Well, now I know why Bush keeps lying about Al Qaeda in Iraq! It's not just to save His sorry butt on the lies He told to get us into Iraq, it's to protect his BFFs, the Saudis! I'd been wondering about that. LA Times:

Although Bush administration officials have frequently lashed out at Syria and Iran, accusing it of helping insurgents and militias here, the largest number of foreign fighters and suicide bombers in Iraq come from a third neighbor, Saudi Arabia, according to a senior U.S. military officer and Iraqi lawmakers.

About 45% of all foreign militants targeting U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians and security forces are from Saudi Arabia; 15% are from Syria and Lebanon; and 10% are from North Africa, according to official U.S. military figures made available to The Times by the senior officer. Nearly half of the 135 foreigners in U.S. detention facilities in Iraq are Saudis, he said.

Fighters from Saudi Arabia are thought to have carried out more suicide bombings than those of any other nationality, said the senior U.S. officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the subject's sensitivity. It is apparently the first time a U.S. official has given such a breakdown on the role played by Saudi nationals in Iraq's Sunni Arab insurgency.

He said 50% of all Saudi fighters in Iraq come here as suicide bombers. In the last six months, such bombings have killed or injured 4,000 Iraqis.

You'd think the Saudis would have greeted us as liberators, and helped carry the cake for us in our cakewalk, eh? Apparently not:

The situation has left the U.S. military in the awkward [how about "impossible"?] position of battling an enemy whose top source of foreign fighters is a key ally that at best has not been able to prevent its citizens from undertaking bloody attacks in Iraq, and at worst shares complicity in sending extremists to commit attacks against U.S. forces, Iraqi civilians and the Shiite-led government in Baghdad.

Er, is there any kind of benchmark for this?

Like, say, reducing the number of Iraqi civilians killed by our allies to 2,000 from 4,000, over the next Friedman Unit?

That should be do-able, right? Especially since it would really support the troops?

Or maybe we could just put all the Saudi fighters in Iraq on big planes and fly them home, like we did for the Bin Ladens after 9/11?

NOTE Can anyone say "play both ends against the middle"? 'Cause it sure looks to me like that's exactly what the Saudis are doing.