On 4/28/07, Yoshie Furuhashi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/29/washington/29saudi.html>
For instance, in February, King Abdullah effectively torpedoed plans by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for a high-profile peace summit meeting between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, by brokering a power-sharing agreement with Mr. Abbas's Fatah and Hamas that did not require Hamas to recognize Israel or forswear violence. The Americans had believed, after discussions with Prince Bandar, that the Saudis were on board with the strategy of isolating Hamas. When you pressure people, they say yes, even when they mean no. How do you think GWB managed to fail instead of grow his business ventures? The hard sell. A bunch of BS big talk that everyone shook their heads up & down to, and then proceeded to do it their way if possible, or bail out of the venture. Exactly as has happened with his wars. The thing about the hard sell is it works with 'rubes'... like Americans who Looooove football and consider murderous wars to be a logical extension thereof. I'm sure that the Saudi royalty considers most of Bush's people to be below dirt on the human evolutionary scale... and they're right. But the Saudis aren't the 'rubes' they were in 1910 or so when the first barrels of oil were exported, and the geopolitical playing field has been redrawn (quite a few times). But the US State department in it's current incarnation is still (perhaps fortunately) reading a playbook of domination written by the people just off the boat... the Mayflower. See: ""Our Indian Wars Are Not Over Yet" Ten Ways to Interpret the War on Terror as a Frontier Conflict By John Brown, USC Center on Public Dipomacy <http://leighm.net/wp/2007/04/08/gwot_indiwar_jbpdbr/> ...for more on that, and some excellent comparisons. Personal advice Yoshie... stop reading, or at least stop believing the New York Time. It'll rot your brain, ands it's been along time since they were REALLY a newspaper of record. Now they're just a newspaper with highly placed connections who help them socially engineer their readers. Trash... reporting quality of the Daily News and not half as adventurous. Leigh . Leigh
