Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to Washington for 22 years has now officially resigned. I reported this in June, but was wrong as to who his successor would be. At the time, I didn't think that the Saudis would put Turki al-Faisal, until now the ambassador to the UK into the post. I thought that Adel al-Jubeir, who had filled in for Bandar, would get the post, but apparently he didn't have the spy creds that the Saudis wanted. Turki, a former intelligence chief, has ties to the Taliban and Al Qaeda, something that the Saudis and our own State Department do not deny.
Supposedly, Turki has "gotten out of that business" after September 11. This may be what the State Department wanted, because an unidentified official insists that the US "used" Turki's connections with AQ and the Taliban, but as the State Department is still a de facto outpost of Riyadh, Turki is likely to get away with at least as much as Bandar did. I hope I am wrong and that the Bush Administration could bring itself to act more for the American people than their Saudi friends.
But it doesn't look that way. Note the boot-licking by this former ambassador:
Another former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Chas W. Freeman Jr., said Prince Bandar was "one of the greatest, if not the greatest diplomatic figures of the last quarter century" who cultivated close ties not only with the Bushes but also with Presidents Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter and with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain and Mikhail S. Gorbachev in Russia.
[...]
"He is charismatic, charming, ingenious and relentless, with a great sense of humor and a great understanding of Americans from his time in the air force," said Mr. Freeman, referring to his time as a fighter pilot training with Americans in the Royal Saudi Air Force.
Here are some interesting facts about Turki:
* Prince Turki resigned as intelligence chief in August 2001, a month before the September 11 attacks on the United States carried out by al Qaeda. He gave no reason.
* Relatives of about 900 of the people killed in the attacks on New York and Washington filed a civil lawsuit in the United States accusing Prince Turki and the Saudi defence minister of funding bin Laden.
* He was appointed ambassador to Britain in 2002. A Saudi official denied the appointment was intended to give him diplomatic immunity to protect him from lawsuits. A U.S. judge dismissed the lawsuits in November 2003.
The acceptance of Turki may end up being a huge mistake for the US. For all of Bandar's faults--and they were myriad-- he could at least be seen as a known quantity. Turki, on the other hand, has just enough in his background that is known to inspire confusion. Even the Washington Times, not known as a Saudi PR outlet, calls Turki a "foe to al Qaeda." This paragraph is a fine example of the Saudi art of hair-splitting:
A bin Laden bodyguard, interviewed by the Arabic newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi, said Prince Turki met the al Qaeda leader as many as five times in the 1980s and 1990s. He was part of a number of Saudi delegations in the 1990s which were aimed at persuading bin Laden to end his "jihad" against the kingdom.
Against the kingdom. Like the rest of the Saudi mafia, Turki wants terrorism against Saudi Arabia to stop, but they don't care if it stops against the US and the rest of the west. Turki's ties to bin Laden and Mullah Omar will likely be exploited to get a deal cut to stop attacks in the kingdom while continuing the targeting of westerners. In this way, the Saudis can point to how successful they have been in controlling terrorism and point the finger at us. And true to form, our State Department will continue to be an outpost of Riyadh rather than the representative organization for the American people to the rest of the world.
Let's face it: Turki is no foe of al Qaeda and he is not and will not be a friend to the United States. I'm hoping that this is a case of "keep your friends close and your enemies closer," but the government, and this administration in particular, have had a poor track record in dealing with dictatorships that own a lot of oil. It doesn't look like anything has changed.
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