The Saudis, Terror and IASPS 

IASPS analyst Paul Michael Wihbey quoted in this watershed piece (Los Angeles Times [10/13/01), "Saudi Aid to War on Terror is Criticized") in response to a report that Saudi Muslim clerics are now openly attacking the House of Saud monarchy, says: "'This is unprecedented -it's a challenge to the House of Saud'" and an "'unprecedented distancing' in Saudi-U.S. relations."

This article is a watershed. Building on Wihbey's recent London Times piece in which he explained Bin Laden's strategy as based in an attempt to subvert the Saudi regime and even to take it over in the style of the famous anti-American take over of Iran by Khomeni, it shows how the press is effectively rudderless with respect to matters of foreign policy.

Until last week, the prevailing view of Saudi Arabia was that of a fast-friend and moderate Arab regime. This was the "default" key in every newsman's lexicon: Saudi Arabia? 

Moderate-Arab-regime-and-friend-of-the-US. In fact the Saudis are the linchpin of support to Arab radicals throughout the region as well as to bin Laden. In a matter of two days following Wihbey's piece in the London Times, which showed that Saudi Arabia, supposed "linchpin" in the U.S. coalition against terror, was in fact the indicator of how self-contradictory and dangerous the policy of "coalition" is. But now American and other newsmen and bureaus are filing stories like this one. Quoting former CIA Middle East officers like Robert Baer, the word on Saudi Arabia is not what it was last month; or for the last decade. Baer said: "lt's a problem...Saudi Arabia is completely unsupportive as of today. The rank and file Saudi policeman is sympathetic to Bin Laden. They're not telling us who these people were on the planes." (Saudi terrorists outnumbered most other Arab nationals on September 11, 2001).

Form the last quarter century it's the Saudis, annually on the 7th floor of the State Department, who have been guiding Middle East policy -and feeding the flak artists, people by Georgie Anne Geyer, who has made her taste for genteel anti-semitism the standard in the U.S. press for years.

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