NYPress - Hill of Beans - Christopher Caldwell - Vol. 15, Iss. 29

To be fair (if only for a moment), back in the early 1990s, Saudi Arabia was known as our unsavory but solid longtime ally against communism, not as the gang of rich fascists who spawned Al Qaeda and are now obstructing our war against it. But until the identity of the Harken purchaser is revealed, probing the issue will be a no-lose situation for the Democrats. They can ask whether George Bush’s fortune has its roots in Arab oil money. They can ask whether the corrupt Bank of Credit and Commerce International was involved. They can ask why it was that the entire bin Laden clan was allowed to be flown out of the country in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. They won’t accuse Bush of intentionally bungling the war on terror to please the Saudis. But they may note that it was tragic that, at a time when thousands of Americans were murdered by extremists whose only ultimate means of support was oil, we had an oil man in the White House.