I guess that's what allies are for.

It's a good thing we have allies like Saudi Arabia to help us deal with terrorist jihadis. Of course, there is the question about how long we can afford to turn a blind eye to the extreme bribes they demand for being our ally, but do we dare stop bribing them and investigate what they have gotten up 'til now?

See Laura Rozen at War and Piece.

Are the Iranians and Saudi's getting together?

Mark Lynch at Abu Aardvark reports on the recent friendly meetings between Iran's President Amedinejad and Saudi Arabia's King Saud. The American media is ignoring this. (It must not fit in with the White House talking points enforced by the major Press editors. Or their budgets won't stretch to sending real reporters to Saudi Arabia during the Haj.)

Even more significant than the friendly meetings, the meetings appear to be accompanied by general public approval in both the Sunni and the Shiite communities.

I wonder how Dick Cheney will try to spin this to justify his greatly desired war with Iran.

[ h/t to Emptywheel. ]

Will oil be the basis for the new international alignments?

What does Saudi Arabia's participation in the Annapolis talks mean?

Can Saudi Arabia hack together a Sunni alliance (with Israel as honorary Sunnis) to counter the Middle East Shiite alliance? Is a hot war likely to ensue?

If so, oil will hit at least $200 per barrel, and the American economy will be in the tank. If that happens, then the dollar will cease to be the international reserve currency, to be replaced by the Europe. Since the Sunni nations in the Middle East have their international reserves in petro-dollars, then those nations will take a major hit in the nest egg. China faced that same problem with the dollar.

But Russia will suddenly be the new rich man on the block and able to really throw their weight around in Europe and the Middle East. How likely is a Russia - Iranian alliance?

Pakistan will be in chaos, as it seems to be headed that direction already.

Emptywheel at the Next Hurrah throws out many of these questions and her commenters address a lot of them.

In my opinion, the oil producing nations of the world appear to be well on their way to dominating international trade because of the value of oil. The European Union, as a highly productive industrial economy which has already adjusted over the years to having relatively little oil well have industrial products to sell. Since the U.S. is a heavy oil-consuming nation, we are likely to be mostly just sitting on the sidelines hoping someone will have pity on us.

The severity of America's problems is going to be a lot worse than it would have been had Cheney and Bush not attempted to substitute military power for diplomacy, economics and heavy doses of research into alternative fuels.

Go read Emptywheels discussion and see what you think.

Saudis giving up on current al Maliki government of Iraq

David Ignatius of the Washington Post reports that the Saudi Arabian King Abdullah doesn't think that the current al Maliki government of Iraq will succeed, so he is working to bring a new government into Baghdad.

Abdullah had seemed to be distancing himself from Washington in some recent comments. In February, he broke with U.S. efforts to isolate the radical Palestinian group Hamas by sponsoring the Mecca Agreement that created a Palestinian "unity government" fusing Hamas with the more moderate Fatah. In March, he surprised U.S. officials by calling the military occupation of Iraq "illegitimate" in a speech to an Arab League summit in Riyadh. He also nixed plans for a White House dinner in April.

Abdullah's criticism of the "illegitimate" American presence in Iraq reflects the Saudi leader's deep misgivings about U.S. strategy there. Saudi sources say the king has given up on the ability of Iraq's Shiite prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, to overcome sectarian divisions and unite the country. The Saudi leadership is also said to believe that the U.S. troop surge is likely to fail, deepening the danger of all-out civil war in Iraq.

The Saudis appear to favor replacing the Maliki government, which they see as dominated by Iranian-backed Shiite religious parties, and are quietly backing former interim prime minister Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite and ex-Baathist who has support among Iraqi Sunnis. Allawi's advisers say that his strategy is to exploit tensions within the Shiite religious alliance and form a new ruling coalition that would be made up of Sunnis, Kurds and secular Shiites. Allawi's camp believes he is close to having enough votes, thanks in part to Saudi political and financial support.

The Bush administration appears to have little enthusiasm for an Allawi putsch, despite its frustration with Maliki. U.S. officials fear that a change of government in Baghdad would only deepen the political disarray there and encourage new calls for the withdrawal of troops.

The ferment in the region is driven partly by the perception that U.S. troops are on the way out, no matter what the Bush administration says. To dampen such speculation, Bush is said to have told the Saudis that America will not withdraw from Iraq during his presidency. "That gives us 18 months to plan," said one Saudi source.

Since Dick Cheney apparently agrees, this is the position the U.S. will probably be taking over the next 18 months.

This appears to be the other side of the Washington, D.C. Iraq-issue from the position the Democrats are taking. The so-called Surge is a stopgap tactic that delays efforts to require a troop pullout, and this Cheney-Abdullah initiative is the dream of some form of success in Iraq that remains for the NeoCons. If the Democrats succeed in passing some kind of legislation that requires an American troop pullout, the Cheney-Abdullah efforts will collapse. [Note: Yes, this is an oversimplification, but it is the kind of oversimplification that will drive the political debate.]

I'm surprised that Cheney and the Bush administration have been so totally secret about this initiative. They are so totally focused on secrecy that they don't trust the American public to understand a good argument. Although how good this argument really is certainly is open to question.

I guess that is the question. Cheney and the NeoCons cannot deal with being questioned because so many of their ideas are considered flawed by most people. Put it out to the public and they will be stopped. So they want the kind of unquestioned control that Saudi King Abdullah has over Saudi Arabia. Thus they have developed the idea of the Unitary Executive.

Complicated, isn't it?

The Middle East is collapsing in front of Bush, Cheney and Rice.

Emptywheel at The Next Hurrah gets several reports and puts together the implications. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has clearly gotten disgusted with Bush and his administration, clearly demonstrating his pique by cancelling a dinner that was to be held at the White House in his honor in April. King Abdullah has also condemned the invasion of Iraq as illegitimate foreign occupation.

Not good when America's most important Arab ally in the Middle East turns his back on Bush. And there's more. So go read it.

The U.S. doesn't have any real future in the Middle East.