of whom is given $500,000 at birth as a sort of start-up fee. The family propagates at the extraordinary rate of 35 to 40 princes a month. The founding King Ibn Saud kept four wives, four concubines, and four slaves, whose numbers he replenished frequently. He married into 30 tribes, deftly building the country by tying it together into a network of mothers and children.
The bedrock of the relationship between the U.S. and the Saudi royal family is Aramco, which began as a joint venture between the international oil giants Standard Oil and Texaco for exploration and development of the kingdom's immense oil and gas reserves, a business endeavor producing billions of dollars in revenues for the royal family. That money is turned right around and paid to American defense contractors for armaments of all types. Woodward says Bandar realized that Bush would need to show some economic progress before the 2004 election and that meant getting Saudi help in dropping the price of oil. "They're high," Woodward told 60 Minutes, referring to oil prices. "And they could go down very quickly. That's the Saudi pledge. Certainly over the summer, or as we get closer to the election, they could increase production several million barrels a day and the price would drop significantly."
Of course, the Saudis aren't talking about a drop in prices to Joe Six Pack, the prince's term for the American public. It means a drop in price to the American oil men in an effort to inflate their profits, because, after all, they are major supporters of Bush and have been pumping money into his campaign.
However, what the prince told Woodward, and what was going down in Washington after 9-11 are two different things. Flooding the market with oil can mean different things to different people at different times.
As Bush was ramping up for the Iraq war, OPEC feared that the U.S. would use its expected new-found control of Iraqi oil to hurt the cartel's power. In the fall of 2002, Saudi oil people in Washington were speculating (i.e., warning) that should the U.S. invade Iraq and then turn around and flood the market with Iraqi oil in an effort to wreck OPEC, Saudi Arabia was prepared to open the gates and together with Iran, the region's other big producer, flood the world oil markets, forcing prices downward. The last thing on anyone's mind was helping out consumers. As always, the suckers were paying top dollar for gasoline, home heating oil, and natural gas purchased from the big international companies, which still control international markets because of their clamp on refining and distribution.
If the Saudis decided to let the so-called free market take over, flooding the globe with crude and sending oil prices into a steep dive, then the U.S. would be faced with a true nightmare. Lower prices would finish off not only smaller international companies that had been enticed into the oil play by high prices, but could wipe out the domestic oil companies in the U.S. , causing sheer political hell for President Bush in his little oil bastion of Houston.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Go to Original
Bush-Saudi Relations an Election Focus
The Associated Press
Friday 23 April 2004
WASHINGTON - It is no secret that President Bush, like his father, has deep personal ties with Saudi officials. The real question is whether those loyalties will cost the president at the ballot box this year.
Bush's Democratic opponent on Thursday accused him of being too cozy with Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan to insist that the oil-rich Saudis do more to help lower the cost of gasoline in America.
The Bush camp and Bandar himself deny any undue influence. Bandar said he has talked about oil with Bush just as he has with Bush's predecessor, Bill Clinton, and other U.S. presidents going back to Jimmy Carter.
The U.S. dependency on foreign oil -- and the fact that Saudi Arabia has more crude than anyone else -- has compelled all presidents to befriend the Middle Eastern country. As Bandar told CNN earlier this week, "Oil prices and Saudi Arabia and American politics are intertwined."
That, precisely, is why John Kerry's gambit could prove effective, said Saudi Institute analyst Ali al-Ahmed.
"Any association between the Bush family and the Saudi royal family is only going to undermine the credibility of the president," al-Ahmed said. "I think Bush either has to dance around it somehow, or join Kerry in his rhetoric -- especially if Kerry is going to receive support from many people in the United States who do not like Saudi Arabia very well."
In an Earth Day speech Thursday, Kerry criticized a meeting in which, according to a broadcast report, Bush and Bandar discussed increasing oil production as the election nears. Kerry said that flew in the face of Bush's 2000 campaign pledge to lean on OPEC nations about making more oil.
"I don't know if it was a deal, I don't know if it was a secret pledge, I don't know if it was just a friendly conversation among friends," Kerry said. "The fact remains that whatever it was, the American people are getting a bad deal today."
Kerry was clearly looking to exploit the long-standing relationship between the Saudi government and Bush's family. Bush's father, former President George H.W. Bush, was especially friendly with Saudi officials, an alliance that grew warmer during the early 1990s before and during the Persian Gulf War.
The Saudi ambassador was on hand when the elder Bush's official portrait was unveiled at the White House in 1995, and he was a guest at a surprise 75th birthday party in 2000 for former first lady Barbara Bush in 2000. The former president also has vacationed at Bandar's home in Aspen, Colo.
Bandar has been a guest at the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas. Last year, he presented the first family with a C.M. Russell painting, a gift worth $1 million that will be stored in the National Archives, along with other presents from well-wishers destined for a Bush presidential library.
Bush called on his father in April 2002 to smooth over rockiness in U.S.-Saudi relations after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, which were carried out by 19 terrorists -- 15 of them Saudis. After meeting in Texas with the president, Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah took a nearly two-hour private train ride with the elder Bush and got a private tour of the Bush presidential library.
Bush's father was closer to the Saudis than his son. While friendly, the president has lent strong support to Israel in spite of Arab complaints.
Good relations with the American public at large also matter to the Saudis. After the Sept. 11 attacks, the Saudi government spent $17 million on public relations, advertising and lobbying to promote U.S.-Saudi friendship.
Yet many U.S. critics contend the Saudis have not done enough to crack down on terror financing in their kingdom.
Bandar, a familiar figure in Washington, has met Kerry on official and social occasions, too, said Stephanie Cutter, the senator's spokeswoman. "I would not describe it as a close relationship," she said.
Philip Wilcox, a former U.S. diplomat who is now president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, said personal ties between U.S. and Saudi officials go back to at least 1945, when President Franklin Roosevelt met with King Abdul-Aziz, who had united Saudi Arabia and was its first ruler.
That history, Wilcox said, is why U.S. politicians must walk a fine line with the Saudis -- both in cultivating ties and criticizing them.
"These competing interests cannot all be reconciled," Wilcox said. "Saudi Arabia is a friend and ally. (Oil) is their livelihood. They're not an extension of the United States, or a client of ours. We shouldn't expect them to reduce their national income just to provide cheap energy for us."