Reviewed by Clare Short MP

This book provided the evidence used by Michael Moore in his film Fahrenheit 9/11 to show the close links between the Saudi Royal family and the Bush family.  It is a best seller in the US and is being published in Germany, Spain, Brazil and elsewhere.  It was to have been published in the UK by Secker and Warburg who then dropped it, claiming there was too great a risk due to the UK's libel laws.  Happily for us, the book has been published by Gibson Square books, a small, brave publisher founded in 2001 that was willing to take the risk.

Having seen the Michael Moore film, I was expecting Craig Unger's book to be another polemic.  It is not.  It is a carefully written and researched survey of a relationship that began in the mid 1970s when the Saudi royal family set out to invest in the US in the wake of the Opec oil embargo.  They were looking for opportunities to invest the massive wealth flowing to them as oil prices soared and also looking for political allies.  The royal family wanted American military protection for their regime, and their oil, in an unstable region.  Thus began the relationship with the Bush family which gave access to President Reagan, then President George Bush and now
President George W Bush.  Unger tells us that by the time George W Bush was elected, the sum of at least US$1.47 billion in investments and contracts had been channeled to the Bush family in deals involving many companies, including the Carlyle Group in which British politicians are also entangled.
 
I was shocked to discover the relationship even goes back to the Iran Contra scandal when the Saudis took over from agents of the Reagan administration in providing support to the right wing rebels who were trying to overthrow the elected government in Nicaragua.  The Saudis had no interest in Nicaragua, but after the House of
Representatives voted unanimously to prohibit the use of US funds to overthrow the government, the Saudis took over and supplied $1 million per month.  James Baker warned the White House that soliciting funds from third countries could be an impeachable offence.  Vice President Bush then insisted there was no harm in it, so long as there was no quid pro quo.
 
The book takes us through the disreputable role played by the US in backing Saddam Hussein and his use of chemical weapons in his war against Iran after the overthrow of the pro-American Shah in 1979.  It outlines how the US also sometimes helped Iran when Iraq was becoming too strong, in a war that took a million lives.

Craig Unger argues that US dependence on the Saudi regime dates from the fall of the Shah of Iran and is explained by its policy towards Israel and need for oil.  It was at this time that the US formed a crucial special relationship with a rich and corrupt royal family that sponsored a narrow and rigid form of Islam known as Wahabiism which they thought would protect their regime from demands for democracy and human rights.  They also promoted this puritanical and fanatical form of Islam across the Moslem world through charitable donations and support for religious schools.  The US and Saudi governments went on to support an Islamist war in Afghanistan against a Soviet backed regime which helped to weaken and hasten the demise of the Soviet Union.  But it also gave birth to Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda.

This book is a must read for those who want to understand the mess we now have in the Middle East.

Clare Short MP, 16 September 2004