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Laurent Murawiec is a senior fellow at the rightist Hudson Institute, a member of the Committee on the Present Danger, a former analyst for the Rand Corporation, and the ex-editor of the Executive Intelligence Review, a magazine founded by Lyndon LaRouche, the controversial conspiracist and serial campaigner for the presidency. A proponent of aggressive U.S. policies in the Middle East in the wake of 9/11, including attacking a number of countries and taking over oil fields, Murawiec's track record also includes advising the French Ministry of Defense, working as a foreign correspondent in Europe, and teaching history at Paris' Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (for more on his background, see "Laurent Murawiec," Hudson Institute).

Murawiec came to public attention after he delivered a July 2002 PowerPoint presentation to the Defense Policy Board (DPB) --a panel that advises the Pentagon on strategy and policy that was led at the time by Richard Perle --in which he argued that U.S. grand strategy in the Middle East must see Iraq as the "tactical pivot," Saudi Arabia as the "strategic pivot," and Egypt as the "prize." Regarding Saudi Arabia, Murawiec argued that the House of Saud is "hated throughout the Arab world: lazy, overbearing, dishonest, corrupt." To effect change in Saudi Arabia-which he called the "the kernel of evil, the prime mover, the most dangerous opponent"--Murawiec suggested that the United States threaten holy sites, take control of oil fields, and confiscate financial assets in the United States. Ultimately, if the country did not stop funding fundamentalist schools and terrorist outfits, the United States should threaten the House of Saud itself (Laurent Murawiec, "Taking Saudi out of Arabia"; see also, "Briefing Depicted Saudis as Enemies," Washington Post).

The presentation, which first came to light in an August 6, 2002 Washington Post report, spurred a tumult of criticism, prompting then Secretary of State Colin Powell to assure the Saudi foreign minister that the presentation had no bearing on U.S. policy and Richard Perle to issue an excuse to Time magazine (August 19, 2002), arguing that he had no idea what Murawiec was planning to say. George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, where Murawiec briefly served on the faculty, abruptly took down its biography of Murawiec from its website, although it claimed the move had nothing to do with the presentation ("The Continuing Saga of Laurent (of Arabia) Murawiec," Slate.com, August 27, 2002).

Murawiec, however, stuck by his PowerPoint presentation, telling a Middle East business reporter: "My experience of your part of the world is that most people hate the Saudis' guts, not to make too fine a point about it. Everybody knows they are a bunch of lazy assholes that are arrogant, too big for their shoes, which behave in a consistently disgusting manner. People in your region have told me that for 20 years. But I am not telling you anything new." After the online news service ITP.net posted the remark, Murawiec denied he had made it, telling Agence France-Presse: "I gave no interview neither to that guy ... nor to anybody. The whole story is spurious and void." ITP.net subsequently released the recorded conversation. When asked by Slate.com about the episode, Murawiec referred questions to his employer at the time, the Rand Corp. In response, Rand released a brief statement from its president, James Thompson, who said: "The comments on the tape recording on the website ITP.net are offensive and repugnant, and Rand repudiates them in the strongest terms. Rand was unaware of these comments until they were reported by ITP.net" ("The Continuing Saga of Laurent (of Arabia) Murawiec," Slate.com, August 27, 2002).

One group that apparently did not take offense to Murawiec's views was the neoconservatives. In November 2002, Murawiec briefed Daniel Pipes' Middle East Forum with his ideas on terrorism and the U.S.-Saudi relationship. Soon after, Murawiec became a fellow at the Hudson Institute, a U.S. think tank known for its promotion of hawkish, Israel-centric U.S. foreign polices and close association with leading neoconservatives like Norman Podhoretz, Irwin Stelzer, and Meyrav Wurmser.

Murawiec's biography on the Hudson website claims that his "main research areas concern the application of anthropology to strategy, the 'Revolution in Military Affairs,' and information warfare." Describing his past research and publications, the biography states: "Murawiec has translated Clausewitz's On War into French (Perrin, 1999), as well as works by G. von Scharnhorst. His book La Guerre au XXI