The Saudi government pays money for this?

Every so often, I get an email from someone called “halah@qorvis.com”. Since I vaguely remember that these are press releases from the Saudi Embassy in DC, I usually delete them just as fast as I delete all the other junk that comes into my in-box.
Today, I decided to open it. It contained just under 600 words of totally useless, non-newsworthy garbage. Interesting only faintly, in its capacity as providing a teeny window into what it is that someone at Qorvis Communications Inc., the p.r. agency hired by the Saudi Embassy, thinks it is that people might want to be hearing from the Saudis these days.
I reproduce the email in its entirety (and lightly annotated by yours truly) below.
So after opening the email I decided to refresh myself as to what this deal is that the Qorvis Corporation has with the Saudis. There’s a lot of interesting information out there on the topic.
Including this, from the WaPo last December, which says:

The FBI searched three offices of the PR firm Qorvis Communications and delivered subpoenas to a fourth office. Officials confirmed the raids but refused further comment, saying there was an “ongoing investigation.” Saudi Arabia is a major Qorvis client; the firm called the investigation a “compliance inquiry” under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The Justice Department found that “the Saudi Arabian Embassy paid Qorvis $14.6 million for a six-month period,” for such services as distributing material highlighting Saudi Arabia’s “commitment in the war against terrorism and to peace in the Middle East.”

$14.6 million? That’s, um, around $2.43 million a month…
A part of me feels really sorry for the Saudis. They’re shelling out $2.43 million a month to this “Qorvis Communications”, and they get rubbish like this in response? (See text of press release, below.)
It reminds me of those extremely unfortunate American Indian tribes, newly very rich with casino profits, who have recently been taken majorly for a ride by various Washington DC shysters. Except that the Saudis are not “newly” rich… They’ve had plenty of time to realize they need to protect themselves from the Gucci-loafered shysters of Washington’s K Street.
Look, let’s lay aside morality for one small moment, and look at this question purely on technical grounds. Do you know who was the best foreign “operator” in the past quarter-century in Washington DC, in the city’s own sleazy terms of influence-peddling, schmoozing, and generally getting ahead?
No question but that it was the late Nizar Hamdoun, who through the 1980s was Iraq’s Ambassador to Washington and had the somewhat unenviable task of trying to “sell” Iraq to a generally very hostile crowd there.
Hamdoun, an extremely canny and fairly charming person, knew how to take a bad case and a big budget and make the budget work for him. He courted everyone, right across the political spectrum, with small dinners, semi-open policy round-tables, and plenty of dosh to throw around. I think he even succeeded in persuading Danny Pipes and Laurie Mylroie to go to Baghdad for a “high-level briefing”, after which those two came back to DC to advocate for an audacious new pipeline scheme that Saddam was trying to organize.
(The pipeline would have gone down to Aqaba, Jordan, but crucially it was thought to require a guarantee from the Israelis that they wouldn’t bomb it before the investors would shell out the money… The appropriately named “Pipes” helped the Iraqis to get Israel’s Shimon Peres involved in the scheme. It was 1985. The plan went nowhere– though intriguingly, a very similar plan is now being peddled once again… Of course, shortly after 1985, both Pipes and Mylroie turned against Saddam in a big, big way. That development had something of the psychology of a major love-affair that all went bitterly wrong…)
Anyway, the man who brought it all together in DC for Saddam’s regime in those days was Nizar Hamdoun. And yes, “bringing it all together” certainly also included those visits that Donald Rumsfeld was making to Baghdad at exactly the time that Saddam was busy using chemical weapons against Iranians and Kurds…
Hamdoun died of leukemia a few years ago. But not until after many, many of his high-ranking American friends had intervened to try to get him to high-end doctors in New York, etc.
Yes, he was, from a purely technical point of view, an outstandingly “capable” diplomat.
And now, there are the Saudis…
I invite you to enjoy with me the idiocy, the sheer, breathtaking vacuity, and the near-total nullity that characterize the press release that Qoprvis Communications sent me today:

Text starts:

Saudi Arabia in Focus
Weekly publication of the Information Office of the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Washington, DC
April 12, 2005. So it drops into my mail-box April 15. So why the delay, huh?
TERRORISM
A very important category this, one that the Saudis have evidently decided to focus on.
THREE MOST-WANTED TERRORISTS KILLED
Saudi security forces have killed three more terrorists on the Kingdom