Robert Fisk Goes Mad

IN one of the most bizarre and mean-spirited attacks on Saudi Arabia, Robert Fisk, the veteran British correspondent who likes to whine in his dispatches from Beirut about how bad America is in the Middle East, launched a full-frontal attack Tuesday on King Abdullah’s state visit to Britain this week.

As you can see above, the Independent’s headline screamed “King Abdullah flies in to lecture us on terrorism”. Fisk’s major gripe with the Kingdom is its backing of Saddam Hussein’s regime in the 1980s in its battles with Iran. He seems to have forgotten that Britain and the US both fully supported Saddam too at the time, and were more than glad to sell them a virtual armada of weapons that Iraq used on its own population and Iran.

As Fisk rightly points out in his article, after this unfair and one-sided attack on Saudi Arabia, he probably won’t be invited here any time soon.

Meanwhile, the British government was quick to respond to King Abdullah’s claim in an interview with the BBC that the Kingdom had warned Britain of a possible terror attack before the 7/7 attacks in London. Not surprisingly, the British intelligence agency MI5 on Tuesday denied that Saudi Arabia had ever warned the UK of the impending attack, obviously feeling guilty at its own sorry lack of intelligence which could have foiled the 7/7 attacks.

The Guardian had a weird Steve Bell cartoon making fun of Abdullah's visit. Click here to see it. It's supposed to skewer the alleged Saudi like of paying bribes and getting kickbacks. What most Britons are neglecting to mention are the huge amounts of weapons we keep buying from the UK, which single-handedly keep British Aerospace afloat.

This British hypocrisy of happily selling us tons of stupid things we really don't need, then whinging when Abdullah visits is typical of the double-faced treachery practiced by some Brits. At least the Americans constantly criticize the Kingdom, and not just when a Saudi leader visits Washington.