[Blarg]

It's that green horseradish paste you mix with soy sauce when you get sushi...no wait...

The Wahabi are a sunni islam sect that the House of Saud has provided tremendous funding for inside and outside Saudi Arabia, helping them set up religious schools (madrassas is how the word is spelled I think). Under the banner of education, many of the schools spend little time on any subject but memorizing the Koran. The Wahabi are an extremely strict fundamentalist islamic sect. The House of Saud has put so much money into the establishment of the madrassas, and conducted much of its civil society in deference to Wahabi religious ideas, as a way to keep its hold on power nationally and spread it internationally.

Saudi Arabia's cynical opportunism in this regard uncomfortably echoes the style and machinations of the House of Saud's foremost ally for decades -- our American royalty, the Bush family. That Bush is using national resources to help establish what is essentially a privatized military in Blackwater, and at the same time carefully directing that privatization so as to tighten his bonds with the religious right in the process, is pretty much business as usual.