Our "ally" speaks and he sounds like an enemy

Saudi king slams 'illegitimate occupation' of Iraq - Yahoo! News:
"'In beloved Iraq, blood is being shed among brothers in the shadow of an illegitimate foreign occupation, and ugly sectarianism threatens civil war,' Abdullah said."

One wonders, if the Arabs are so upset, why haven't they stepped forward to supply troops and police to help stop the "ugly sectarianism" in Iraq or even helped to train Iraqi troops and police.

Of course, a part of this is posturing by the Saudi king to maintain his family's claim to the leadership of the Arab world, and by that position to be the major force in the Muslim world.

Back in the heyday of the Baath socialist movement, Egypt's strongman Gamal Abdel Nasser tried to use his nation's position as the most populous Arab nation, with the largest armed forces and on the front line of the confrontations with Israel to seize the the leadership of the Arab world, for a time even forming a union with Syria called the United Arab Republic.

Anwar Sadat and his successor Hosni Mubarak, by giving up on hostilities with Israel in exchange for massive subsidies from US taxpayers , have forfeited Egypt's claim to Arab leadership. The US-led invasion of Iraq directly eliminated Saddam Hussein as a contender for the mantle of Arab leadership and indirectly led to a lowering of the profile of the only other significant contender Muammar al-Qaddafi of Libya.

So, whatever the rhetoric, Saudi Arabia's ruling family really owe the US a great debt. Or are we just fools? Maybe both.

On the other hand, check out Israeli pride minister Ehud Olmert's response to the latest interation of the Saudi-authored Arab peace initiative as quoted at length in Haaretz.