Bush, Saudis Agree to Oil Price Reduction Before Election

[Mason]

http://www.forbes.com/home/newswire/2004/04/18/rtr1335645.html


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, promised President Bush the Saudis would cut oil prices before November to ensure the U.S. economy is strong on election day, journalist Bob Woodward said in a television interview Sunday.

In an interview with CBS's "60 Minutes" about his new book "Plan of Attack" on the Bush administration's preparations for the Iraq war, Woodward, a senior editor at the Washington Post, said Prince Bandar pledged the Saudi's would try to fine-tune oil prices to prime the U.S. economy for the election -- a move they understood would favor Bush's re-election.

Questioned about his assertion at a time when oil prices are nearing a 13-year high, Woodward responded:

"They're high. And they could go down very quickly. That's the Saudi pledge. Certainly over the summer or as we get closer to the election they could increase production several million barrels a day and the price would drop significantly."

If this is true, then it's despicable.

[zimv20]

well, at least the chicanery is transparent now.

or is that an oxymoron?

[SlyHunter]

When oil prices went up people were saying why wasn't Bush doing anything? Why don't he have people over there demanding that they lower the prices? And now that they are coming down supposedly its a grand right wing conspiracy on Bush's part.

[Mason]

When oil prices went up people were saying why wasn't Bush doing anything? Why don't he have people over there demanding that they lower the prices? And now that they are coming down supposedly its a grand right wing conspiracy on Bush's part.

Nice spin, but let's drop the Bush as martyr view. If Bush is condoning high prices now with the agreement that the Saudis will raise output later on, he's ****ing over the country for his Saudi buddies' profit and political gain.

[vwcruisn]

its reasuring to know that Bandar bin Sultan, a terror funder, is such good friends with the Bush family that they have nicknamed him "Bandar Bush."

"Washington's most senior diplomatic couple -- Bandar has been ambassador for 20 years -- have been ladling out "material support," indirectly or directly or both, to suspected terrorists or their families for years.

Haifa's late father was King Faisal of Saudi Arabia; Faisal's brother Prince Sultan, now Defence Minister, is Bandar's father. The couple have contributed uncounted millions to the 300 Saudi charities that are "suspected of doling out about $4-billion every year to Islamic extremists," according to the Detroit News.

[...]

On Sept. 13, 2001, George W. Bush invited Bandar to the White House -- not to press for more liberty and less hate-financing in Saudi Arabia, which is consistently ranked in the lowest 5% of all countries in global-measured freedoms -- but to hug him and smoke cigars (according to a hair-raising profile of Bandar in the March 24 New Yorker).

Why? It helps that Barbara and George H. W. Bush have all but adopted Bandar and Haifa. "The Bushes are like my mother and father," Haifa told The New Yorker. "I know if ever I needed anything, I could go to them." In the May issue of The Atlantic, Robert Baer, a retired CIA agent, wrote that, around the Bush family Kennebunkport, Me., compound, the prince is known as "Bandar Bush."



link (http://mattwelch.com/NatPostSave/bandar.htm)

[SlyHunter]

Nice spin, but let's drop the Bush as martyr view. If Bush is condoning high prices now with the agreement that the Saudis will raise output later on, he's ****ing over the country for his Saudi buddies' profit and political gain.
If.