Today's New York Times carries a Reuters dispatch from Muscat, Oman, which reports that the secretary general of the Gulf Cooperation Council "criticized Baghdad for continuing antagonism toward its pro-Western neighbors Saudi Arabia and Kuwait."
It's inaccurate to call Saudi Arabia "pro-Western." Consider that the Saudi government daily Al-Watan on December 9, 2001, published an article titled "The Jewish organizations are implementing their strategic hellish plan to take over the world." The article reported, "At the end of the last century, the Jewish organizations consolidated a hellish plan to take over the world by sparking revolutions or taking control of the keys to governments in various countries, first and foremost the US and Russia."
The article went on, according to a translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute, "In conclusion, the reader is likely to wonder about the extent of the Jews' control . . . So as to prove our words, we will not address Jewish control of the media in Western countries, primarily in the US. . . but we will give an example of the Jews' infiltration and control of the top positions in the American administration. This control aroused astonishment in the days of the Clinton administration. . . .: Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, FBI chief George Tenet, Defense Secretary William Cohen, Clinton's national security advisor Sandy Berger -- all Jews. Through this infiltration of the various American administrations, and through controlling the media and money, the Jews impose their agenda on the other peoples, and the Jewish sense of superiority, whose aim is to recruit the peoples and their resources for the good of Jewish interests and their racist state Israel, remain unchanged."
It's not just Jews the Saudis have a problem with. They don't like Christians, either. As the U.S. State Department put it in a report on religious freedom in Saudi Arabia: "Freedom of religion does not exist. Islam is the official religion, and all citizens must be Muslims. . . . Conversion by a Muslim to another religion is considered apostasy. Public apostasy is a crime under Shari'a (Islamic law) and punishable by death."
In addition, there's the fact that Saudi Arabia spawned Osama Bin Laden and more than a dozen of the terrorists who hijacked planes and flew them into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.
It's a mystery how, in light of all this, the Times can pass along to its readers a news article describing Saudi Arabia as "pro-Western."
Surprisingly: A front-page article in today's New York Times reports that President Bush "announced the American withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, with surprisingly little backlash from Russia or the allies." The lack of backlash was "surprising" only to those, like the Times, who had overestimated the amount of backlash. There were plenty of people who had a more clear-eyed view of the matter and who weren't particularly surprised.
Can't Spell: An item in the "boldface names" column of the metro section of today's New York Times refers to "Rabbi Arthur Schneider." A news article on the front page of today's Times, which mentions the same event, spells it correctly as "Rabbi Arthur Schneier."
Can't Spell: A dispatch from Crawford, Texas, in today's New York Times reports, "The White House announced today that Valmay Khalilzad, an Afghan-American on the staff of the National Security Council, would be the special presidential envoy to Afghanistan." In fact Mr. Khalilzad's first name is "Zalmay," with a "Z," or "Zal," for short.