Oily character

The British paper The Guardian is reporting [1] is reporting that the Justice Department is about to open a corruption investigation into an arms company that paid a billion dollars to Prince Bandar, the former Saudi ambassador to the United States. The company has been trying to take over U.S. arms companies and, the Guardian reports, "make the Pentagon its biggest customer."

A few reminders about how close this man is to our president and his father.

Here [2], Bob Woodward tells 60 Minutes that Prince Bandar promised the president Saudi Arabia to lower oil prices in the months before election day.

Craig Unger's book [3] House of Bush, documented how Prince Bandar donated millions of dolalrs to Bush family charities.

And, in Woodward's strangest and most disturbing revelations in his book [4] State of Denial, he reported that George Bush the elder sent his son to Prince Bandar bin Sultan in 1997 for elementary tutelage in foreign affairs; that Bandar literally keeps a shrine to Bush 41 in his 32-room Aspen mansion; that Prince Bandar uses the word "we" to refer to the United States and Saudi Arabia as a single corporate entity.

Not that Bush needs to much more bashing to assure him a lifetime of ignominy, but enterprising investigative reporters out there should really start looking into what W knew and when he knew it when it regards to this old family friend, and/or whether he's directed his Justice Department loyalists to cut him adrift.

[UPDATE: Make that a billion pounds, not a billion dollars.]