Bloodless Coup

W and the Saudis (or at least Bandar)

Quite a lot of the left-leaning blogs have noted the section of the latest Bob Woodward book were presidential candidate George W. Bush is deeply befuddled about why he should care about North Korea (and, relatedly, his deep disdain for the idea that he should read reports or even history (gasp!) on the subject. Now I think it's entirely fair to note this and show it as yet another sign of a clueless, disinterested, incurious president who doesn't want to be bothered with detail and can only see things in somewhat sloppy 96-point terms (a situation that every foreign policy decision making scholar would tell you is rife for foreign policy catastrophes, but hey, the FPDM section at ISA doesn't get to pick the president). But that's ground we've covered before, and his disinterest in North Korea has long been clear. I think the appalling, perhaps most deeply troubling thing, about the passage though is this - the current president of the United States relying on the expertise of the Saudi ambassador to the United States to create his worldview. Ummm, isn't that a wee bit of a problem? Maybe I should pay more attention to those books about the Bush family and the Saudis.