The world watched with horror as sons of American citizens came back in coffins after a horrific blast that killed 19 servicemen. President Clinton, during the weekend, was at Eglin Air Force Base mourning the death of these loyal Americans and consoling their families. Absent from that public gathering were any Saudis or representatives of Bandar bin Sultan, the Ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Absent from that gathering were any US officials asking why. Absent from this gathering were any citizens who have lost dear ones that could receive a conceivable answer and reasonable response to their questions.

In Saudi Arabia, a minority holds the majority at bay. Not only do the Saudis not know what is going on, the Americans, including the FBI, were not allowed to know what is going on. The secrecy and hypocrisy of the Saudi regime has reached such arrogance that Americans are not at liberty to defend their own lives when it comes to Saudi Arabia. Imagine for a moment what would happen if the reverse is true. Americans extremists blasting away at innocent Saudis in this country. The media with all its might will rise to defend the hopeless Saudis and denounce any extremist elements in this culture. So the question is why the media is not rising up for these Americans and denouncing the totalitarian Saudi regime whose sole purpose is to steal and loot the country ? Why do we, as the largest democracy in this world, still support despotic regimes like Saudi Arabia?

The accountability issue under the Saudi set of rules is a hot button for many Saudis. Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world whose rulers are not accountable to anybody or anything. Think about this for a moment. Even Qaddafi is accountable after the Pan Am 103 terrorist act. Clinton is accountable to many balancing forces that our great grandfathers saw important to implement in our democratic system. He is accountable first and foremost to the American public, then to Congress, then to the media, then to US businesses, and then to the importance of his post and the responsible weight he must carry to insure the US is always ahead. In Saudi Arabia, the King is not accountable to the people because he is not voted by the people, he is not accountable to a Congress or a parliamentary body because none exists, he is not accountable to the media because he controls it and no one else has the right to establish a non-government controlled media, he is not accountable to Saudi businesses because he decides which of these businesses gets how much of the pie that gets divided between himself and his family prior to any budget earmarking, he is not accountable to his post because he has total control over his decision making, he is not accountable to his conscious because he does not think that people have the right to question his judgment and therefore his conscious is clean. In fact, accountability is such a non existing entity that when the Saudis wanted a fundamentalist dissident out of London, they had to threaten British businesses and the British Government against imposed reprisals in the form of contracts against British businesses if the dissident is not extradited. The issue upset someone high enough in the British government that he decided to leak the story rather than subject his government to blackmail and threats by the al-Saud family. Had al-Saud felt accountability, they would have thought twice about their action of threatening a modern western country just to silence one man with a fax machine.

Accountability under al-Saud is quickly becoming an issue of why do we allow anyone to be so much out of control in the first place ? What is it that this family brings to the US that the US will go out of its way not to offend them or bother them ? Stability; we know what that means after the latest blast that happened in Saudi Arabia. Security; against whom and for how long ? Friendship; is the US putting friends ahead of interests ? we doubt it. So what is it that makes the US support Saudi Arabia so relentlessly ? What makes the US think that any replacement would not maintain low oil prices yet be respected by Saudi Arabia and even the Muslim world ? What makes the US think that a new respected leader would not be able to control fundamentalists through common sense and a balance that was maintained very well prior to the Gulf War ? Is it because we have close elections and the administration would not want to rattle the Saudis and rattle its peace chances in the region ? Are our planners working on alternative scenarios that would kill the reason for existence for this website and would make Saudis once again proud of their country and support it instead of bombing it ? The answer to all these question is found in the grim face of Bandar bin Sultan. For the first time, he even realizes that this is the beginning of the end of al-Saud rule if drastic changes are not brought upon by open minded people who can deal with extremism and moderates in a much better way than King Fahd has been able up to date.