Factions within Factions within........

The Middle East is a complicated place. In Iraq we not only have the Shi'a and Sunni factions we have factions within those factions. Within the Bush administration we have factions that disagree on what factions we should support and even what factions within those factions we should report. Not complicated enough for you yet? Well hold on, according to Professor Cutler we have factions within the Saudi Government that have paired up with factions within the Bush administration and other foreign policy movers in the US.

In a November 30, 2006 post, I suggested the following:

[T]here are signs of a growing Right Arabist split regarding US policy toward Iran. The factions within such a split are representing by Vice President Cheney, who is trying to bolster Saudi resolve to resist Iranian regional dominance, and James Baker, who is trying to facilitate Saudi detente with the Iranians.

These signs may also be linked to factional battles within the House of Saud although limited transparency make these more difficult to discern on the basis of open source reporting.

Cutler thinks that the resignation of Prince Turki al-Faisal yesterday may have made this split more transparent. Go read Cheney, Baker, and the House of Saud for the details but in short do we have a Baker(Bush)/Bander faction and a Cheney/King Abdullah faction in the US and Saudi Arabia? Or is it something else? Whatever it is it spells trouble for the middle east and the world. There are far too many shades of gray for the black and white George W. Bush and the delusional neocons to handle. And of course Cheney is just trying to figure out the best way to get his hands on the oil and the power that brings.