Saudi Prince Tied to Bush Is Sounding Off-Key at NY Times

[applegrove]

Saudi Prince Tied to Bush Is Sounding Off-Key

By HELENE COOPER and JIM RUTENBERG
The New York Times
Published: April 29, 2007

WASHINGTON, April 28 — No foreign diplomat has been closer or had more access to President Bush, his family, and his administration than the magnetic and fabulously wealthy Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia.

Prince Bandar has mentored Mr. Bush and his father through three wars and the broader campaign against terrorism, reliably delivering — sometimes in the Oval Office — his nation’s support for crucial Middle East initiatives dependent on the regional legitimacy the Saudis could bring, as well as timely forewarning of Saudi regional priorities that might put it into apparent conflict with the United States. But now, current and former Bush administration officials are wondering if the longtime reliance on Prince Bandar has begun to outlive its usefulness.

Bush administration officials have been scratching their heads over steps taken by Prince Bandar’s uncle, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, that have surprised them by going against the American playbook, after receiving assurances to the contrary from Prince Bandar during secret trips he made to Washington.

For instance, in February, King Abdullah effectively torpedoed plans by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for a high-profile peace summit meeting between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, by brokering a power-sharing agreement with Mr. Abbas’s Fatah and Hamas that did not require Hamas to recognize Israel or forswear violence. The Americans had believed, after discussions with Prince Bandar, that the Saudis were on board with the strategy of isolating Hamas.

.........SNIP"

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/29/washington/29saudi.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&hp

[merh]

1. From the article

Most bitingly, during a speech before Arab heads of state in Riyadh three weeks ago, the king condemned the American invasion of Iraq as “an illegal foreign occupation.” The Bush administration, caught off guard, was infuriated, and administration officials have found Prince Bandar hard to reach since.

Since the Iraq war and the attendant plummeting of America’s image in the Muslim world, King Abdullah has been striving to set a more independent and less pro-American course, American and Arab officials said. And that has steered America’s relationship with its staunchest Arab ally into uncharted waters. Prince Bandar, they say, may no longer be able to serve as an unerring beacon of Saudi intent.

“The problem is that Bandar has been pursuing a policy that was music to the ears of the Bush administration, but was not what King Abdullah had in mind at all,” said Martin S. Indyk, the former United States ambassador to Israel who is now head of the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy.

Of course it is ultimately the king — and not the prince — who makes the final call on policy. More than a dozen associates of Prince Bandar, including personal friends and Saudi officials who spoke on condition of anonymity, say that if his counsel has led to the recent misunderstandings, it is due to his longtime penchant for leaving room in his dispatches for friends to hear what they want to hear. That approach, they said, is catching up to the prince as new tensions emerge between the United States and Saudi Arabia.

The times, they are a changing and the tides turning....

[applegrove]

2. Looks like Jeb will not have a future is everyone is abandoning ship.

[merh]

3. Let's put it this way

I wish I had some investments in the life vest industry.

:evilgrin:

[shance]

5. As long as there are electronic voting machines, there's always a "future" for any Bush

n/t

[happydreams]

7. This could be more political gamesmanship than anything

else. The Saudis don't want to appear as too close to the Bushies so as not to alienate other Arabs. The real measure of how "pro-American" the Saudis are is tangible change in policy; ie, booting Americans, or cutting off oil, etc.

[yurbud]

4. Bob Woodward documented Bandar arranging a car bombing for us in Lebanon in 80s

you can't be much more of a team player than that, except maybe getting your intelligence agency to help with a bigger favor of the same kind.

BOB WOODWARD: Casey had lunch with Prince Bandar, the Saudi Ambassador to the United States, one of the most powerful figures even today in Washington. And they went for a stroll in the garden and they said, "We have to go off the books." And they agreed that the Saudis would put up the money to hire some professionals to go and try to car-bomb Sheik Fadlallah.

And it was so off the books, there's no evidence that Reagan knew about it or Weinberger or Schultz. It was Casey on his own, saying, "I'm going to solve the big problem by essentially getting tougher or as tough as the terrorists in using their weapon, the car bomb."


NARRATOR: The new U.S.-and-Saudi-backed Lebanese counterterrorist group set up a car bombing near a Beirut mosque.

JIM HOUGAN, Author/Journalist: The bombing took place in a public square, when the mosque let out and when it was thought that Fahdlallah would be coming through. In effect, you had hundreds of people who were leaving the Muslim equivalent of church. More than 80 people were killed. The remark at the time was that we- everyone was certain it was a CIA operation because everybody got killed except the target.

NARRATOR: Eighty killed, more than two hundred wounded. Sheik Fadlallah survived. He'd left the mosque late.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/target/etc/script.html

[babylonsister]

6. Friends? Bandar has 'outlived his usefulness'??

Why would anyone want to use America's 'playbook' at this point?