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By Root 277 0

is the nation of Saudi Arabia, possessor of the largest-known reserves of oil in the world. When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, it was really the Saudis next door who felt threatened, and it was your father, George Bush I, who came to their rescue. The Saudis have never forgotten this and, according to a March 2003 article in The New Yorker, some members of the royal family consider your family to be part of their extended family. Haifa, wife of Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, says that your mother and father “are like my mother and father. I know if ever I needed anything I could go to them.”29 And as Robert Baer—who was a case officer in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations from 1967 to 1997—revealed in his book Sleeping with the Devil, your dad even has a special name for the Saudi prince—he calls him “Bandar Bush.”30

This relationship, as you know (but have never revealed to the American people), was forged over many years. Through his stints in the CIA and as vice president and president, your father learned that whenever the dirty work needed to be done, the United States could always turn to Saudi Arabia. When White House aide Oliver North needed money to buy arms for Iran in the Iran-Contra Affair, it was the Saudis who provided the $30 million in secret cash.31 When the CIA needed funds to help destroy the Italian Communist Party in 1985 and finance its opponents in elections, it was your good friends the Saudis who happily put $10 million in an Italian bank.32 This was all while dad was V.P., and he was having the Saudi ambassador over for frequent lunches.33

It is no surprise then that the Saudi ambassador is the only diplomat in Washington who receives his own personal State Department security detail, compliments of the U.S. taxpayers. Robert Baerreported that Prince Bandar donated $1 million to the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum in Texas and a million dollars more to Barbara Bush’s literacy program.34

Even though Poppy was defeated by Clinton in 1992, the ties remained just as strong. Your father’s Carlyle Group did a lot of business with the Saudis when it came to weapons procurement. The Saudis spent more than $170 billion on armaments in the 1990s, and a chunk of the business went through the Carlyle Group.35 Your dad has met with the Saudi royals on many occasions and has traveled to the Arabian peninsula at least twice since leaving office and stayed in the royal palaces of the House of Saud, both times on behalf of the Carlyle Group.36 Prince Bandar is also an investor in the Carlyle Group,37 and he attended your mother’s seventy-fifth birthday party in Kennebunkport.38 It has been a fruitful relationship all around.

When there was all that nasty stress surrounding the hanging chads in the Florida ballot boxes in the late fall of 2000, your close friend Prince Bandar was there for your family, offering his support. He took your father on a pheasant hunting trip to England, to help take his mind off all the chaos, while the royal family’s lawyer—your lawyer, James Baker—went to Florida to direct the battle for the ballots. (Baker’s firm would later represent the Saudi royals in the lawsuits against them by the families of the September 11 victims.)39

To be fair, Mr. Bush, it’s not just your family members who are the recipients of the Saudis’ largesse. A major chunk of the American economy is built on Saudi money. They have a trillion dollars invested in our stock market and another trillion dollars sitting in our banks.40 If one day they chose to suddenly remove that money, our corporations and financial institutions would be sent into a tailspin, causing an economic crisis the likes of which has never been seen. That threat looms every day over our heads, and it is something no one ever wants to talk about. Couple that with the fact that the one and a half million barrels of oil41 we need daily from the Saudis also could vanish on a mere royal whim, and we begin to see how not only you, but all of us, are dependent on the House of Saud. George, is this