sam88

Nytimes is a very crude propaganda machine, I hope one day a decent person would expose them.

Your "The Saudi government doesn't support Al Qaeda" sounds like a joke in bad taste, I mean come on? the CIA confirmed the majority of ISIS are Saudis, 9/11 had many Saudi terrorists, Bin Laden was Saudi, ISIS is being funded by Saudi and Qatar, to mention Saddam in the current situation sounds like an intentional misleading propaganda to say the least.

I think the best thing that has been written on the Middle East is Walid Khalidi, ed., From Haven to Conquest. But as a rule of thumb,"When governments are loyal to the US (Israel, Ukraine, etc), the US calls for disarming of all militias and groups that are opposed to those governments. But in the cases of governments that are opposed to the US (Syria, Iran, Cuba, etc) the US funds and arms militias against those governments."

The chart is over simplification and lacks any depth for such relationships, for example, Jordan and Saudi, both friendly with Israel and have been funding ISIS, yet there is no mention of Jordan, Qatar too, too tiny yet playing a very big role in this mess, not there at all. The main player in all relationship in the middle east is the US and Israel, the rest is not much.