kyleb said:
although it is a damn shame we have such a mess going on in Iraq right now or we would be in a better position to deal with this situation.
One of the primary reasons to go to war with Iraq (although of course not a publicly stated one) was to lessen America's political dependence on Saudi Arabia. Already we have removed the constant geopolitical threat Saddam posed to Saudi Arabia, which had kept tens of thousands of US troops based on Saudi Arabia ever since the first Gulf War. (Ending their presence there, let's not forget, was the reason for which Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda took up arms against the US in the first place.) As a result we have already redeployed our forces out of SA.
As Iraq's oil industry is rebuilt and modernized, and output rises to what their oil reserves can naturally support (which will take several years), Saudi Arabia's ability to control oil prices and punatively influence the world's economy will lessen correspondingly, and we'll have even less reason to kowtow to their fascist, terrorist-supporting regime.
I've seen the argument made--and it's probably true--that we could take a much tougher line with the Saudis already and that their economic leverage over the West is overstated. But there's little doubt that our Middle East policy is targeted towards weaning ourselves (and Europe, although they seem less eager) from Saudi influence. Just because the administration covers for the Saudis in public doesn't mean they aren't moving against them in private. After all, who do you think leaked this story about Zubaydah's interrogation to Posner anyways?
Time Magazine said:
The stuff that is going to spark hot debate is Chapter 19, an account—based on Zubaydah's claims as told to Posner by "two government sources" who are unnamed but "in a position to know"—of what two countries allied to the U.S. did to build up al-Qaeda and what they knew before that September day... Posner told TIME he got the details of Zubaydah's interrogation and revelations from a U.S. official outside the cia at a "very senior Executive Branch level" whose name we would probably know if he told it to us. He did not. The second source, Posner said, was from the cia, and he gave what Posner viewed as general confirmation of the story but did not repeat the details.
The Bush administration leaked it. Contrary to popular belief, leaks are very rarely unauthorized or the work of rogue employees. And when the source is a "very senior" member of the executive branch--which is code for "Cabinet undersecretary or better" (the bit about "whose name we would probably know" is cutesy for "whose name any idiot would know")--it is nearly always authorized. If I had to guess I'd say the leak was from Wolfowitz, Rice, Rumsfeld or Cheney.
The Bush administration is very actively on a course to distance ourselves from Saudi Arabia and try to undermine the regime there. The war in Iraq was not an impediment or distraction from this, but a fundamental part of it. (One can obviously disagree that it was the right way to achieve this goal, but this is definitely one of the prime motivations behind the war.)
Of course we'd be making better progress toward that goal if things in Iraq were going more smoothly, but I doubt this was the point of your comment.
