The Saudis Have Finally Lost It

By Wyatt Earp | April 13, 2009

No, not because they stone adulterers or because they ban alcohol – including Guinness! – but because they fret over something as innocuous as personalized license plates.

RIYADH – Saudi Arabia has banned auto licence tags whose Arabic characters spell out offensive words when romanised, with the list of banned combinations including “USA”, Al-Watan newspaper reported Sunday.

Saudi plates normally have three Arabic characters and three numbers, but the growing fashion is for auto owners also to display a version using the Latin alphabet and some buyers of personalised “vanity plates” deliberately choose Arabic letters which turn into words like “SEX”, “ASS” and “NUT”.

Heh, those three words were pretty much my only vocabulary in high school.

The authorities in charge of issuing vanity plates have released a list of nine prohibited three-letter combinations, and ordered all branches to stop renewing plates that include them, according to Watan.

On the list are combinations like “BUT,” “BAD” and “BAR” — the latter presumably a problem because it suggests alcohol, which is strictly prohibited in the conservative Islamic kingdom.

But first on the list, for unexplained reasons, is the combination “USA”. (H/T – AFP)

Unexplained reasons? Are they serious? Anyone with three brain cells knows exactly why “USA” would be banned in Saudi Arabia. It is because despite the fact that was happily purchase their oil, bow to their kings and kiss their leaders’ asses, and save them from Iraqi invasion, the Saudis always have – and probably always will – hate America.

The hate, of course, is completely irrational. They despise us because we enjoy freedom, are a source for good in the world, and because we have the best babes per capita than any other nation on Earth.

I say, let them ban “USA,” as long as they realize that we may not be there the next time an Islamic nation wants to roll tanks into Riyadh.

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