I found Tiger Sharks observations interesting, as I have been on business to the middle east in the past (about 5 years ago) - Saudia Arabia, Kuwait, and Bahrain.

Guess where I had alcohol in Saudi??
Yup, at a party being hosted by a member of the royal family.

Incidentally, the number of killings and bomb attacks in Saudi have increased significantly since the US left. Al Quidea has made no secret of the fact that it wants to overthrow the existing regime and replace it with a fundamentalist one, like Afghanistan.
You can see their point to some extent, given the way the existing regime operates.

In response to groovicus, the problem with "ambulances" is that in the past they have been proved to have not been the real thing, and used to smuggle weapons and/or explosives to terrorists.

Curiously, the BBC have withdrawn their original piece about the use of a soldiers head as a football. I guess they are waiting for more confirmation about this, but they did believe it to be true.

Not sure about Iraq, but we are in the position of being able to create democracy in that part of the world, as opposed to letting it descend into anarchy and chaos. Running away, like Spain has done, does not seem to me to be even remotely justified.