You were right, I did miss it. Thanks for that. I thought the final sentence a little ominous though. God help us when the American foreign policy establishment finally turns its attention to regime change in Saudi Arabia.
Grazie. The last paragraph was clearly dashed off, as I felt the need to wrap the whole thing up before I started rambling endlessly.
As
per your new style (are you being swayed by the Rand Paul school or FCO/State Arabists or Simon Jenkins?) your comments seem slightly gnomic.
No serious US "officials" or hangers-on have contemplated over-throwing the Saudis or ever will, bar some wild comments by Richard Perle and Michael Ledeen in 2002, who were as justified in what they said about the terror-sponsoring and totalitarian nature of the al-Saud as they were about the Iranian regime. The closest it came, and this was the most impressive moment in the entire history of the awful US-Saud relationship, was Condi Rice pushing Abdullah to reform, and specifically naming prominent, jailed Saudi dissidents in 2005 to rattle the absolute monarchy. She was only persauded at the last minute to pull those comments from her 2005 Cairo speech, and it was a shame she did. She didn't really want to. That was the chilliest moment before Obama. But note: the chill with Obama was not due to human rights, which his administrations have never raised, but because of his pathetic and doomed (and sinister by default) outreach to the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran.