Once you get past the sound of private axe-grinding on the part of unnamed officials, this piece from The New York Times does a fair job of reporting the dis-ease some American government officials are expressing about Saudi Arabia. One academic is quoted as saying that the Saudis are no longer acting as ‘vassals’ of the US… as if they ever were. Saudi Arabia has consistently acted in its own interests since its founding. That some have confused that with identifying itself and its concerns with the US is their error, not the Saudis.

The Saudis are concerned about what happens to/with the Sunnis of Iraq. But as one source notes in the piece, this doesn’t extend to the Saudi government’s support of Sunni terror in Iraq. The Saudis are even more concerned about those terrorists making their ways back to the KSA and conducting terror campaigns against the Saudi government and society.

I suspect that this article, rather harsh in tone, is the result of some government officials, antipathetic to Saudi Arabia, trying to frame next week’s visits to the KSA by SecState Rice and SecDef Gates before their arrival.

U.S. Officials Voice Frustrations With Saudis’ Role in Iraq
Helene Cooper, Mark Mazzetti and Jim Rutenberg

WASHINGTON, July 26 — During a high-level meeting in Riyadh in January, Saudi officials confronted a top American envoy with documents that seemed to suggest that Iraq’s prime minister could not be trusted.

One purported to be an early alert from the prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, to the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr warning him to lie low during the coming American troop increase, which was aimed in part at Mr. Sadr’s militia. Another document purported to offer proof that Mr. Maliki was an agent of Iran.

The American envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, immediately protested to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, contending that the documents were forged. But, said administration officials who provided an account of the exchange, the Saudis remained skeptical, adding to the deep rift between America’s most powerful Sunni Arab ally, Saudi Arabia, and its Shiite-run neighbor, Iraq.

Now, Bush administration officials are voicing increasing anger at what they say has been Saudi Arabia’s counterproductive role in the Iraq war. They say that beyond regarding Mr. Maliki as an Iranian agent, the Saudis have offered financial support to Sunni groups in Iraq. Of an estimated 60 to 80 foreign fighters who enter Iraq each month, American military and intelligence officials say that nearly half are coming from Saudi Arabia and that the Saudis have not done enough to stem the flow.

One senior administration official says he has seen evidence that Saudi Arabia is providing financial support to opponents of Mr. Maliki. He declined to say whether that support was going to Sunni insurgents because, he said, “That would get into disagreements over who is an insurgent and who is not.”

Senior Bush administration officials said the American concerns would be raised next week when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates make a rare joint visit to Jidda, Saudi Arabia.
…