Electric Josh

Saudis
So here's some pretty decent thinking by Joe Conason (and without Salon's heartbreaking paywall!) on The Classified 28 Pages. See also this. Man, do I ever hope nothing quite this vulgar and cynical is actually going on in the White House.

If I was an optimist, I'd openly express hope that the following situation is closer to what's actually going on:

1. The various Bushies were making a ton of oil money from their dealings with the Saudis, but had some reservations about how much ill will was being generated across the Middle East by the presence of US troops there to prop up the monarchy.
2. Upon watching buildings get destroyed by airplanes driven by Saudi-directed jihadis, the Bushies decided that this relationship had to end, the Saudi royal family driving lots of the world's terrorism and all, but...
3. ...the entire US economy would crash horribly if the Saudis did anything untoward with the oil supply right when the amazingly greedy and destabilizing tax cuts were hitting, and...
4. ...doing anything drastic to reduce America's oil dependence---like declassifying good batteries that could power long range, ass-kickin electric cars, or suddenly, massively instituting Europe-style gas taxes to get people to use less oil---would crush the economy worse than any (temporary) oil supply problems. Imagine all the oil companies and most of the car companies all in serious financial trouble at the same time because the nationwide demand for oil dropped forever by 50% in two years.
5. So we needed our own non-Saudi-controlled oil supply to protect us against any economic nastiness that might otherwise be headed our way upon withdrawing all our troops from Saudi Arabia and telling the monarchy to go screw, that last bit having the effect of removing the House of Saud from power. Oh, wait, never mind, because they'd quickly be replaced by a probably even more anti-American theocracy. Hmmm...

Of course, I'd just declassify the stinkin batteries and raise gas taxes and be done with it. I'd rather be poor than dodge fundamentalist suicide bombers or whatever. All of which is easy for me to say, not being President...

That's the optimist's view.
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