Saudis batting down the hatches?

Bryan at Why Now asks why the Saudi ambassador has suddenly quit and flown home. "Prince Turki al-Faisal has only been in the position 15 months, while his predecessor, Prince Bandar bin Sultan stayed for 22 years."

Josh Marshall conjectures:
"...Saudi Arabia's neighbor Iraq is in some sort of slow motion civil war. The neighbor across the water, Iran, has been empowered tremendously and stands to gain even more power if their Shi'a coreligionists in Iraq take over the country and slaughter or dominate the Sunni Arab minority. And the White House is signalling that it might opt to take the side of the Shi'a in that cataclysm and, shall we say, go along for the slaughter."

In the same post, Josh offers an even more chilling theory:
"The folks who brought you the Iraq War have always been weak in the knees for a really whacked-out vision of a Shi'a-US alliance in the Middle East. I used to talk to a lot of these folks before I became persona non grata. So here's basically how the theory went and, I don't doubt, still goes ... We hate the Saudis and the Egyptians and all the rest of the standing Arab governments. But the Iraqi Shi'a were oppressed by Saddam. So they'll like us. So we'll set them up in control of Iraq. You might think that would empower the Iranians. But not really. The mullahs aren't very powerful. And once the Iraqi Shi'a have a good thing going with us. The Iranians are going to want to get in on that too. So you'll see a new government in Tehran. Plus, big parts of northern Saudi Arabia are Shi'a too. And that's where a lot of the oil is. So they'll probably want to break off and set up their own pro-US Shi'a state with tons of oil. So before you know it, we'll have Iraq, Iran, and a big chunk of Saudi Arabia that is friendly to the US and has a ton of oil. And once that happens we can tell the Saudis to f$#% themselves once and for all.

Now, you might think this involves a fair amount of wishful and delusional thinking. But this was the thinking of a lot of neocons going into the war. And I don't doubt it's still the thinking of quite a few of them. They still want to run the table. And even more now that it's double-down. I don't know what these guys are planning now. But there's plenty of reason to be worried."

As to Cheney being summoned to Saudi Arabia? ThinkProgress says Cheney is supporting the Shiites:
"Cheney is reportedly advocating taking the side of the Shiites in Iraq’s civil war, a position which caused him to be “summoned” recently to Saudi Arabia and has stoked fears of a broader war in the Middle East. Whatever motivations Cheney has for remaining publicly silent, he seems intent on pushing his failed ideological vision to its disastrous ends, while escaping accountability for it."

ThinkProgress again:
"“Saudi Arabia has told the Bush administration that it might provide financial backing to Iraqi Sunnis in any war against Iraq’s Shiites if the United States pulls its troops out of Iraq,” the New York Times reports. “King Abdullah also expressed strong opposition to diplomatic talks between the United States and Iran.”"