From the Jerusalem Post: “It would be ‘catastrophic’ for the Middle East if Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry was elected to the White House, a former Kuwaiti ambassador to Washington said in comments published Wednesday.”
Sheik Saud Al Nasser Al Sabah, who was Kuwait’s ambassador to the United States when Republican President George Bush formed a US-led coalition to liberate Kuwait from Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi army in the 1991 Gulf War, said a Republican government would do a better job in solving the region’s problems.
“If the American administration changes in November, it will be catastrophic … because those Democrats do not understand a thing about foreign policy, and they lack the determination to make decisions the way (President George W.) Bush made them in Iraq and elsewhere,” Sheik Saud told Al-Siyassah daily in an interview conducted recently in Kuwait.
Sheik Saud served as ambassador to Washington from 1981 to 1992 and also held the Gulf state’s oil and information ministries. He currently holds no official post and his views do not necessarily reflect those of the Kuwaiti government.
Yeah. Probably a Halliburton-Unocal stooge, this so-called “Sheik” Saud. Ignore him. Or better yet, find some academic to explain him away. Clearly his serving as an ambassador to the Washington DC power elite for so many years renders him an “inauthentic” Sheik, does it not? I mean, a suit and tie? Please.
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h/t John Resnick
Hmm … his name is “Saud” eh? Quick, to that Fatphone! Mickey missed a connection!
The emphasis is not on the given name ‘Saud’ but the family name ‘al-Sabah,’ as in ‘ruling family of Kuwait.’ May not be official, but it’s pretty darn close.
well, balance that out with my granddad, former ambassador to kuwait (and the UAE) for several years under reagan, who thinks “bush has created a shitstorm.” actually, he said “terrible geopolitical instability”, but you get the point.
and W does understand foreign policy?
John Kerry fought in Vietnam you know.
Al-Sabah technically is the ruling family of Kuwait, as they were duly elected years ago. That makes them not like Saudi Arabia at all, where King Saud took power for himself.
Depending on who you speak with in Kuwait, Al-Sabah was ‘elected’ with the blessings of either the five major commercial families or the Kuwaiti parliament.
For my money, six of one, half a dozen of the other. But they do speak their minds there in the press, so I’ll take what he says at face value. Its across the negotiating table that you have to watch the Kuwaiti’s…shrewd traders to the last. (One of them actually once told me “we think of our selves as the Jews of the Arab world.” And he meant that with great respect. No kidding.)
I’m pretty sure Saddam Hussein thought of them in exactly those terms as well.