Why Is Bush Helping Saudi Arabia Build Nukes?: Wall Street Journal

Originally posted by Grafilthy

War is change, and change can be a good thing.

wow.

Change is good. It's helped me through a few rough times, like, when I needed another pack of cigarettes or was homeless for awhile.


Of course it takes a good chunk a change to fill up our gas tanks now. One day, I'll finally have one of those hybrids to hyper mile with. (Bush willing)

Originally posted by Blaine91555

Originally posted by Neo Christian Mystic
Bush and Rice should revisit the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty they signed in 1968. If USA gives away nuclear technology to the Saudis, why shouldn't Russia help out Iran?

Iran is enriching material to build weapons. The Saud's are only going to use nuclear power plants and will not be enriching material for weapons. HUGE difference.

I have to wonder if people actually read the article?

Says who? Are you saying USA will ship enriched plutonium overseas? Seems like a daunting task if you ask me. What indicates that sentrifuges are not part of the technology USA gives to the Saudis?

reply to post by Grafilthy

wow.

I live to surprise.

DimensionalDetective:

Your hatred for Bush has clouded your over all judgement. It is not the Bush administration following their own policy, so much as it is the foriegn policy laid out for the past several decades.

This is what is so funny about this. There is NO proof whatsoever that Iran is doing what these maniacs are constantly threatening them for, other than their accusations.

Actually there is considerable evidence, for instance prohibiting Russia from removing spent Uranium, and under ground complexes built for the purpose of "development".

So based on this premise, maybe someone should start investigating what the U.S. is up to with the Saudi's? Since we have about as much proof that it has NOTHING to do with weaponry as their claims that Iran is doing it...

Saudi Arabia and the United States are, for lack of a better term, allies.

Says who? Are you saying USA will ship enriched plutonium overseas? Seems like a daunting task if you ask me. What indicates that sentrifuges are not part of the technology USA gives to the Saudis?

If America builds Saudi Arabia a Nuclear Power plant, they will be the supervisors of said power plant.

AGAIN I point out that this is where the negotiations with Iran and Russia failed. Iran went as far as to stop paying Russia for their efforts, and Russia withdrew their scientist and engineers and all construction halted.

Bush is getting nuke tech to the Saud family for two reasons: 1) Bush is weak and can't persuade them to lower oil prices, and 2) FAR MORE IMPORTANT: Bush is down with Sauds, Rothschilds and other NWO cronies trying to destabilize the planet to set up a corporate Big Brother regime like that hinted at by Nick ("chip em") Rockefeller. Bin Ladens funded Bush's Harken Energy, Sauds financed Al Queda, and we're being run into the mud by brain-dead hacks who are so obvious that any literate adult can see them for what they are. They collaborate in narco traffick, and remember: Sauds gave $21 billion--yes that's right, 21 BILLION--to Pakistan to develop nuclear weapons. And Pakistan created the Taliban. See a pattern here?

reply to post by gl2


The House of Saud does not "set the price" of oil. The few times they have manipulated prices, it was to lower oil prices for competition with other Gulf States.

I swear, the lack of knowledge on the Middle East and BASIC economic affairs is dismal!

reply to post by gl2


The House of Saud does not "set the price" of oil. The few times they have manipulated prices, it was to lower oil prices for competition with other Gulf States.

I swear, the lack of knowledge on the Middle East and BASIC economic affairs is dismal!

It makes absolutely no sense unless you look at it thru the Skull and Bones paradigm. Bush's purpose on this earth is to enrich and empower his fellow Bonesmen by thievery and by deliberately spreading instability, war and death.

Oil is sold in dollars, and the Bush administration seems to have no inflasion goal at all. The dollar value is so low that oil prices rise. Here in Norway we make tons of dollars because of it. We have domestic oil prices at the double of the US and we have had for a long time, and they are gonna rise further. In addition there is the insecurity of Iraqi oil and not to mention the pipelines in Afganistan and earlier in Balkan. USA only fight where there is oil, in order to manipulate the oil prices to make them rise. However, Bush also weakened the dollar so everything goes up in smoke for USA.

That is ridiculously derranged.

"Err yeah it's ok! Because at the moment they're our friends! Besides we can always attack them later when we want more oil and make up some cr*p about their leaders being evil".

That's my take on it.

reply to post by DimensionalDetective


The difference is in the two nations' policies and behaviors over the last few decades.
1960s: Iran is attempting to end feudalisn and enter the world marketplace. Saudi Arabia has been a significant producer of oil since 1950, but deals with some difficulties resulting from their crude form of government. Reforms follow some mismanagement.

1970s: Iran erupts into violent conservative Islamic Revolution. Khomeini takes control. Declares that the US is the Enemy. Thousands of dissidents are killed, yet Iran manages a suprising level of organization throughout.
Saudi Arabia sorts out royal family succession while continuing to deal with industrialized nations. They get rich.

1980's: Western relations with Iran continue to deteriorate after hostage crisis. Saddam decides to take some Iranian real estate. he is backed by most Western powers, Russia, China and major Arab states including saudi Arabia. The Iran-Iraq War turns out to be one of the most senseless inhumane wars ever fought. Iranians use human wave tactics, en.wikipedia.org...-Iraq_War, that Iraq meets with chemical weapons and massive artillery. Iraq builds a huge military with help from the rest of the world.
War ended with US negotiated peace in 1988.

1990's: After the disaster that was the Iran-Iraq War, Iran takes a practical approach to maintaining Islamic law and identity. They work to build amiable relations with world powers and are successful with just about everyone but the US. (Go figure...)
Saudi Arabia keeps making money while maintaining its repressive monarchy without going to war.

And the rest in history. The Iranians have had Uranium enrichment tech for a long time. We, the US, really just don't care for radical Islam. Saudi Arabia is growing. Increasing modernization and infrastructure will help foster democratic reforms.

reply to post by Neo Christian Mystic

You might look into Russia's role in the current fuel cost flap. I will be.
For us, it just might be time to pay the piper...
Ah, meaning that we've had it our way too long and now it's our turn to get shafted.

reply to post by gl2


Yes. We live in a complex world, yet it a closed system and nothing operates in isolation from anything else. Every action has an equal reaction. Newton's third law. This is most appropriate for the situation becasue we're discussing energy and power. If you profit, someone down the line loses out. It's part of the fun of being alive and aware!!
We just need to keep the struggle and contests off of the battlefield. Not kill individual's but prevent groups and nations from growth. Eliminate sufferring, while maintaining robust competition.

I'm really starting to think that this administration is just sitting around drinking the good stuff and smoking Cubans while trying to outdo each other. Who can come up with the biggest bag of BS and make the American People swallow it.

I think they (Bush jr, Bush sr, Cheney, Rice) have made it into a game by now, I wonder who has the most points and what the winner gets at the end of their term? This is why the expression "laughing all the way to bank" exists!

This probably has something to do with, the enemy of my enemy is
my Friend according to the White House.

But on my side of the fence, the Enemy of my Enemy is NOT my Friend.
It looks more like the White House is encouraging all the Countries in the
Middle East to have a showdown. Problem Solved.

Saudi Arabia in all likelihood already has nuclear weapons - Pakistan's nuclear program is Saudi Arabia's nuclear program - it's well established that Saudi Arabia funded most of it, via China.

Do you think they got nothing in return?

There are persistent reports that there is a force of about 20 nuclear-tipped Ghauri missiles in a silo complex south of al-Sulaiyil. The complex is visible on satellite photos, and US intel is well aware of the fact - they just don't talk about it. Unlike Iran, which probably wouldn't be able to build a bomb for a decade or so even if they choose to.

The difference is that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia don't openly challenge US hegemony, no matter what they're doing in secret.

Iran does, even if they aren't actually doing anything about it.

Somehow it's not an issue that the country from which most of the 9/11 hijackers originated, and also the country that created the Taliban, are nuclear armed.

If a nuke explodes in a US city, I'll bet good money it comes from Pakistan or SA, not Iran - though that might well be who we'd retaliate against anyway.

[edit on 6/13/08 by xmotex]

reply to post by xmotex


Actually this is more then true.. the Pakistani "CIA" type organization is in fact funded by Saudi Arabia .. and the links with 9/11 indicate the relationship is so close between these two nations it is possible to say Pakistan is nothing but a Vassal state to Saudi Arabia. The Saud's are the wealthiest nation in the Middle East, and it is widely known the man who sold Pakistan the designs for a Nuke, also sold them to many other nations. Including Libya. If Pakistan and Libya and quite possibly Iraq and Sudan could acquire weapons like Nukes, you can bet the Saud's have them .. the only difference is the Saud's have a good enough military and intelligence community to keep it secret... and if the public cannot openly see a nuclear program, the US Government will never admit another Nuclear Power has entered the world.. South Africa and Israel still are unrecognized!

Yes, I would say it is obvious Saudi Arabia has nukes .. I would bet as well Iran already has them, or else, are very close.. Both nation are rolling in money, especially since the Iraq War .. and other nations like India, Pakistan, North Korea are so desperate for money they would have sold everything they got.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The last few posts... good exchange, thanks.
So who suffers in Iran? There are quite a few of our ..."allies" mixed in there. We still get quality research from Iranians. That's just one aspect of Iran that has been of value to the world.
I've mentioned this before on ATS, but i really had high hopes for Iran. I hoped that this radical element had perhaps run its course, but it seem that there are these aging factions with covert grudges determined to see their agendas realized and revenges taken before they go to the grave.

i.e. Bush Sr. and Co. and the Iranian/Islamic Revolution elite.

Originally posted by Rockpuck
There is also a nifty side effect.. when Nuclear Power replaces current Saudi power plants it will alleviate the need for massive oil consumption on the Saudi's part to power the country.

The Saudis don't have a large enough population to consume anything in ' massive' amounts beside say US debt...

Thus more to export to alleviate demand.

Which is the exact excuse Iran is proposing only they do in fact have a population size worth mentioning.

And of course you are correct, favors mean favors in return.

In a ideal world where the leaders of countries do each other 'favors'! Sad fact is that's the relationship that the powerful have with the weak and the fact that the US is willing to give the Saudis so much must mean that this has nothing to do with Saudi-Arabia and everything to with US ambitions in the ME.

People think the US is just destroying the Middle East.. and they are very wrong.. we destroyed Iraq, an emblem of the Old Middle East..

Iraq was just about the most westernized nation in the ME before the US essentially destroyed it in 1990. The US is NOT in the business of changing the ME, or anywhere else, for the 'better' and if such benefits accrue it has in my experience been entirely coincidental or because the US national security state didn't have a choice , during the cold war times, but to allow some progress under a nominally capitalist system to ensure that the countries didn't set too much of a progressive example to their neighbours. The fact that is has been destroying many of those countries during the last decade suggest strongly that it's now trying to 'fix' what it never wished to allow in the first place.

the Sauds, Kuwait, UAE, even Iran, Jordan .. these countries have all seen a rise in revenue because the US destroyed once standing barricades.

Risen in revenue? Are we talking about the people, in terms of progress, or about how much money western corporations have managed to make there? What about the rights of women in those countries as compared to Iraq? How can a country be considered westernized if women still don't even have the vote and are nominally considered property?

Just look at Dubai .. an icon of what the Middle East SHOULD be.. a region where they are not oil dependant, but also have many other sectors of industry and consumption to create a "real" economy, thus relieving poverty and that backward image we all seem to think of Arabs.. robed men in a desert on a camel.

But Dubai is not a country ( much more accurate to call it a city) and to compare the issue faced by actual countries it's strange that you should hold up Dubai to be a indication of anything but a enormous concentration of foreign capitol and education. I suppose the same can be said for the entire UAE but since you don't seem to be aware of the relationship that's probably pointless.

The fact that you have a image of 'backwards' Arabs says far more about your level of education than it does about the fact that some Arabs may be lacking in that department. Maybe if the US didn't bomb infrastructure, and otherwise destroyed trough sanctions, the great Iraqi' universities ( where many people in the ME were educated) there might be less education problems in the region.

War is change, and change can be a good thing.

War is in fact almost always either with the aim to destroy what has so far been achieved or in defense of what has been achieved. If you can name me examples of wars fought to 'develop' other countries in anything but the image of the invader, if at all, i would be most interested.

Also to the guy who said if we help the Sauds Russia should be allowed to help Iran.That was the whole plan.. Russia is building the plants and thus they where to be the over sight even after they are built. But Iran didn't want that.

So would you want a nominal friend to control your energy generation capacity to such a extant? Would your population/voters like that idea or would you rather aim for the popularity that a native program would result in? Sure they will accept Russian aid but they are doing their best to obscure the fact that Russians will control it for the same old and obvious reasons.

Makes you wonder what they want with all that spent Uranium ... hmmmm .. yes, I do wonder....

Who said they wanted to keep the spent fuel?

No nation keeps it's waste without a purpose. Most often, it's for the Big Bomb.

Most nations maybe ( the 'waste' is hardly that difficult to deal with given sufficient interest to do so) but we are now talking about Iran which does not stand much to gain by having a few native built bombs.

Stellar

Originally posted by Rockpuck
Your hatred for Bush has clouded your over all judgement. It is not the Bush administration following their own policy, so much as it is the foreign policy laid out for the past several decades.

Sure Bush is but a bit player in far larger game but does that mean we should respect him any more or less for being nothing other? What about US foreign policy is respectable to start with?

Actually there is considerable evidence, for instance prohibiting Russia from removing spent Uranium, and under ground complexes built for the purpose of "development".

From who? The same people who brought us the African yellow cake nonsense and Iraq WOMD in general? Fool me once shame on me? Do you like being fooled and if not what do you think you stand to gain from Iran being bombed back to the same middle age Iraq has now descended to?

Saudi Arabia and the United States are, for lack of a better term, allies.

They are not allies at all as the one has power while the other has little but oil the US could in fact be getting on it's own continent.

If America builds Saudi Arabia a Nuclear Power plant, they will be the supervisors of said power plant.

Sure but once the technology is on foreign soil things don't seem to stay as 'secret' as it once used to be. Some later posters have indicated that Saudi-Arabia might in fact already have such weapons which brings up the question of why a well known sponsor of terror ( even if it's more protection money than funding per se) should be allowed such advanced weapons?

AGAIN I point out that this is where the negotiations with Iran and Russia failed. Iran went as far as to stop paying Russia for their efforts, and Russia withdrew their scientist and engineers and all construction halted.

So would you trust the Russians with your energy development? The Russians are in it for themselves and i think the Iranians understand that Russia may very well sell them 1970s/80's weapons , during a American invasion/attack, as long as they can pay for it. Russia has a long history of 'helping' those who can pay for weapons without getting itself into wider conflicts it does not want to be part of. I believe that the Iranian leadership understands very well that any aid from Russia in a US war against Iran would be the type that saves few Iranian lives and does little to safeguard the leadership.

Stellar

reply to post by djerwulfe


you do know the expulsion of the US puppet - the shah was because the people had enough of what he was doing to the country?