A Saudi envoy has assured the Bush administration that it will keep oil prices in a range of $22 to $28 per barrel and will not take actions that would harm the U.S. economy, the White House said on Monday. White House spokesman Scott McClellan declined to comment directly on remarks by journalist Bob Woodward saying that Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, had promised President Bush the Saudis would cut oil prices before November to ensure the U.S. economy was strong on election day.
| Funny, last week the Saudis were supposed to be raising prices to insure Bush would lose the election. |
| Two contradictory statements. I guess we'll know which one's correct by September... |
But McClellan said Bandar, in recent talks at the White House, "committed to making sure prices remained in a range of, I believe, $22 to $28 per barrel of oil, and that they don't want to do anything that would harm our consumers or harm our economy. Prices should be determined by market forces, and we are always in close contact with producers around the world on these issues."
| "Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer." |
Woodward, author of the new fiction book "Plan of Attack" on Bush's preparations for the Iraq war, said Prince Bandar pledged the Saudis would try to fine-tune oil prices to prime the U.S. economy for the election, a move they understood would favor Bush. Bush has been under attack from Democrats in recent weeks for failing to stem rising domestic gasoline prices which have hit a record of $1.80 per gallon, according to the U.S. motorists group AAA.
| And now he'll be attacked for stemming the rise in price. |
Prince Bandar has been the Saudi envoy to the United States for 20 years and is part of the Saudi royal family, which has had a close relationship with the Bush family for years.
| Yup, just like clockwork. |
On April 1, Bandar reassured the White House that the kingdom would not allow oil shortages to hurt world economic growth after Saudi Arabia led a push by OPEC to cut output by 1 million barrels a day from April.
| Gee, it's like we've got the goods on the Saudis, or something. |
| UPDATE: Boy, that didn't take long... |
Democrat John Kerry on Monday voiced unwavering support for special U.S. ties with Israel and vowed to end "sweetheart relationships" with Arab countries like Saudi Arabia that he said funded terror. Courting the Jewish vote in Florida, the state at the center of the disputed 2000 election, the presumptive Democratic nominee cited a report that President Bush and his senior advisers made "a secret White House deal" with the Saudis to deliver lower gas prices. "Last night ... it was reported that in the Oval Office discussion around whether to invade Iraq that the president, the vice president (Dick Cheney), the secretary of defense (Donald Rumsfeld) made a deal with Saudi Arabia that would deliver lower gas prices," Kerry told a town hall meeting in Lake Worth. "But here's the catch," he said. "The American people would have to wait until the election, until November of 2004."
| As strategy it doesn't make any sense. Luckily for Kerry, given the public's short attention span, they'll have forgotten what he was hollering about a month from now, remembering only that he was hollering... |
Journalist Bob Woodward, author of a new book titled, "Plan of Attack," also said in a CBS' "60 Minutes" interview that Bush gave national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Cheney and Rumsfeld permission to tell Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan of his decision to go to war in Iraq before informing Secretary of State Colin Powell. "Now, if this sounds wrong to you, that's because it is fundamentally wrong and if what Bob Woodward reports is true -- that gas supplies and prices in America are tied to the American election, then tied to a secret White House deal -- that is outrageous and unacceptable," Kerry said.
| John, didn't you complain the other day that Bush wasn't doing anything to keep the price of gas down? Oh, sorry, that was yesterday, before a different group of voters. |
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