Saudi is even worse than other Arab states in this respect, since it’s founded on the principle that the religious police are allowed to enforce whatever crazy perversions of Islam they like, as long as they successfully keep the proles under control and let the royals do whatever *they* like behind closed doors.

Frankly the Middle East is, and always has been been, run by a bunch of autocratic maniacs and the US probably quite rightly came to the conclusion that pouring billions of dollars in oil money every year of support money to those regimes is a very bad idea. However the execution of the ‘regime change’ plan to secure access to the energy reserves was frankly shoddy and short sighted.

I do find it amusing that because the US has never developed a sensible energy diversification strategy it’s basically at the beck and call of bunch of hereditary nutballs. Who else appart from me knows that one of the recent ex-King’s of Saudi Arabia was an alcoholic and was removed from the throne because he was pissed 24 hours a day…. Amazing for the head of a muslim state….
It’s always been one rule for the ruling class (who do very well off annuity oil revenue streams thank you very much) and one rule for everyone else…

Although I have to say that I’ve looked into it a lot, spoken to quite a few people who know more about politics and oil than me, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the war was probably about getting control of more oil fields, though I’m not sure Tony Blair thought this.