Who/What Will Cause The First Famous 3 AM Call?

Russia to be Obama's first 3 am call? (See 1 below.)

Lachman says G 20 meeting a failure but, as I wrote earlier, I have no doubt they had a sumptuous lunch. (See 2 below.)

Rachman on Obama abut his approach towards the Middle -East. Rachman points out the fallacy caused by being a "lumper" and believes the U.S. economy will force Obama to be a "splitter." He also believes, therefore, Obama will give less attention to the Middle East and Rachman suggests that could become a tragic missed opportunity. (See 3 below.)

Right or wrong, I never bought into the idea that attacking Iraq was a strategic error. I agree post the military phase the administration was unaware of the enormity of the consequences and made wrong personnel decisions, starting with Admiral Brimmer, who disbanded the Iraq military.

That said, I also believe the Democrats' actions and rebuke bordered on the despicable and,at times, even approached being treacherous. Now we have the agreement that should be ratified by Iraq's Parliament pertaining to our force withdrawal and matters have moved from perilous to hopeful because GW stood firm and embraced winning advice. He did not fold his cards as " Democrat losers" wanted him and it is possible history will record this was a seminal event in possibly changing the fortunes of and direction in this region. Only time will tell but in the interim decisions by Obama and subsequent presidents will go a long way towards either helping or hindering the situation. They can either build upon the progress or reverse course and lose it. (See 4 below.)

Honesting Reporting concludes CNN back to its old ways - dishonest and biased reorting. (See 5 below.)

Janes' abstract regarding new Iranian missile. (See 6 below.)

A more graphic way of saying what I have been saying. (See 7 below.)


Dick

1) Who'll Cause Obama's First 3 a.m. Call?

"Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking."

This ominous warning was not issued by President-elect Obama's campaign adversary John McCain or any of his surrogates. It came from Joe Biden, Obama's running mate and the nation's next vice president - merely two weeks before Obama's election victory.

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Indeed, throughout his two-year campaign for the most powerful office in the world, Obama's lack of executive experience was almost always Topic No. 1. And his virtual blank slate pertaining to foreign policy produced more attack lines by his opponents than anything else.

During the Democratic primaries, Hillary Clinton made much hay when she unleashed the famed "3 a.m. call" television ad questioning whether a nation at war could risk electing someone so green as its leader. She made dramatic gains following the ad's unveiling, taking Obama to the wire in a spirited intra-party fight.

With an electorate more concerned about the current financial crisis and other more worrisome domestic issues, Obama beat McCain comfortably to win the election. But the world's bad actors and flash points will not simply go away. Fortunately for him, some of the potential problems will remain more long-term and less urgent, such as China, India and Brazil; while others, such as Venezuela, Cuba and Africa, will not be strategically pressing enough to warrant emergency actions.

So just who'll be responsible for Obama's first 3 a.m. phone call at the White House? After careful consideration, these are RealClearWorld's top five suspects:

No. 5 Russia


2) The G-20 Summit Was a Failure
By Desmond Lachman

Global financial markets want an immediate, bold, and coordinated policy response. G-20 members did not provide it.

This past weekend’s G-20 financial summit has to be considered a failure. At a time when the global recession shows every sign of worsening, G-20 members were unable to agree on a concrete policy response. This raises serious questions about whether the G-20 is an appropriate forum in which to coordinate monetary and fiscal measures for the world's major economies during a crisis.

The most recent data from the United States, Europe, and Japan confirm that the financial crisis has dealt a severe blow to the world economy. Global equity and credit markets remain highly fragile, and most analysts expect the developed economies to experience significantly negative growth for the next few quarters. Meanwhile, it appears that growth has slowed abruptly in emerging market economies such as China and India.

G-20 members should have responded to this dismal outlook with firm action. They should have focused on immediate fiscal stimulus programs, which would have been a useful complement to the coordinated interest rate cuts and bank rescue measures announced at the previous G-20 meeting in early October.

At a time when the global recession shows every sign of worsening, G-20 members were unable to agree on a concrete policy response.Instead, the weekend summit produced merely a nebulous commitment to “take whatever actions might be necessary” to stabilize global financial markets and an agreement on principles for reforming both the financial system and multilateral lending agencies. Mercifully, G-20 members agreed to pursue these reforms within a framework of free and open markets. Yet their vague pledges were announced in a wordy communiqué that was short on specifics.

Their lack of urgency is disturbing. At a time when global financial markets are clamoring for an immediate, bold, and coordinated policy response, G-20 members have delayed their next summit until April 2009. This only heightens the probability that equity and credit markets will experience another meltdown as the global economy sinks deeper into recession.

Why did the weekend summit yield such meager results? Several reasons. For one thing, it was convened hastily at the behest of French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, both of whom were motivated more by domestic political concerns than they were by a pressing desire to stabilize the global economy. As for President Bush, his lame-duck status deprived the meeting of the strong leadership that it desperately needed. For better or worse, President-elect Obama decided to skip the summit and watch its proceedings from Chicago.

On a more basic level, the large and diverse G-20 may not be an appropriate forum in which to tackle a crisis whose roots lie in the U.S. and European economies. Indeed, it might be easier to achieve policy coordination among the major economies in the smaller G-7, assuming that China were included.

Ultimately, real economic leadership must come from the United States. The world trusts that Barack Obama will provide that leadership after January 20. Let us hope that global financial markets can wait until then.


3) Is Obama a Middle East ‘splitter’?
By Gideon Rachman



Historians are sometimes divided into lumpers and splitters. The splitters like to chop problems up into lots of small bits. The lumpers like to link them altogether.

Would-be Middle East peacemakers can be categorised in the same way. The lumpers want a “comprehensive peace settlement” that links together all the problems in the region – Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Israel-Palestine, even Iran. The splitters want to deal with all these problems separately.

David Miliband, Britain’s foreign secretary, used the day of the US presidential election to come out as a “lumper”. He made a speech arguing that “the only way to settle the Palestinian issue is as part of a wider drive for a new alignment in the Middle East ... At its core is a Palestinian state, but as part of a broader peace between Israel and the Arab world.”

Mr Miliband even sees Iran as part of the same lumpy problem. He argues that the “Iranian nuclear programme poses a threat not just to Israel, but to the stability of the Middle East ... which makes the case for a comprehensive approach that much more urgent”.

The attractions of lumping are obvious. The idea of fixing the whole of the Middle East in one go is delightful. And it is true that all of these problems are linked. To take just one example, Iran’s poisonous relationship with the US has encouraged it to make trouble in Lebanon and Palestine, by sponsoring Hizbollah and Hamas.

But while lumping works as an argument, it risks failing as a policy. There are three obvious problems. First, there is the risk of being over-ambitious. If nothing is resolved until everything is resolved there is a risk that you will end up with nothing.

Second, there is the problem of which end of the lump you attack first. The much-reviled neoconservatives were also lumpers. But they thought that change in Iraq was the key to the transformation of the Middle East. Mr Miliband, in common with most mainstream European politicians, sees an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement as the key to the lump.

This brings us to the third problem with the lump thesis. It is not clear that progress in one area will necessarily unlock the others. Let us say that the Iranians are miraculously persuaded to abandon their nuclear ambitions. Does that automatically lead to the establishment of a viable Palestinian state? Clearly not. Or put it the other way round: let us say the Israelis are miraculously persuaded to grant the Palestinians a viable state. Does that persuade the Iranians to abandon all thoughts of pursuing nuclear weapons? Clearly not. In fact, linking Iran and Israel-Palestine could inadvertently do the Iranians a favour, by tacitly conceding them a legitimate role in Gaza and in Lebanon.

What probably is true is the more modest claim: significant progress in one area would improve prospects in another. So if there were a rapprochement between Iran and the US that involved the Iranians cutting off support for Hamas, the Israelis would feel more secure – and that might make a Middle East peace settlement easier to achieve. Similarly, the establishment of a proper Palestinian state would remove a source of anger and anti-western grievance across the region, and so undermine an angry, anti-western regime such as Iran.

So how will President-elect Obama respond to all this – and will he be a lumper or a splitter?

I think, as a matter of practical politics, Mr Obama will have to be a splitter. The state of the American economy is going to eat up most of his working day. When he turns to foreign policy, the Israeli-Palestinian problem will come fairly low down his list of priorities – behind, in rough order of urgency, Iraq, Afghanistan, climate change, Iran, international economics and Russia. He will see the Iranian nuclear issue as too important to await progress on Israel-Palestine. Withdrawal from Iraq is a central pledge of his administration, regardless of what is happening with Israel. If an Obama administration sees chances to make progress on Lebanon, or with Syria, it will take them as they arise.

European diplomats who have dealt with the new American team say that they have been assured that Mr Obama does regard the Israel-Palestine problem as a priority and something that the new administration intends to start work on quickly. (It is generally held that President Bill Clinton left the Middle East peace process until too late in his second term and that this mistake has been repeated by President George W. Bush.) A “serious” commitment by Mr Obama need not mean launching immediately into an important global conference. Simply appointing a high-profile envoy would be regarded as a good earnest of intent.

Mr Obama may well oblige on the envoy front. But I doubt he will want to spend much political capital and time on the Middle East peace process when there are so many other priorities clamouring for his attention.

A decision to put the Israeli-Palestinian question on the back burner would, however, be a shame. That is not because it necessarily holds the key to solving all the other problems of the Middle East. It is because the situation – although relatively quiet at the moment – remains dangerous, unstable and a disaster for the population. Ignore the Palestinian problem when things are quiet and it is liable to force its way back on to the agenda – by blowing up at an even more inconvenient time.

4)Iraq 'Fails' Upward: Iraq's security deal with U.S. shows gains amid 'failure' mantras.

One of the least attractive features of the recent Presidential campaign was the Democratic Party's characterization of the war in Iraq as a complete, total and irredeemable failure. Essentially, theirs was an exercise in political nihilism. Notwithstanding a large American political and military commitment overseas, the Democrats chose to argue that nothing good had come of this.


On Sunday, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's cabinet approved by a 21-7 vote a status of forces agreement with the U.S. It says that U.S. forces will withdraw from Iraq's populated areas by June 2009 and all forces will withdraw by the end of 2011.

We have our own misgivings about the limits on U.S. forces suggested by the 2009 date. We suspect both sides understand the need to revisit this if conditions on the ground change dramatically. With George Bush gone, though, Mr. Maliki may have a harder time getting President Obama to approve U.S. troops leaving their bases, no matter how badly needed.

This still won't satisfy the Democratic left in Congress or in the blogosphere, but now they will be President Obama's problem, as he transitions from campaign rhetoric to international realities. To that end, we offer a brief compendium of campaign myths about "failure" in Iraq that are belied by the Maliki government's security deal with the U.S.

Foremost among the nothing-works-in-Iraq charges was that the government there was hopelessly divided and would never get its act together. Competence, however, is precisely what it reflected in this deal.

The status of forces agreement now moves from the cabinet to Iraq's parliament, where it must receive at least 51% approval. By all reports, that is considered almost certain. The parliament's two major parties -- representing Shiites and Kurds -- have the votes to approve the deal. On votes this fundamental, though, the Maliki government has sought strong majorities to broaden support for the government, which means support from Sunnis in parliament. That, too, looks likely. As one Sunni parliamentarian, with succinct logic, told the Wall Street Journal: "Under this security agreement, Iraq is in control; and under the U.N. mandate, the U.S. was in control, so which deal is better?"

The Iraq-as-failure lobby also insisted that Prime Minister Maliki, a Shiite, was a pawn of Iran, and that the Iranians effectively dominated the Iraqi political process. With this deal, as with the Maliki-ordered routs -- by the Iraq army -- of Shiite militias in Basra and Sadr City last spring, the Prime Minister established his bona fides as an independent player. Iran almost surely will try to blow up this agreement.

American voters were given to understand that the ungrateful Iraqis don't deserve U.S. support. Setting aside the historically poor results of American pull-the-plug policies toward allies (think Iran since the Khomeini revolution), the agreement's 2011 timetable makes clear that Iraqis understand that a U.S. presence is crucial to preserving their government's achievements.

As recent press reports make clear, those achievements are real. The Iraqi military has proven its ability to secure and pacify the cities. Civic activity has returned. Oil production has resumed. Nearby nations -- Jordan, Bahrain, the UAE -- are engaging Iraq diplomatically.


Mr. Obama's foreign policy advisers are capable of taking issue with each of these assertions of progress. Yes, fragile democracies can buckle and break. Pot-shotting, however, is a pastime for out-of-power parties. The new Obama national-security team will bear responsibility for building on the concrete gains of the Bush-Petraeus military surge and of Prime Minister Maliki's government.

Failure to capitalize on this progress would pitch the new Obama Administration's Gulf policies back into the arms of the rejectionist wing that ran the party's campaigns. For the good of the U.S.'s reputation as a reliable partner, and of the Iraqi people, we hope their judgment will be to build forward rather than walk away.

A good start would be to ensure that the U.S. will be there in substantial numbers at least through Iraq's elections early next year. More than security, we can help assure the different factions that the election is fair -- a value even our own factions can agree on.

5) CNN: One Year Analysis: Bias is creeping back at CNN as HonestReporting reviews one year of coverage.

HonestReporting has been tracking bias at CNN for many years. We named CNN a "runner-up" in our 2001 Dishonest Reporting award thanks to analysis showing that its coverage disproportionately relied far more on images and interviews with Palestinians than with Israelis. Since then, we have critiqued CNN several times. One example was CNN's undue haste to air breaking news, when it accepted the Palestinian accusations related to the "Gaza Beach Massacre" only to issue a retraction later.

Last year, we named CNN senior correspondent Christiane Amanpour winner of our "2007 Dishonest Reporting" award for her series in which she drew parallels between Jewish and Islamic terrorists.

Against this background, we decided to see how CNN's Middle East reporting stood up as a whole. Since CNN.com bases more and more of its coverage on video, we decided to analyze CNN video reports available online. Over the last 12 months, after viewing video segments from CNN correspondents as well as raw video footage hosted by CNN on its website, we found several disturbing patterns.


CNN: November 1, 2007-October 31, 2008 - Summary of Findings:

Sixty-seven minutes of the combined video segments were spent airing images sympathetic to the situation of the Palestinians. Only a total of 31 minutes and forty-five seconds illustrated the Israeli side.

Almost twice as many people interviewed (56) were critical of Israeli polices as opposed to those who were critical of Palestinian actions or defended Israel (30).

Twenty-one out of thirty-one cases (67%) in which CNN hosted raw footage on its website reflected negatively on Israel.
I. Balance

We reviewed hundreds of video reports hosted on CNN's website (all publicly available in CNN archives at CNN.com.) From these, we selected 53 reports in which the subject matter dealt with an aspect of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We excluded reports that focused on subject matter that was either not in dispute or not relevant. So, for example, a report about domestic Israeli politics was not included while reports on rocket attacks against Sderot or military strikes against Gaza were.

We then recorded the total time in the reports that featured images likely to draw sympathy for one side or the other. Sometimes the entire length of the report highlighted one side's plight. Other times the report included images representing both sides. Our goal was to determine whether CNN was giving more time to footage favoring one side of the conflict over the other. We found that video footage favored the Palestinians over Israel by an almost two-to-one margin.


Example A: "Gaza City in the Dark"


Gaza City in the Dark is an extremely telling report. For the first half of the segment, correspondent Ben Wedeman reports on the blackout in Gaza City and how difficult it has made life for Gaza's residents. Throughout the segment, we are shown multiple scenes of Gazans holding candles. However, when questioned by CNN anchor Adrian Finnigan, Wedeman admits:

"I think it does appear that there is a fair amount of manipulation of the power cuts by Hamas for publicity purposes. It is unclear what is behind these power cuts in Gaza."

Yet Wedeman and others continue to report from Gaza about the Israeli blockade in the weeks after this report aired. Instead of acting on their suspicion and investigating and debunking the Palestinian claims, we simply see more reports of Israeli-imposed blackouts and candlelit anti-Israel protests.

Example B: "Palestinian Prisoners Released"

The story referenced above from August 26 reports on Israel's release of almost 200 Palestinian security prisoners. The vast majority of the report shows a festive atmosphere in which freed prisoners are greeted as heroes. For two minutes and ten seconds, we see images that reflect the Palestinian perspective - joy for those released and a plea for those still jailed to also be freed.

Towards the end of the piece, a mere twenty seconds gives the Israeli perspective: Freed terrorists in the past have gone on to commit murder and other acts of terrorism. Some may claim that this segment is "balanced" since both perspectives are represented. But to focus on one side for more than seven times the amount devoted to the other side is anything but.

Example C: "Daily Suffering in Gaza"

CNN correspondent Ben Wedeman again details the daily suffering in Gaza. However, there is little context given for the reasons behind Israel's partial blockade. There are no interviews with Israeli government officials explaining the raid or even a short clip of life in Sderot under rocket attack. A man identified as a "human rights activist" tells CNN the reason for the suffering: "You are punishing a nation in an unprecedented way for just one reason: because these people elected Hamas, that's all." With just a single reference to "fighting between Israel and the militants," the entire four minutes and twenty-five seconds of this report detail Palestinian grievances.

II. Perspective

Besides time devoted to different views of the conflict, the choice of interview subjects for CNN broadcasts is also key. Whether the person being interviewed is a government official, a technical "expert", or just a "man in the street," that person's opinions are broadcast around the world and can determine the balance of a news segment.

Since Israelis and Palestinians can be (and often are) critical of their own governments, we didn't simply divide people by their ethnicity. Instead, we recorded how many individual interviews in the reports promoted critical views of Israeli actions versus those who were critical of Palestinian actions. We found that in the 86 interviews embedded in the video segments that we analyzed, almost twice as many were critical of Israel (56) than those critical of Palestinian actions (30).


Example D: "Forced Turncoats?"


The accusation that Israel demands that Palestinians seeking medical treatment within Israel act as informants. Two Palestinians are given time to make their personal claims followed by a woman representing a non-governmental organization. Against these three narratives, Israeli spokesperson Mark Regev is allotted a short time to rebut the accusations. But his defense is completely overwhelmed by the time spent with the Palestinian patients.

Example E: "Gaza Students Desperate to Go"


The struggles of a small number of Palestinian students refused permission to leave Gaza to study in the United States. Two Palestinian students tell their stories while an "expert" falsely claims that Israel controls all of Gaza borders. In fact, Israel today has no presence on Gaza's border with Egypt. Yet the viewer would not know this from the report. Once again, Mark Regev voices Israel's position but is immediately contradicted by the "expert's" false statement.

III. Raw Footage: Negative Impressions

A highly questionable CNN practice is to include raw video footage (often from the Associated Press) on its website mixed with narrated news reports. Middle East news is complicated enough to explain to viewers with the aid of a correspondent. Making sense of events by viewing very selective raw video footage is impossible. We found that in almost seventy percent of the videos we analyzed, actions shown without proper context reflect negatively on Israel.

While CNN is not responsible for content provided by outside news sources such as AP, CNN is responsible for vetting such material before posting it on its web site.

Example F: "More Violence In Gaza"


CNN hosts an AP video showing the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike on a car in Gaza. No reasons for the Israeli strike are given. In fact, in this particular strike, members of the Islamic Jihad terrorist group, responsible for firing rockets into the Israeli city of Sderot were killed. All we see are the smoldering remains of a car in Gaza surrounded by a crowd and a shot of bodies on stretchers. These videos are subsequently employed by those who accuse Israel of unprovoked aggression against civilians in Gaza.

Example G: "West Bank Clashes"


A number of AP videos are hosted on the CNN website under the same headline: "West Bank Clashes." No matter the date, these videos are very similar, all showing heavily armed Israeli soldiers discharging their weapons and throwing tear gas grenades. They all also show people described by the captions as "protestors" waving flags, running from the soldiers, and occasionally throwing rocks. (Examples from 2008: October 3, August 2, July 9, and May 29).

The viewer, however, has no way of knowing that these so-called "non-violent" Palestinian demonstrations are anything but. As we have documented, the goal of the protestors is often to use enough violence to provoke the Israeli soldiers into a response while the cameras are rolling. These raw footage clips portray Israel in a very negative light compared to the protestors.

Conclusions

To its credit, CNN has shown a past willingness to listen to criticism and make changes. Several years ago, when HonestReporting subscribers flooded CNN on a daily basis with angry letters demanding better coverage, the network made several specific policy changes in response to the accusations of bias. (Read the whole story here.) For a few years, Middle East coverage improved significantly.

Yet, as this report shows, anti-Israel bias has crept back into CNN's coverage. That is why it is an appropriate time to demand that CNN take a comprehensive look at its Middle East reporting and set objective standards to make sure that its coverage is not tainted with bias. Specifically, CNN must:

Ensure that reports provide appropriate balance in terms of images of the conflict and embedded interviews. Remove unedited raw video footage or provide proper context for that footage. Avoid excessive haste by taking time to ascertain exactly what is happening before broadcasting confusing footage. Provide more information in video headlines and captions.

HonestReporting subscribers should demand that CNN provide more objective and balanced coverage by going to the CNN contact page. We will continue to monitor CNN in our regular weekly communiques and for special reports such as this.

6) New missile marks 'significant leap' for Iran capabilities
By Lauren Gelfand and Alon Ben-David

Iran announced on 12 November that it had test-fired a new medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM) with a stated range of 2,000 km.

The missile, a two-stage solid-fuel system known as Sajil, was launched from a site in western Iran near the Iraq border towards a target 800 km away, according to Western intelligence sources. As Jane's went to press it was still unknown whether the launch was completely successful, although it appeared that the separation marking the two stages did occur.

"This is a whole new missile," Uzi Rubin, former director of Israel's Ballistic Missile Defence Organisation, told Jane's . "Unlike other Iranian missiles, the Sajil bears no resemblance to any North Korean, Russian, Chinese or Pakistani [missile technology]. It demonstrates a significant leap in Iran's missile capabilities.

"Regardless of the success of the test, this missile places Iran in the realm of multiple-stage missiles, which means that they are on the way to having intercontinental ballistic missile capabilities," he added.

In statements released by state media, Iranian Defence Minister Brigadier General Mustafa Mohammad Najjar hailed the launch of the Sajil missile as "very fast", adding that it would be easy to produce. Tehran's Al-Alam television reported that the new missile utilises "composite solid-propellant fuel" and that unlike the Shahab-3 MRBM, which is launched only vertically, the Sajil could be launched "at a variable angle".

Video released by Iranian state media clearly shows a two-stage missile with a guidance system on the second stage and a triconic re-entry vehicle identical to that of the Shahab-3. However, the Sajil's diameter appears greater than the 1.25 m of the Shahab. Intelligence sources consider the Sajil to be a new name for Iran's Ashura MRBM, which failed to deploy its second stage in an unsuccessful launch in November 2007.

With a purported range of 2,000 km, the Sajil brings Moscow, Athens and southern Italy within striking distance from Iran. It is this kind of threat that has spurred the US development of a missile defence shield in Europe - most recently seen with the planned placement of interceptors in Poland - despite objections from Russia.

"This is a growing threat and we need to be able to deal with future missile attacks from Iran," said US State Department spokesperson Robert Wood. "This is something of concern to the international community, and I'm including Russia in the international community here. And so we think missile defence is in the interests of not only the United States and its European allies, but also Russia."

7) The Saudi Peace Initiative: "Auschwitz Borders": First Introduced by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, March 28, 2008
By Eili Hertz

What Arab countries failed to achieve by use of force during the past 60 years, they hope to achieve by this renewed Saudi 'Peace Initiative':

Israel to withdraw to the non-secure borders that existed prior to the 1967 Six-Day War, borders that invited aggression - frontiers that the eloquent former Israeli diplomat, the late Abba Eban, branded "Auschwitz borders."

Illegal Arab aggression against the territorial integrity and political independence of Israel in 1948, 1967, and 1973 cannot and should not be rewarded. Arab attempts to 'roll back the clock' as if nothing happened, are a baseless ploy designed to use the 'Peace Initiative' as leverage to bring about a greater Israeli withdrawal from parts of Judie and Samaria [western Palestine] and to gain a broader base from which to continue to attack Israel.

Furthermore, Saudi Arabian King Saud ibn Abdul Aziz had stated in 1954 - before the 1967 Six-Day War and before the 'Occupation': "The Arab nations should sacrifice up to 10 million of their 50 million people, if necessary, to wipe out Israel ... Israel to the Arab world is like a cancer to the human body, and the only way of remedy is to uproot it, just like a cancer."

Saudi Arabia is one of the worst offenders of civil, religious, and political rights having a 'judicial' system that sanctions stoning individuals to death for adultery, beheading criminals with a sword, and amputation for theft, including cross-amputations of a right arm and a left leg that leave offenders horribly disabled for life.

Freedom House, a non-sectarian organization that was founded by Eleanor Roosevelt to monitor civil rights around the world, stated in its 2008 survey that Saudi Arabia is "Not [a] Free" country. Political rights and civil liberties are absent or virtually nonexistent, and people experience severely restricted rights of expression and association - all as a result of the extremely oppressive nature of the regime.

Professor, Judge Stephen M. Schwebel, past President of the International Court of Justice (I.C.J.) made it clear: "No legal right shall spring from a wrong" and this principle of law applies to Saudi Arabia as well.

Why would anyone make a deal with this kind of regime?