Tanya C. Hsu: Michael Moore and Richard Perle Combine Forces: Who Really Wants to Invade Saudi Arabia, and Why?

(Institute for Research Middle Eastern Policy) ". . .In 1973, the Nixon administration described a plan of attack against Saudi Arabia to seize its oil fields in a classified Joint Intelligence Report entitled “UK Eyes Alpha”. British MI5 and MI6 were informed, and under British National Archive rules the document was declassified in December of 2003. The oil embargo had been over for only three weeks but “Eyes Alpha” suggested that the “US could guarantee sufficient oil supplies for themselves and their allies by taking the oil fields in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the Gulf State of Abu Dhabi”. It followed that “pre-emptive” action would be considered, and that two brigades could seize the Saudi oilfields and one brigade each could take Kuwait and Abu Dhabi.
In February of 1975 the London Sunday Times revealed information from a leaked and classified US Department of Defense plan. The plan, drawn up by the Pentagon, was code named “Dhahran Option Four” and provided for an invasion of the world’s largest oil reserves, namely Saudi Arabia.
Also in 1975, Robert Tucker, US intelligence and military analyst, wrote an article for “Commentary” magazine, owned by the Jewish American Committee, entitled “Oil: The Issue of American Intervention”. Tucker stated that, “Without intervention there is a distinct possibility of an economic and political disaster bearing … resemblance to the disaster of 1930s…The Arab shoreline of the Gulf is a new El Dorado waiting for its conquistadors.” And this was followed in February of the same year by an article in Harper’s Magazine by a Pentagon analyst using a pseudonym, Miles Ignotus, emphasizing the need for the US to seize Saudi oilfields, installations and airports entitled “Seizing Arab Oil”. According to James Akins, former US diplomat, the author was probably Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State at the time. Kissinger has neither confirmed nor ever denied the charge.
Further, in August of 1975, a report entitled, “Oil Fields as Military Objectives: A Feasibility Study”, was produced for the Committee on Foreign Relations. In this report, the CRS stated that potential targets for the US included Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Venezuela, Libya, and Nigeria. “Analysis indicates … [that military forces of OPEC countries were] quantitatively and qualitatively inferior [and] could be swiftly crushed.”
The real premise of an attack against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been around since the Cold War. The idea was, however, revived under the aegis of a new “war against terrorism” on the charge of that the Saudi state supported such against the west. One nexus of this drive is Richard Perle.

Neo-conservative Designs on Saudi Arabia

Richard Perle is an outspoken critic of any Americans doing business with the Kingdom, despite his own attempt to secure $100 million in Saudi investment for his private venture capital firm. His ill-fated attempt to become a power-broker with one foot on in the door of the US Defense Policy board of the Department of Defense and another foot in the door of Trimeme capital investments is well documented. He has since become more hard-line, telling the National Review, “I think it’s a disgrace. The Saudis are a major source of the problem we face with terrorism. “ (Perle had to resign from the Defense Policy Board when his secret and extortive fundraising meetings with Saudi Arabian businessmen became public.)
Perle's efforts to rearrange the dynamics of the region, including Saudi Arabia, have gone on for many years. Incoming Israeli Likud Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked Perle to draft a regional strategy paper for Israel. The Institute for Advanced Strategic & Political Studies, a think tank based in Washington DC and Jerusalem published the completed paper, “ A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm ”, emphasized the need to overturn the Oslo Accords and Middle East peace process. It demanded Chairman Yasser Arafat be blamed for every act of Palestinian terror; required the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the Ba’athist regime in Iraq and Syria; and the force of democracy foisted upon the entire Arab world plus Iran. One senior Israeli intelligence officer stated the goal was to make Israel the dominant power in the region and expel the Palestinians. Perle's efforts to neutralize international funding for the Palestinian resistance and support of Palestinians have driven his policy recommendations ever since.
Another author of “A Clean Break” was David Wurmser. In September of 2003 Wurmser was moved to the US State Department to work directly under Vice President Dick Cheney and his Chief of Staff Lewis Libby. David Wurmser’s wife, Meyrav, ran MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute) alongside Colonel Yigal Carmon, of Israeli Army Intelligence. MEMRI specializes in selective retrieval, searching and translating especially plucked Arab language documents that confirm MEMRI's bias that the Arab world despises the West. Meyrav Wurmser received her doctorate at George Washington University on the life of Vladimir Jabotinsky, founder of Revisionist Zionism and declared fascist, and hero of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the Likud Party.
Saudi Arabia was again declared an enemy of the United States on July 10th, 2002, when RAND Corporation’s Laurent Murawiec gave a PowerPoint presentation to the Defense Policy Board at the invitation of Perle Like Meyrav Wurmser, Murawiec is also from George Washington University and listed as a past faculty member. He was also a follower of the Lyndon LaRouche cultist organization. This group indoctrinates its members to abandon their homes because “family values are really immoral”, according to those who left the group. (Lyndon LaRouche is a convicted felon, conspiracy theorist and UFO believer.)
Entitled “Taking Saudi Out Of Arabia” the PowerPoint presentation states “Saudi Arabia the strategic pivot” and declared that the Kingdom is an enemy of the USA. It advocated the US seize the Kingdom and its oil fields, invade Mecca and Medina, confiscate Saudi Arabian financial assets unless the Kingdom stop supporting anti-Western terrorist activities.
Saudi Arabia was declared as the “kernel of evil, the prime mover, the most dangerous opponent” in the Middle East. Murawiec claimed, “Since independence, wars have been the principal output of the Arab world” and that “plot, riot, murder, coup are the only available means to bring about change…Violence is politics, politics is violence. This culture of violence is the prime enabler of terrorism. Terror as an accepted, legitimate means of carrying out politics has been incubated for 30 years…” James Akins explained the overall plans thusly: “It’ll be easier once we have Iraq. Kuwait, we already have. Qatar and Bahrain too. So it’s only Saudi Arabia we’re talking about, and the United Arab Emirates falls into place.”
The connections between individuals pressing for a US invasion of Saudi Arabia run deep. Richard Perle’s lifelong mentor was the RAND corporation’s late Albert Wohlstetter, the grandfather of neo-conservative analysts. Wohlstetter also was a Ahmed Chalabi's classmate at the University of Chicago. Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress and the protagonist of the information provided to the US government regarding the thus far non-existent Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, is an indicted criminal in Jordan where he has been sentenced to more than 20 years’ hard labor for currency manipulation and embezzlement through Jordanian Petra Bank.
The analytical and populist groundswell of denunciation against Saudi Arabia as a state sponsor of terrorism from progressive and conservative circles alike may culminate in an invasion sooner rather than later. Supporters within the current US administration can use this unity to execute another “blueprint" for US policy. It can follow as easily as Saddam Hussein’s “imminent threat towards America” and Iraq’s WMDs served as the principle rationale for the US invasion of Iraq.

Target Saudi Arabia: Taking the Case from Think Tank to Theater

In reality there has been no hard evidence linking Saudi Arabian leaders and officials to terrorism, little evidence of Saudi subjects playing a mindful role, and far less financial ties to terrorism than could be found in most nations with a banking system. In fact, the US State Department lists the Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Australia and indeed the United States itself as having Al Queda financial ties and connections. However, facts may not be enough to stem rising anti-Saudi sentiment among policy makers and average Americans.
The Murawiec PowerPoint indictment continued, stating that Saudi Arabia is “[a]n instable group: …Wahhabism loathes modernity, capitalism, human rights, religious freedom, democracy, republics, an open society” and that “Wahhabism is spreading world-wide” [sic] based upon Iran’s Revolution led by Shi’ite Ayatollah Khomeini; that “Wahhabism moves from Islam’s lunatic fringe”, and that there was a “[s]hift from pragmatic oil policy to promotion of radical Islam…. [Saudi Arabians are] treasurers of radical, fundamentalist, terrorist groups.”
Saudi Arabia is then charged with being “the chief vector of the Arab crisis … active at every level of the terror chain…[it] supports [US] enemies [and has] virulent hatred against US…. There is an “Arabia” but it need not be “Saudi”…[US must] stop any funding and support for any fundamentalist madrasa, mosque, ulama, predicator anywhere in the world…Dismantle, ban all the kingdom’s “Islamic charities”, confiscate their assets... [and] What the House of Saud holds dear can be targeted – Oil...the Holy Places…Saudi Arabia [is] the strategic pivot”.
Were these presentations not heard by top-level Bush administration officials they would be dismissed as simplistic absurdity. However, the sparks of a mass movement to demonize Saudi Arabia had already begun to ignite, and on June 6th 2002 the right wing Hudson Institute held a seminar called “Discourses on Democracy: Saudi Arabia, Friend or Foe?”, Laurent Murewiec and Richard Perle in attendance.
Of even further interest is the ironic and direct link between Richard Perle and terrorism. A recent fundraiser in support of the victims of the Iranian earthquake in Bam, sponsored by the Mujahedin-e-Khalq, asked Richard Perle to be their keynote speaker. Despite rejections by other groups to speak at the event, based upon the US state department’s official conclusion that the MEK is an officially designated “foreign terrorist organization”, Richard Perle knew of the designation, ignored it, and was happy to oblige and raise monies - monies which were immediately seized after the event by U.S. Treasury agents. The MEK is the same terrorist organization that attempted to assassinate Richard Nixon in 1972. . . ."

(click title for full essay, part 1 of 3)