The close US/Saudi alliance and the massive amount of weapons and intelligence lavished on the regime in Riyadh by the West is one of the great unmentionables in Western discourse…
It’s not hard to understand why so many of the elite sectors of the West want everyone to avert their eyes from this deep and close relationship with the Saudis. It’s because that alliance single-handedly destroys almost every propagandistic narrative told to the Western public about that region.
As the always-expanding “War on Terror” enters its 14th year, the ostensible target — radical, violent versions of Islam — is fueled far more by the US’s closest allies than any of the countries the US has been fighting under the “War on Terror” banner. Beyond that, the alliance proves the complete absurdity of believing that the US and UK’s foreign policies, let alone their various wars, have anything to do with protecting human rights or subverting tyranny and fanaticism. And it renders a complete laughingstock any attempts to depict the US government as some sort of crusader for freedom and democracy or whatever other pretty goals are regularly attributed to it by its helpful press.
—Glenn Greenwald
US State Department “Welcomes” News That Saudi Arabia Will Head UN Human Rights Panel
