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Home Front: Politix
Dick Cheney to Visit Riyadh This Week
2006-01-15
Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah will meet with US Vice President Dick Cheney here later this week, US Embassy deputy spokesman Andrew Mitchell said yesterday. Mitchell said that the vice president would also visit Egypt, Pakistan and Afghanistan in this tour.
Wonder if he's carrying a briefcase to each meeting?
“The talks between King Abdullah and Cheney will be held on Tuesday,” said Mitchell. He said the talks would focus on key issues of mutual concern, including bilateral relations and the situation in the Middle East and Iraq.
and perhaps points east??
That's an absolutely plain vanilla agenda. My guess is that the subjects of conversation would be Syria — the Soddies will be meddling big time as soon as it becomes obvious it's going to explode — and Iran. I'm sure the Soddies have no objection to Iran getting thumped, but it looks like there might be Israeli involvement in the process and that will tighten the royal sphincter. The other issue of concern to the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques would be discomfort at seeing yet another member of the Axis of Evil drop. He's got to know that we have the axis mapped and that there weren't only three members. Iran going down moves Arabia up on the list.
Mitchell said that Cheney was due to meet with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Jan. 17 before he travels to Kabul to represent the US at the opening session of the Afghanistan’s new parliament.
... the subject to be Hosni's efforts in smoothing Assad's path to oblivion...
Cheney will stop in Pakistan to see the relief and reconstruction efforts being made by the US Agency for International Development in the wake of the October’s devastating earthquake. He will deliver a horse's head to meet with Pakistani President Parvez Musharraf. In Oman, the vice president will hold talks with Sultan Qaboos to discuss bilateral and regional issues of common concern with special reference to the war on terror.
Oman, of course, controls the Straits of Hormuz...
good translation above, Steve.

Note, also, that Bush, Sr. is on his way to Pakland and Nicholas "Monty" Burns is visiting Pak-India as well. Something's up.
Posted by:lotp

#10  anon, there are about 12,000 royals now and every one of them expects to live like the oldest generation and resent the ones who do. Even among the older brothers - ESPECIALLY among the older brothers -- the knives are out since the old king's death.

We don't have to invade or nuke them IMO. The real issue is keeping them sufficiently stable in the short run that their chaotic collapse doesn't come at a bad time for our economy or other moves in the region.

That's not 'sucking up' ... it's just doing what we can to sequence the various crises we have to deal with. JMO ...
Posted by: lotp   2006-01-15 20:31  

#9  Watch the libs....Cheney, from the united states of Halliburton...
Posted by: Captain America   2006-01-15 18:40  

#8  Anon, yes, but if the other banks will not trade with their banks, same thing.
You can't eat money, jewels, gold, etc.
Posted by: Redneck Jim   2006-01-15 15:24  

#7  sorry, mate they own the banks, or at least a sizeable chunk of a few of them.
Posted by: anon1   2006-01-15 14:05  

#6  You folks are missing a major point, money is no good if you can't use it.
Having Billions in banks is more worthless than if you had some cash, freeze the banks, and at least the cash you have on hand can be used for toilet paper.
Gold and Jewels are even more useless, can't even wipe with them.
Posted by: Redneck Jim   2006-01-15 11:25  

#5  Man don't use the initials. REA sounds like a boondogle, a money-sink, a socialist conspiracy and holdover from 1935.

You mean the Republic of Eastern Arabia.
Posted by: 6   2006-01-15 11:04  

#4  Anon1:
That's a little excessive. I have a more modest proposal.
1. Set up the REA. No Arabs or moslems allowed.
2. Make Mecca and Medina uninhabitable so no hadj money flows in.

No need to kill every person in the area. They will have no money, no power.
Posted by: Jackal   2006-01-15 10:45  

#3  Given a large enough quarrel, the princes of the house of Saud could live without the petrol dollars now, they have diversified their assets.

If they had to flee their country they could live very nicely in south america or europe somewhere with their billions.

My point is that it doesn't matter if Saudi Arabia is on the axis of evil, the US cannot invade and depose the government as it did with Iraq.

To de-evilise Saudi Arabia would take a full-scale occupation force with martial law and forced re-education. This is because the enemy IS the civilian population.

In Iraq, the enemy was Saddam with a neutral or only moderately anti-US civilian population.

Saudi Arabia has a moderately anti-US ruling royal family with a rabidly militant Islamist US and Jew-hating population.

America can not invade Saudi Arabia, the US does not have the strength or manpower to put that teeming rat-infested nation under martial law.

It does have another option: to nuke it. That is theoretically possible but the US population would lack the will in any future I can forsee.
Posted by: anon1   2006-01-15 09:53  

#2  The Saudi's don't operate independently of us. If they cut off our oil, they lose all their revenue, we don't lose all our oil. They need that revenue to keep bribing their own people and feeding their life style. I doublt they are any more interested in riding camels than we are horses. And if they cross us, their treasuries are worthless. So I'd say our financial interests are aligned. It's how they spend their dollars on ideology that's the problem. If we take out the hit men, they'll just have to spend them differently.
Posted by: Nimble Spemble   2006-01-15 09:25  

#1  even if arabia is bumped up on the axis of evil list, that signifies nothing.

America cannot depose the princes and 'liberate' the seething islamist fanatic population. They are the enemy.

The US wastes a lot of energy sucking up to the Saudis. You don't suck up if you don't need to.

The house of saud doesn't feel threatened by the US. They hold our balls in their hands. They can shut off the oil any time they want. They have bezillions of our oil dollars reinvested in gold and other financial instruments. The rulers are not dependant on us. But we are dependant on them.
Posted by: anon1   2006-01-15 09:17  

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