According to Matt Welch
U.S. ambassadors, current and former, are forever gleaning their primary information from the ever-growing ranks of Saudi princes (at least 6,000 at last count), who dominate the government and elite business class. That is in large part because many Saudi princes speak English, while U.S. ambassadors, at the direct behest of the House of Saud, do not speak Arabic. (New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman reported last October that King Fahd had persuaded former U.S. president Ronald Reagan in 1988 to withdraw his recently appointed Arabic-speaking ambassador, Hume Horan, and that "ever since then, we've been sending non-Arabic-speaking ambassadors to Riyadh -- mostly presidential cronies who knew exactly how to penetrate the White House but didn't have a clue how to penetrate Saudi Arabia."
(via Instapundit)
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