Roger Simon says:

The Bush Administration, like virtually all recent US administrations, has had a repellently cozy relationship with the despicable Saudi regime. While our presidents feel free to criticize even the mighty Chinese for human rights abuses, they say hardly a word in public about the oil-rich Saudis, leaving the (usually mild) criticism to some low-ranking State Department official with a name no one recognizes.

Roger links to the horrific case of secondary school teacher Mohammed al-Harbi, who has been sentenced by Saudi Sharia courts to 40 months in jail and 750 lashes for "discussing the Bible and praising Jews".

According to a Saudi site dedicated to Mohammed al-Harbi:

After the Saudi authorities captured the terrorists who perpetrated the may 11, 2003 tragic terror bombing in a residential area in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Muhammad al-Harbi made a public announcement to his school’s students praising the Saudi police and supporting anti terrorism actions waged by the Saudi government. He explained that that terror acts are against Islam and do not represent the faith nor its followers. This announcement was not received well by some of the other teachers in the school who adopted some extremist views and conservative ideologies that did not agree with Muhammad’s thoughts. They started plotting against Muhammad for his sincere efforts in spreading the message of tolerance and support for anti terror acts...

In related KSA news, Saudi government officials like the chief justice of Saudi Arabia's Supreme Judicial Council, Sheik Saleh Al Luhaidan, are campaigning to get young Saudis to become suicide bombers in Iraq. According to the Washington Post, most of the suicide bombers who have been killing our soldiers and Iraqi citizens are Saudi .

According to the Saudi daily Al-Iqtisadiyya, Saudi religious shops are using sex (or the lack of it in the KSA) to convince Saudi men to join the Jihad and blow themselves up:

Religious Cassettes Promoting Jihad

"So ubiquitous are the religious cassette shops that they are outnumbered only by groceries… The bulk of cassettes sold in these stalls are motivational. On closer scrutiny, you will realize that their contents are confined to a system of thought that serves to prepare youth to accept its ideas, yield to them, and adopt its Jihad program.

"These cassettes mostly urge people to carry out Jihad through taking up arms, without specifying the zero hour or the Jihad battlefield. As such they advocate Jihad for Jihad’s sake. It’s a mobilization campaign in which Jihad becomes a state of mind, a mode of living. They want you to give up this foul and mean earthly life, renounce worldly pleasures, devote your life to Jihad, and seek to die in the Jihad battlefield so as to win martyrdom."

These jihad recruitment shops are outnumbered only by grocery stores. The Saudi government will probably deny that they're part of this, but are we supposed to believe that the Saudi government knows about a woman showing her ankles in Jeddah, a teacher making anti-Jihad (and therefore 'unreligious') statements in a classroom - but they don't know about the countrywide jihad-cassette industry that's bigger than Borders?

Whether our government chooses to acknowledge it or not, Saudi Arabia is at war with us. Fighting a war by getting (and staying) cozy with the enemy has never been a very good strategy.

[link thanks to Crossroads Arabia]