How many times can the Times bash Bandar before it admits it is just bashing Bush?

From the Sunday New York Times, article by Helene Cooper and Jim Rutenberg, "A Saudi Prince Tied to Bush is Sounding Off-Key."

Bush administration officials have been scratching their heads over steps taken by Prince Bandar’s uncle, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, that have surprised them by going against the American playbook, after receiving assurances to the contrary from Prince Bandar during secret trips he made to Washington.

For instance, in February, King Abdullah effectively torpedoed plans by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for a high-profile peace summit meeting between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, by brokering a power-sharing agreement with Mr. Abbas’s Fatah and Hamas that did not require Hamas to recognize Israel or forswear violence. The Americans had believed, after discussions with Prince Bandar, that the Saudis were on board with the strategy of isolating Hamas.

As if King Abdullah would embarrass himself by “isolating Hamas” before the Palestinian people themselves were ready to do this. What the Saudi king did in this case was side-line Hamas – and in a way that allowed Hamas to save face while still managing to get Abbas – someone Israel could deal with (well, maybe try to at least) – back in the driver’s seat.

As to this charge:

American officials also believed, again after speaking with Prince Bandar, that the Saudis might agree to direct engagement with Israel as part of a broad American plan to jump-start Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. King Abdullah countermanded that plan.

How could Cooper and Rutenberg - or these unnamed American officials they refer to - possibly have concluded that King Abdullah would further polarize the situation by agreeing to talk to Israel directly before receiving trustworthy assurances that Israel was willing to talk to him? That is, that Israel was willing to make the concessions that he is urging Israel to make.

King Abdullah - as all Saudi kings before him - will conduct his negotiations strictly behind the scenes. King Abdullah is not someone who anybody has ever suggested would suffer well the public humiliation of having any deal he proposed torpedoed right in front of his face. This is simply not his style - or the style of the Saudi monarch.

Then there is this potshot that the Times takes:

Most bitingly, during a speech before Arab heads of state in Riyadh three weeks ago, the king condemned the American invasion of Iraq as “an illegal foreign occupation.” The Bush administration, caught off guard, was infuriated, and administration officials have found Prince Bandar hard to reach since.

Once again this “illegal war” assertion is recycled. Surely it must have occured to the reporters and editors, even the ones who work on 42nd Street, that King Abdullah made this statement to get his audience past the quaqmire of having to condemn the Iraq war so he could push them to the next phase: making Middle East peace.

Now notice how slyly the Times weaves in the "sounding off-key" business:

“The problem is that Bandar has been pursuing a policy that was music to the ears of the Bush administration, but was not what King Abdullah had in mind at all,” said Martin S. Indyk, a former United States ambassador to Israel who is now head of the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy.

Martin Indyk is the Times' source here? As if Indyk is Bandar's best friend – or the Bush administration's for that matter. Indyk was a foreign policy advisor to Clinton and then his ambassador to Israel until he was replaced by President Bush in 2001.

Moreover, Bandar simply isn’t in the business of entertaining American presidents as Indyk suggests. The prince's job is to shuttle messages back and forth between the Saudi king and the American president. These are the only two people, to use Indyk's analogy, who would know how well Bandar sings and they're not talking - certainly not to Indyk, at any rate.

As Saleh al-Kalleb, Jordan's former information minister so aptly told the Times: “The relationship between the United States and the Arab regimes [i.e., Saudi Arabia] is like a Catholic marriage where you can have no divorce.”

So instead of trying to cast Prince Bandar as a singer who has somehow lost his talent, why did not the Times compare him to a child of this "Catholic marriage"?

But then the Times couldn't have mocked the Saudi's relationship with the Bushes with this too-clever-by-half line: "Prince Bandar has continued his long courtship, over decades, of the Bush family and Vice President Dick Cheney." [Emphasis added.]

I doubt whether Bandar has ever been in love with the Bushes - or whether that would matter if it were true. As the Jordanian minister implied in using the Catholic marriage analogy, the time is long since past for any party to be wondering whether they are in love.