When George snagged the White House, I joked to someone that it was going to be foreign policy by Carlyle Group, one of the homes of James Baker, George Sr., etc. and etc. And in a way, it has been, if only because the neo-cons really don't like the Bush I regime folks and so have resisted anything, especially any conciliatory actions, that the old guard favors.

Now we're going to get the full press. Baker is George's "personal envoy" with the public mandate to straighten out the Iraq debt situation. Since straightening out the debt is now linked to the security situation, Baker will get to work on that problem, too, which inevitably will mean cutting deals for financial and troop support.

The way things are going (or not going), this portends ill for Halliburton and Bechtel. They got their crumbs from Cheney and Rummy, but I've got a strong feeling that Baker will make sure they get cut out of the big prizes. Someone's got to be punished for this debacle.

Josh Marshall's got a good string of quotes about the ties between Baker/Bush/Carlyle and the Saudi royal family. (Scroll down a bit first to "All in the Family".) It gets complicated when you think that the Saudi's are also bankrolling the spread of extremist Islamist schools from Europe to Asia -- who is on whose side?