I suppose it's a voctory of sorts that Cordesman was asked to include that disclaimer?

Hooray for our side!

Saudi Arabia supplied almost all of the guys in the 9/11 thing. Saudi Arabia supplies most of the foreign fighters against American troops in Iraq. AND THEY ARE OUR ALLIES in "the real world"?

I guess that's why I'm not in a think tank.

In what way did Saudi Arabia supply almost all of the guys in the 9/11 thing? Because they were Saudi nationals? As Americans we should be very clear in separating the actions of a few individuals from the remainder of the country, and certainly from the alliances made by the government.

Cordesman would have had it right if he had just stopped at this point: "Washington cannot--and should not--try to bring security to the gulf."

And to John Burgess--given their track record, why should we care whether think tanks survive? And as far as Jonathan and Anthony go--JS wrote about his feelings for Cordesman last year: http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/001188.html.
I don't know who John Burgess is, but based on reading this blog for several years, I would hazard a guess that JS is at least as well-read in Cortesman as is JB.

"I wonder, though, how you think they should find funding to continue their operations?"

What business is it of ours how a private group gains funding? Let the think thanks of the world panhandle on the street with the rest of the bums, for all I care.

Well, Nick J., if you have no useful suggestions for how I can support my heroin habit, I don't want to hear any complaints out of you when I'm forced to turn to armed robbery in order to get my daily fix.

85 perecent of 'al-Q in Meso' are SAUDIS, for pete's sake (see most recent Nat Sec Est). we stabilize the saudis, they take a slice of the $20B pie and give it to the wahabbist terrorists, the terrorists go to iraq to kill americans and non-coreligionists instead of doing so in saudi. everyone wets his beak with OUR dough-re-mi. i don't need a think tank to figure this out. we live in a time that future generations will call the Era of Great Idiocy.

eyeball - First, the most recent NIE (from February) contains no such claim. Second, how would they even have arrived at such a figure? Al-Qaeda doesn't publish demographics, and surely they didn't poll or survey the combatants, definitely not in any sort of statistically rigorous way. So I have to imagine this claim is bullshit.

My suspicion is confirmed by your second statement, about "wahhabist terrorists", which conflates "wahhabism" with the philosophy of al-Qaeda. They have nothing to do with each other; al-Qaeda is the descendant of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is not "Wahhabi"; the fact that they are both conservative Muslim ideologies should not fool you.

Finally, you're confused about the flow of money in this situation. WE are getting the $20 billion, in exchange for selling heavy-grade weapons to the Saudis. This is nothing unusual; we have been selling Saudis all kinds of expensive toys for years, so that the tremendous amounts of cash they acquire in the form of oil revenues can move out of the Kingdom and back into the hands of American corporations where it belongs.

sorry to be argumentative because i did make some errors of haste, but:

- 50 percent of outside insurgents flowing into iraq are non-shiite saudis - fact acknowleged by US government in July (not in NIE; my error).

- shiite outsider insurgents would not of course join al-qaeda.

- osama is well-know wahabbist as are hardest separatists in saudi itself. they do NOT have nothing to do with each other.

- no the saudi money doesn't go back to saudi - mistake that. saudis save by not having to buy arms on black market. money is fungilble. my simple point is that we are arming the very people who are letting their problem terrorists become OUR problem terrorists, for now in iraq. this strikes me as stupid.

- am not trying to inflate al-qaeda problem in iraq. it's an irritant but doesn't count as focal point of all iraq problems, or somesuch other such bushian cant. was just noting that the saudis cannot be happier knowing the guys who want to blow up americans inside saudi are eagerly crossing the border and do so in iraq.

sorry to be argumentative because i did make some errors of haste, but:

- 50 percent of outside insurgents flowing into iraq are non-shiite saudis - fact acknowleged by US government in July (not in NIE; my error).

- shiite outsider insurgents would not of course join al-qaeda.

- osama is well-know wahabbist as are hardest separatists in saudi itself. they do NOT have nothing to do with each other.

- no the saudi money doesn't go back to saudi - mistake that. saudis save by not having to buy arms on black market. money is fungilble. my simple point is that we are arming the very people who are letting their problem terrorists become OUR problem terrorists, for now in iraq. this strikes me as stupid.

- am not trying to inflate al-qaeda problem in iraq. it's an irritant but doesn't count as focal point of all iraq problems, or somesuch other such bushian cant. was just noting that the saudis cannot be happier knowing the guys who want to blow up americans inside saudi are eagerly crossing the border and do so in iraq.

Hey, here's another nice piece of work by Cordesman:

http://www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/050919_saudimiltantsiraq.pdf

As mentioned above, last month both the New York Times and Los Angeles Times quoted U.S. and Iraqi officials confirming that a majority of the suicide bombers in Iraq are Saudis. While one source stated that the Saudis compromised 45% of the total foreign insurgents in Iraq (not just suicide bombers), other sources have suggested that there, too, the Saudis comprise a majority (see www.asecondlookatthesaudis.com for more details).

Any way, the report by Cordesman linked to above, which he wrote with the help of a Saudi "expert" named Nawaf Obaid, concluded that only 12% of the foreign fighters in Iraq were Saudis (note also the K Street address - not one for subtlety, I guess).

I think it's pretty clear that Cordesman is a hack, if not a traitor.

I guess that's why I'm not in a think tank.
Posted by Bob In Pacifica

Yeah, Bob - it shows you can actually think, an instant disqualifier.

Unless you believe think tanks have no place in the world, Posted by John Burgess

That gets my vote!

my simple point is that we are arming the very people who are letting their problem terrorists become OUR problem terrorists, for now in iraq. this strikes me as stupid. Posted by eyeball

bush is stupid, but he is not a fool. There's plenty of money to be made in these arm sales, and arm sales go up after people get afraid. So, more terrorism in the world is a win-win for him. It helps a great deal that he is a sociopath that does not know or care how other people suffer. Like his mother, bush has a 'beautiful mind' - except he may be dumber.

oh, and bush is flying plane loads of weapons into Lebanon these days, while he flew cluster bombs to Israel last year to be used on Lebanon. bush is also sending weapons to Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, and Ethiopia.

It's a big game of "let's you and him fight"

THINK TANKS ARE OK, but you kinda need somebody that can think, therein lies the problem.