We bet it's all done with smoke, mirrors, and a few carefully place "memos." First there was (right after Labor Day) the announcement that oil prices were dropping because of a "surplus." But now, after many political observers (us included) pointed out the fishy Bush-friendly timing of this announcement, the headlines read: "Tight US Supplies Boost Oil Prices." Hmmm, this makes it seem like they must be shuttling the oil around like the hidden ball in a shell game! Maybe the Saudis have grown tired of being Bush's personal "oil bankers." Maybe Karl Rove is afraid Bush's manipulations are too close to being exposed...in any case, the amazing shrinking and expanding oil supply would be funny - if it weren't such a grim story for so many strapped Americans. Check out the wildly varying headlines to the right of the main story on this BBC page.

Back in April, Saudi Prince Bandar pledged he would make sure that oil prices fell in the run up to election 2004 as a way to help his good buddy Bush. After all, Bush told the FBI to back off investigating the Bin Ladens in summer 2001, then let the Bin Ladens fly out of the US within days of the 9/11 attack. Later, Bush blocked an FBI investigation into the Saudi connection to 9/11. So the Saudis owe Bush big time. Now they're paying him off. Right on schedule, OPEC announces that after months of supposed "tight supplies" and inflated prices there's suddenly plenty of oil and the price is going down...at least through November 2.

Even as Bob Graham calls for an investigation into why Bush blocked an FBI probe of the connection between Saudis and 9/11, Bush's Saudi pals are paying him off for "services rendered" by rigging a drop in oil prices right before the election. But to hide the fact that the drop is based on a Saudi promise to Bush made back in April, 2004, OPEC issued its announcement through the organization's Indonesian president, Purnomo Yusgiantoro. Here's the story Yusgiantoro is giving out: "the world is oversupplied with about 1.5 million barrels of oil a day, and falling prices in the futures market suggest an easing of concern over supply disruptions." Since when do escalating attacks on Iraq pipelines "ease" oil concerns? And if there's a surplus, why were prices nearly $50/barrel? To help OPEC rip off the US?

The flow of Iraq oil has slowed to a drip as 8/30 due to attacks on Iraq's northern and southern pipelines. So it makes no rational sense that oil prices would suddenly drop the same day...unless the drop was rigged. And, it was. Reuters reports: "The head of the OPEC producers' cartel said on Monday (8/30) that the group, which controls more than half of world exports, aimed to increase spare output capacity by about one million bpd in the next few months in an effort to bring down sky-high prices." In April, it was revealed that Saudi Prince Bandar of OPEC had PROMISED Bush he'd see that oil prices dropped right before the election. (see http://money.cnn.com/2004/04/19/news/international/election_saudi/) And what better day to start the rigged slide than the opening of the GOP convention? The joke on the voters, of course, will be the return to higher prices in the dead of winter once the election is over.

Holden writes for Atrios: "How can Timothy O'Brien write a lengthy piece in today's NYTimes about Riggs Bank, delving into the bank's money laundering activities on behalf of the Saudis and notorious Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, without once mentioning Bush uncle/campaign 'Pioneer' Jonathan J. Bush's involvement with Riggs? O'Brien does briefly mention that Joe Allbritton owned a controlling interest in Riggs from 1981 until Riggs was sold last week to PNC Financial (while revealing that Allbritton's wife Barbara, a Riggs board member, protested when the bank finally ended its relationship with Pinochet). However he makes no mention of the fact that Mr. Allbritton is a long-time Bush family friend and fundraiser for both GHW Bush and GW Bush. If a blood relative and close friend/financier of Bill Clinton or John Kerry were deeply involved in a bank that laundered money for dictators and terrorists, what do you think the focus of the Times story would be?"

To understand the relationship of the Bush and Saudi dynasties, "One would have to journey back in the time to the birth of al Qaeda at the terrorist training camps during the Afghanistan war. One would have to study the Iran-Iraq War of the Eighties, the 1991 Gulf War, and the Iraq War of 2003. One would have to try to deduce what had happened within the corporate suites of oil barons in Dallas and Houston, in the executive offices of the Carlyle Group, in the Situation Room of the White House, and in the grand royal palaces of Saudi billionaires... Finally, one would have to put all this information together to shape a continuum, a narrative in which the House of Bush and the House of Saud dominated the world stage together in one era after another. Having done so, one would come to a singular inescapable conclusion: that, horrifying as it sounds, the secret relationship between these two great families helped to trigger the Age of Terror and give rise to the tragedy of 9/11."

Alexander Bolton reports in The Hill: "The Bush administration has refused to answer repeated requests from the Sept. 11 commission about who authorized flights of Saudi Arabian citizens, including members of Osama bin Laden's family, from the United States immediately after the attacks of 2001. ... Democrats suspect President Bush, who met privately with the Saudi Arabian ambassador, Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, on the morning of Sept. 13, 2001, may have personally authorized the controversial flights, several of which took place when all other U.S. commercial air travel had been halted. ... If Bush or members of his inner circle are shown to have approved the flight of the prominent Saudi Arabian citizens, it could be damaging to Bush, who has staked his re-election campaign in large measure to his carefully built image as the steady leader of the war against terrorism."

Craig Unger writes, "Throughout the reams of documents released by the administration, standard practice was to allow each National Guardsman's name to be printed in full. Why did the White House make an exception in this case? Why would the Bush administration want to make sure this name in particular did not make it into the public eye? The White House declined to answer these questions... When I interviewed Bath for my book... I discovered that the White House may not want to reveal his name because Bath, a Houston businessman who became friends with George W. Bush in the '70s, is the middleman in a story Bush doesn't particularly want told -- the saga of how the richest family in the world, the House of Saud, and its surrogates [and Salem bin Laden and Khalid bin Mahfouz] courted the Bush family. Bath was present at the birth of a relationship that would bring more than $1.4 billion in investments and contracts from the House of Saud to the House of Bush over more than 20 years."

Tim said that Bandar was "almost a member of the Bush family" (talk about guilt by association! ouch!) before repeating that Saudis were allowed to fly, and one key FBI official said he had not even been in the loop about it. Tim hammered Bandar about how these 140 Saudis got permission to leave the country. Bandar (sounding angry and even more cornered than he had when Russert first asked about the subject) said many of these people were kids or college students -- and said that he had talked to the FBI. "It is not true that they were flying when Americans were not flying..." (Hold it -- didn't domestic flights resume the next day, on September 14, 2004?) "Where are we, in a banana republic?..." (Yes, Bandar, we are -- as long as your pals the Bushes remain in power.) "Read what the 9-11 commission says about it."

"'Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan's assertions that he did not learn of Bush's decision to launch war on Iraq before Secretary of State Colin Powell are false, journalist Bob Woodward told CNN on Friday. 'For some reason, Bandar wants to fuzz this up,' said Woodward... He said Bandar woke him up with a late phone call Thursday night and ended up acknowledging that Woodward's description of the meeting was accurate... 'Bandar called me last night,' [Woodward] added. 'Woke me up -- a quarter of 12. And we went through this. And I said, 'What are you doing?' ' Woodward said Bandar told him that he had officially been told that a decision had not been made, but that the White House had made it clear the decision was in fact made. 'I said, 'Well, the issue here is when you left that meeting did you think the president had decided on war?' Woodward told CNN. 'Bandar said 'absolutely.' ' "

In 2000, Bush promised to "use the full weight of the White House to pressure oil-producing countries to increase production if there was a gas-price crisis... Now, with esteemed journalist Bob Woodward reporting that the Bush administration and top Saudi officials agreed to manipulate oil prices in conjunction with the 2004 election, Bush's passivity towards Saudi Arabia is raising disturbing questions. Why won't the administration exert serious pressure on the regime both on oil and terrorism policy? Why does the resident continue to refer to Saudi Arabia as 'our friend' when the country has potential ties to the 9/11 terrorists? Why, as author Daniel Benjamin reported, did the administration weaken efforts to scrutinize potential Saudi money-laundering schemes before 9/11? A look at the resident's 'deep personal ties with Saudi officials' - and his financial connections to the Saudi royal family and powerful Saudi businessmen - may provide clues."