Saudi Arabia Gets a Free Pass Again

I almost spit out my café latte this morning after reading this one. Board members of the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency approved a deal Thursday that exempts Saudi Arabia from nuclear inspections. Saudi Arabia, the one country that everyone SHOULD fear is being exempt?!

The Associated Press reported that, "although the Saudis resisted Western pressure to compromise and allow some form of monitoring, the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency had no choice but to allow it to sign on to the agreement. Called the small quantities protocol, the deal allows countries whose nuclear equipment or activities are thought to be below a minimum threshold to submit a declaration instead of undergoing inspection." It should be called, the SaudiArabia's Got You By the Balls Cause You Need Our Oil, So Don't Even Think of Touching Us deal.

Seventy-Five nations, most of them small and in politically stable parts of the world, qualify for the protocol but adding Saudi Arabia to the list, despite serious misgivings about the arrangement in an era of heightened proliferation fears, is just insane. In the past two decades Saudi Arabia has been linked to prewar Iraq's nuclear program and to the Pakistani nuclear black market, not to mention all sort of harboring of terrorists and funding their activities.