Lee Smith: The Arab Lobby - A new book explores the 'petrodiplomatic complex' and Saudi influence on U.S. foreign policy - '...there is an Arab lobby in the United States--one as old as, if not older than, the Israel lobby, and it has helped to shape U.S. foreign policy and economic life since the end of World War II. Mitchell Bard's The Arab Lobby: The Invisible Alliance That Undermines America's Interests in the Middle East describes how this Arab lobby--from U.S. foreign service officers, oil companies, Christian anti-Zionists, and Ivy League universities to Gulf Arab states, Arab-American activists and Islamist ideologues--exercises its influence in U.S. politics. The book is already being dismissed by critics as a slapdash attempt by a former AIPAC employee to answer Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer's 2007 book, The Israel Lobby. But those who actually read the new book will find a serious and timely look at a powerful and remarkably under-studied influence on U.S. foreign policy...'