TEN YEARS AGO ON INSTAPUNDIT:

The Saudis provided — at a minimum — money to al Qaeda. I know it. Kleiman knows it. Graham knows it. You know it. The administration knows it. The Saudis damn sure know it. Al Qaeda knows it. The families of the victims know it. I’ll lay odds that my Chinese taxi-driver on the way home tonight knows it. Yet its classified?!?

What’s this, the betrayal that dare not speak its name?

If the Bush administration’s plan does not ultimately include regime change in Saudi Arabia, it is destined for failure and the President is going to lose a lot of supporters very quickly. This had all better be part of a brilliant Machiavellian strategy to oust the House of Saud, while Poppy Bush lulls them into a false sense of security by groveling before them for donations to that sanctuary for the needy and oppressed, Andover Academy.

Fracking may do for the Saudi problem what a decade of diplomacy, “smart” and otherwise, has failed to do.

UPDATE: Reader Matt Borcherding writes:

Terrorism is also a Iranian export, fueled by their oil money. Russia’s thuggism, including its invasion of Georgia, is paid for by their oil and natural gas exports. Here in the Western Hemisphere, Venezuela’s oil funds Marxist support if not outright terrorism. But the same argument still applies to all: cheap fracking and shale oil equals less money to the enemies of progress, democracy, and freedom.

Indeed.