The (Ex) Washington Realist

King Abdullah created quite a stir on his arrival in Britain by claiming that the UK government failed to act on intelligence provided by the Saudis that could have prevented the 7/7 bombings in 2005. Spokesmen for the prime minister maintain that the intelligence provided was not material to those attacks and could not have led British authorities to the perpetrators.

I'm interested in two facets. First, let's assume that the king is being perfectly straightforward. What precisely was the information? Was it obtained from Saudi informants, say, in Pakistan, that have connections and ties to extremist groups? Was it general or specific? And how did the Saudis pass it along? In such a form that it was so general (beware second generation Pakistani Britons) as to be unactionable?

Second, and this is the larger issue. Is this a reminder that the West can't be choosy in terms of who it allies with? Abdullah's comments in London sound the same note that Putin's statements a few years ago in New York that Moscow had proposed a joint operation to finish off the Taliban in Afghanistan prior to 9/11 only to be rebuffed.

How much of this is also a smokescreen to further divert attention from the Al-Yamanah affair? (This is the starting point for Benjamin Heineman and Fritz Heinman to examine the question of corporate corruption in the current issue of The National Interest, by the way).