Kiriakou served in Bahrain in the mid-1990s and has described the posting as among the happiest periods of his life. One conversation from it he has carried forward as a summary judgement on American policy in the region.
The remark
“The Emir of Bahrain once said to me, we were sitting at his beach house, and he said George H. W. Bush was the last American president that gave the Arabs a fair shake.” [1]
Kiriakou endorses it without qualification. “I think that’s true. I think that the Arabs have not had an American president treat them with equality and equanimity since George H. W. Bush.” [2]
The evidence
The specific act Kiriakou cites as the basis for the verdict is financial: Bush “cut off loan guarantees to Israel because they wouldn’t stop building settlements.” Every president since, in his account, “has kowtowed to the Israelis.” [2]
His own position on the settlements goes further than the Bush precedent. “The settlements not just have to stop, they have to go. They have to be destroyed,” he says — on the model of the Israeli settlements in Sinai, which were destroyed when Sinai was returned to Egypt. [2]
The verdict sits against Kiriakou’s description of the West Bank as it now stands, which he compares to Bosnia: “these little islands of Jewish settlers completely surrounded by historically Palestinian land.” That, he says, “is absolutely unacceptable.” [3]