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Subject: Friend or Foe?
Robert996@excite.com    12/1/2001 1:06:47 AM
How much longer do you think the US will consider S.A. a friend? They certainly have not been acting much like an ally lately (ie funding terrorism(indirectly, but money is money), not cooperating in cutting off terrorist assets, refusing to allow US Strike aircraft to use their airspace, etc. etc.).
 
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Desertmole    RE:Friend or Foe?   3/7/2005 5:26:19 AM
A lot of what you say is spot on. The problem is a combination of the Muttawas and the Ulema. The latter is the body of religious scholars (almost entirely Wahabi) who run the schools in Saudi. They have some support from members of the Royal Family, which gives them more power. Life was not always like this in Saudi, or so some friends told me. They were there from the 1960s until 1999. Prior to the accession to the throne of the current king, the muttawas had little power. The muttawas would never have considered harrassing Westerners, which is now one of their favorite sports. King Fahd had always been the playboy of the family, and did not care who knew about it. He was famous for losing several million dollars in one night at the roulette tables in Monaco back in the '60s. It seems he also had a girl in every town, both inside and outside the Kingdom. Well, the muttawas kept book on him. When he came to power in 1982, they (and the Ulema) demanded he give them more power, or they would start a revolution similar to the one in Iran. He gave them whatever they wanted. The end result is pretty much as you say, though the Royal Family is trying to hang on to power, with almost no clue of how to "get off the tiger they are riding" without getting eaten.
 
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3\229AHR(ABN)    RE:Friend or Foe?   3/7/2005 9:16:05 PM
Not only the education system and religous arenas (both tightly intertwined in the region), but don't forget the media. TV and, more importantly, radio (for those without $$ or reading skills) are run by, funded, and\or owned by these same people. And those media outlets, for the mose part, are very biased against the USA. To give my 2 cents on the question of SA as a US ally: only if we are standing in the room at the time the question is asked. What they are doing (or funding) behind closed doors was, until recently (the bombs in SA that killed muslems), completely un-american. They (SA) have been tracking down and killing (most of the time) alot of bad people lately. But if you look close enough, you'll see these people were posing direct threats to SA. All under the auspicuses of the war on terror. I agree that until they (the whole region) stop the "brain-washing" that the populations are getting from schools and religous figures, we won't see an end to jihad against the US.
 
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