READER TRENT TELENKO takes exception to the Ralph Peters article that I link to below, and offers this competing analysis:

Thanks to demographic changes, the Saudis can no longer credibly threaten Western economies with an oil embargo. The real Saudi oil weapon amounts to a scene from the Mel Brooks movie “Blazing Saddles.” They are playing the part of the black sheriff who faces down a lynch mob trying to kill him by putting a gun to his own head and saying “Stop right there, or I shoot the Nigger.” The Saudis are counting on the fact that anyone replacing them will be worse than they are and thus the outside world needs the Al-Saud clan in charge of the Arabian oil fields.

The Bush policy initiatives with Russia, its plans to invade and overthrow Saddam, and encouragement of the Iranian resistance amount to a plan to eliminate the Saudi oil weapon. If the Iraqi oil fields are fully operational and in the hands of American oil companies, the Iranian state is in the hands of a rational non-mullah western aligned regime and Russia is maximizing its oil production. The Saudi oil weapon is eliminated.

At that point, all it will take to over throw the Saudis is to remove our troops rom Saudi bases and state publicly that the fate of the Al-Saud clan is irrelevant to US interests. The lack of foreign hard currency from crashed oil prices means that the Saudi princes cannot buy off the Wahhabi masses and they will get eaten.

After the Wahhabi revolution and subsequent American blockade, the Western Europeans and 3rd worlders will be screaming for an American occupation of Saudi oil fields.

This is an interesting analysis. It is, of course, inconsistent with what we’re hearing from the White House, but that hardly proves that it’s not true.