Stardate 20030715.1134

(On Screen via long range sensors): The overall war is continuing more or less as envisioned. Now that we're beginning to get established in Iraq, and now that Iraq's oilfields are coming back online and exports are beginning again, we've reached the point where we can begin to seriously confront the Saudis.

The grand strategy of a war requires pacing and preparation; you pick your fights when you're ready, and choose the sequence so as to maximize the chance of success and minimize the chance of self-immolation. In the case of the current war, one of the things which was important was to make sure that the economy of the world didn't collapse or go into serious spasms while the war was being fought.

There have been a lot of people who, for a long time now, have demanded that we cease treating the Saudis as staunch allies and friends. Saudis have been the financiers of much of international terrorism and the rise of extremist Islam around the world, and before the overall war can end that also has to end.

That's true, but if you pick a fight too soon, you can lose it. If, for instance, on September 12 Bush had identified Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq and Iran all as nations which he considered enemies, then they'd all have instantly allied with one another overtly. He didn't, and they didn't, and though Saudi Arabia and Syria tried to impede our war against Iraq as much as they could, they didn't succeed in saving Saddam.

And now we no longer need the Saudis. We've withdrawn our forces, and we no longer need the command center which is there. With Iraq's oilfields back online, a disruption in Saudi crude shipments (no matter why) will no longer threaten to make the world economy go into spasms. And that means we no longer have to treat them with kid gloves.

Which is why there's increasing evidence that the US is about to take a much harder line with the Saudis:

A congressional report will soon reveal close ties between residents of Saudi Arabia and Osama bin Laden's terrorist network, two senior lawmakers said Sunday.

"It would be embarrassing, I think, to a lot of people there," Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby, the Republican former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer."

The classified report is the result of an investigation into the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The report, or portions of it, is expected to be declassified soon.

"There are a lot of high people in Saudi Arabia, over the years, that have aided and abetted Osama bin Laden and his group. And they've done it through charities, they've done it directly and everything else," Shelby said. "What we've got to do is find the truth."

I think this was always on the overall plan for the war's campaign. Once Afghanistan was take care of and after Iraq had been taken, I think that it was always expected that the next step would be to apply political pressure to Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria to get them to stop supporting terror groups.

Fighting terrorism is like fighting ants; there are too many of them, they're too small and too spread out. To fight ants, you don't fight the ants. You fight the queen. If you kill the queen, all the rest of the ants will die. Terrorists are small and spread out, but without money they're only a small threat at best. Terrorism is low-resource warfare but it isn't no-resource, and even organizations like al Qaeda need millions of dollars per year in order to operate. Most of that money has been coming from Saudi Arabia. If the support stops, al Qaeda will be even further impeded and its threat will be reduced even further. (And the same goes for other similar groups e.g. Hizbollah.)

The Saudis have been giving that money to those groups as a form of danegeld. "We'll give you money if you leave us alone, and go kill Jews and Americans instead, OK?" They're trying to placate both the terrorists and us, by continuing their support while making a few gestures, highly publicized but token and insignificant, to prove their support for the "War on Terrorism".

Now we're in the position of being able to apply far greater pressure on them, to let them know that we no longer need them and won't settle for token gestures on their part. Saudi Arabia has been permitted until now to straddle the fence; now they're going to have to choose sides.

The war is going well.

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