By Harry Thomas San Antonio Express-News Posted July 10 2005
Secrets of the Kingdom: The Inside Story of the Saudi-U.S. Connection. Gerald Posner.
There are some who would say that the United States' relationship with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a devil's bargain, especially in the face of international terrorism.
According to author Gerald Posner, they don't know the half of it.
In his new book, Secrets of the Kingdom: The Inside Story of the Saudi-U.S. Connection, the author of Why America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11 tells the sometimes sordid story of the Saudi monarchy's success in flexing it's oil-enhanced power.
The subtitle indicates that the book covers the Saudi/U.S. connection, but really that only covers about a third of the content. It's more the story of how the House of Saud came to power and its endorsement of the form of Islam known as Wahhabism as atonement for its excessive lifestyle -- at the expense of its citizens.
Corruption is endemic in the kingdom, according to Posner. And under the guise of "commissions," the corruption has been legalized. Any prince who makes a business deal is entitled to ask for commissions, which can range into the billions of dollars.
With the enormous wealth to be made in oil, many companies and countries were and are willing to pay that price. The result has been an opulent lifestyle for the royal family, with extravagant purchases of houses, cars, jewelry, liquor and women.
One of the most prolific is Prince Al-Waleed, who is profiled as "the prince who would buy America."
The Saudi government has also spent an enormous amount of money on military equipment to deter the ambitions of Shiite-majority Iraq and Iran. And when the Saudi government allowed the American military into the Kingdom for the first Gulf War, its legitimacy as the defender of Wahhabi Islam was questioned.
To distract the populace and religious leaders from these violations of the tenets of Wahhabism, the royal family implicitly supports the Islamic extremists that are exporting terrorism around the world, says Posner.
Posner says that the 15 Saudis involved in the 9-11 hijackings were a product of those teachings. Even today, he notes, students at Wahhabi-sponsored madrassas are taught that Jews and Christians are their mortal enemies and that "it is compulsory for the Muslims to be loyal to each other and to consider the infidels their enemy."
Posner chronicles in detail the Kingdom's dislike for Israel and its campaign against "Zionist" influences.
He details the creation of the Wahhabi lobbying organization, which not only drummed up support for U.S. military equipment purchases, but also countered the moves of the pro-Israeli lobby.
Most startling is the description of the "Petro Scorched Earth" policy that has the majority of the Saudi oil extraction and refining process booby-trapped with nuclear devices that will irradiate and render the oil fields useless for decades in case of attack.
Posner claims this information was garnered from National Security Agency communications intercepts, and admits there is no way to confirm the story. But if it is true, the economic impact would create a world crisis worse than the Great Depression, argues the author.
Posner was attacked in the Saudi Arabian and Arab press for Why America Slept because he portrayed some prominent Saudis as having a substantial role in the 9-11 attacks.
This book might get him a Salman Rushdie-style fatwa, or religious order, issued for his death.
Secrets of the Kingdom doesn't come out and say it, but it does offer some good reasoning why the West should start working on alternative sources of energy.
