| Words right from the camel's mouth. Parse as necessary. |
 Saudi Ambassador in Washington Prince Turki Al-Faisal said on Wednesday not the US Administration, but rather the Congress and the American public opinion are the two major challenges the Kingdom has to deal with to improve its image. "Our relationships with the US Administration are graded at very good when it comes to cooperation on issues of interest to both nations," Prince Turki told a small group of Arab journalists based in Washington. But the relationship with the Senate and the House of Representatives, which both speak sometimes negatively about Saudi Arabia, is something of paramount challenge to Saudi Arabia.
| Bush is in the position of having to maintain a semblence of cordial relations with the princes, due to a lot of factors, including oil and the desire to avoid open confrontation with the entire Muslim world. Not being given to hasty actions, he's taking the WoT one piece at a time, with Soddy Arabia and Pakland down the list, after the way has been prepared. Congress, a beast with 565 bellies and probably half that number of brains, doesn't feel the same constraints. The public, even the public that's not paying close attention, sees where the impetus toward holy war is coming from and feels an instinctive dislike for the Arab Master Race. |
Saudi Arabia, a strategic ally to the United States, has come under a barrage of criticisms since the September 11 attacks by US some lawmakers, accusing the Kingdom of supporting Islamic radicalism and inability to take concrete actions of reform.
| Most such criticisms have been well-justified. |
Such accusations, categorically denied by the Saudi Government, have badly tarnished Saudi Arabias image in the United States despite the fact that the US Administration maintained close contacts with the Kingdom, praising it for its leading role in the fight on terrorism.
| The denials of the obvious have made the Tragic Kingdom look stupid and duplicitous. That's why the public doesn't like them. |
The Saudi diplomat said the September attacks, engineered by a number of Arab nationals with close link to Osama Bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network among whom 15 of 19 some were identified as Saudi nationals, have doubled the responsibility of Saudi Arabia to prove its innocence to the growing number of Americans whom he described as "lacking basic knowledge of Saudi Arabia."
| Some of the rest of us have acquired that basic knowledge of Soddy Arabia. We really don't like them. |
Prince Turki, who has been traveling to a number of cities in America within efforts to improve his country's image, said many of the people he met with had negative picture about Saudi Arabia.
| Crawling with holy men, chopping people's heads off, exporting jihad to the rest of the world, spittle-spewing, xenophobic sermons at Friday prayers at the Grand Mosque... Shucks. I can't see why anybody's got a negative opinion of them. |
"These two issues are the major challenges to us. We need not to focus our efforts in Washington, we need to travel to real America if we want to establish good picture of our countries," he said in reference to small and big cities in the United States.
| Cut a few holy men's heads off and opinion might start to change. |
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