Might the Saudis Blow Up Their Oil Infrastructure?
by Daniel Pipes
FrontPageMagazine.com
May 11, 2005

Investigative writer Gerald Posner reveals something most extraordinary in Secrets of the Kingdom: The Inside Story of the Saudi-U.S. Connection, his book to be published by Random House later this month: that the Saudi government may have rigged its oil and gas infrastructure with a self-destruct system that would keep it out of commission for decades. If true, this could undermine the world economy at any time.

Posner starts by recalling various hints that Americans dropped back in the 1970s, that the high price and limited production of oil might lead to a U.S. invasion of Saudi Arabia and a seizure of its oil fields. For example, in 1975, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger murkily threatened the Saudis with a triple-negative: "I am not saying that there's no circumstances where we would not use force" against them.

I wonder just how the U.S. will actually take the Iranian oil reserves, or even the Saudi reserves, given that our military is spread paper thin already covering Iraq and Afghanistan. there are some 65 million people in Iran and lots of them would apparently like to self destruct if in so doing they would kill an American or 2.

A large part of our problem in Iraq was the result of our failure to put enough boots on the ground to hold things together after we destroyed the Iraqi army. How are we going to protect the infrastructure, let alone secure the cities? Look at the story about the Mexican pipeline attacks. They have 60,000 km of pipelines. Would it take 1 soldier every 200 meters to keep the bad guys away? That's 300,000 soldiers. Next, think of the rail lines. Put a guard or 2 on every bridge or culvert?

Well, lets draft a few million, just in case. Better do that before the invasion of Iran. Like maybe, starting next week.

E. Swanson

The irony, of course, is that the Bush administration is actually telling the truth this time about the Wahabbist Saudis' responsibility for the majority of US casualties in Iraq, both directly and through backing of Iraqi Sunnis.
But who hasn't known that for years now, MSM silence notwithstanding? The question we should be asking here is, "Why now?" The theories I read here go like:
- The desperation of a flailing, helpless US administration.
- Creating a fall guy for the imminent FF shortages.
- Establishing a pretext for seizing the SA oilfields.
- Intimidation/threatening the house of Saud, for occult reasons.
- As a limited hangout, because the Dems are about to blow the lid off it.

The last theory makes sense to me because Hillary has the same devotion to Israel that GWBush does, but she isn't hobbled by those troublesome ties to the Saudi royals. She could sure make hay from our talking-tough-on-terror CiC, who is in fact coddling the bad guys that are old family friends!

Americans are armed and dangerous

When TS hits TF, it will be interesting to see what the citizenry will rally around. On the one hand you've got a state with increasing dominion over its citizenry (at least it seems to be going that direction). On the other hand you've got desperate people who can't find employment, fuel, security, and perhaps food.

I tend to think if those two scenarios play out at the same time, the citizenry will rally behind anyone or anything that puts bread on the table. If the police state can do it, the police state will survive. If not, the police state won't have a chance and a revolution will occur, resulting in regional nation-states loosely organized around trade and geography.

Tom A-B

Nope - the people who get the contracts for constructing databases are generally interested in money - IBM is neither democratic nor republican, but it most certainly has interests which mesh well with whoever is writing the checks and laws. The same is true of AT&T, or any other phone company, for example, along with the credit agencies, private prison companies, airlines - the list is very, very long, and to get into the subject seems to stamp one as being part of the fringe.

I truly think the paradigm of republican/democrat is likely to break down, and it will be those replacing them which will appreciate the tools so profitably constructed over the last decades.

America is likely to become the first profitable police state in human history - the tools were always built with profit in mind - just look at the history of credit cards - in the mid-1980s, a credit transaction was checked in a few seconds from a terminal using a region wide radio system - or at least it was where I worked. The technology has improved vastly since then. And America has essentially nothing in terms of data protection laws, or even an awareness of the need for protecting personal data from being collected in the first place. At least in Germany, my concerns don't sound strange, they sound like recent history.

One of the things about following the housing bubble has been how most Americans seem to be no longer able to comprehend living without credit - and here I am, never having had a credit card in my life. There is a lot I don't understand at this point about my fellow Americans, and they have little interest in my factual discussions of the world they live in. It has become very difficult for me to try to describe the U.S. to Germans at this point - and time to stop before we drift into discussing how many American beliefs about evolution. The U.S. is much less part of the industrial West than it was before Ronald Reagan was elected, both in manufacturing and in social terms.