More Cold Water
From a UPI story I picked up from Chris Johnson:
The United States has also moved swiftly to reduce dependence on Saudi oil. Almost unnoticed, the United States now gets less than 8 percent of its oil needs from the kingdom, according to the American Petroleum Institute....Sept. 11 revealed an ugly House of Saud secret....
...The scheme was brilliant in its simplicity. Saudi's fanatical Wahhabi clergy was allocated untold billions during the past 20 years to turn the Koran into a book of holy war against the United States and Israel and spread its teachings in mosques and Koranic schools in much of Asia, Africa, Western Europe and North America. In return, the Saudi clergy agreed to keep the 25,000-strong royal family out of its crosshairs. What the House of Saud still cannot accept is that it has sown the seeds of its own destruction. It is now reassessing its strategic relationship with the United States.The rest of this most interesting story can be found here.Washington's reassessment of that relationship started after Sept. 11. It is now almost complete.
Daniel Pipes has taken to describing the Saudi entity as our rivals, rather than as friends or enemies. I have wondered for some time if al Qaeda was not set up as a sort of power challenge to the US by the Saudis, albeit a secret and deniable one. It seems kind of far fetched to think that the Saudi Entity could challenge the US and assume our place of power, but no more so than a private citizen of that country declaring war on the US in his own name and that of Muslims around the world.
I also wondered if this secret, international conspiracy, al Qaeda, is supposed to be modeled after the fictitious "Jewish International Conspiracy" from the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", which is such a popular book in the Arab world and has been for decades. It seems to me quite likely that it is.
That's the most startling connection I've ever seen suggested, Michael. You may even be right. Who else would they model themselves after, if not the bugaboo monster they fear?
Wow. I'm going to have to chew on that one for a while.