Hey, we elected an oilman as president. We have no right to be surprised.

Salon on Woodward's new book on 43, "State of Denial":

At the instruction of his father (Bush 41), Bush (soon to be 43) met with [Saudi ambassador Prince] Bandar in 1997 and confided, "I'm thinking of running forpresident ... And I don't have the foggiest idea about what I think about international foreign policy." You do not have to be a Michael Moore-style conspiracy theorist to find it worrisome that a Saudi prince is put in charge of giving a future president his worldview.

Bandar, who may now be much more willing to go public with Woodward since he has returned home to Saudi Arabia, keeps popping up in the narrative in chilling ways. The administration's infamous rendition policy -- under which terrorist suspects are farmed out to foreign governments with a belief in the truth-telling virtues of torture -- may have begun shortly after 9/11 when Bush told Bandar, "If we get somebody and we can't get them to cooperate, we'll hand them over to you."

The book also describes Bandar's Oval Office meeting in early 2004 with Bush, Condi Rice (then the national security advisor) and White House chief of staff Andrew Card
(another source, since he has now left the administration). Bush, Woodward writes, "thanked Bandar for what the Saudis were doing on oil -- essentially flooding the market and trying to keep the price as low as possible.[Bush] expressed appreciation for the policy and the impact it could have during the election year."

I wonder what the Saudis got in return?