The negative response last week of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to President Bush's request for increased oil production flows from its member countries' judgment of U.S. foreign and domestic policies.

Rising fuel prices in the United States are contributing mightily to the general problems of the economy. Consumers, already squeezed by the falling value of their housing, inflation and stagnant wages, are seeing their situation further gnawed away by $50 tanks of gas.

Saudi Arabia, the leading member of OPEC and the world's top oil exporter, used to be America's ace-in-the-hole in petroleum-prompted economic crunches. The American president would ask the king if Saudi Arabia couldn't increase production just a little to cut America a break. The Saudis would agree and pressure would ease.

But not now. Mr. Bush has poisoned the water with the Saudis in two areas. The first is that King Abdullah, when he was crown prince in 2002, stuck his neck out with a proposal that could have led to peace in the Middle East between the Israelis and the Arabs. His idea was consistent with the land-for-peace, two-state settlement that Mr. Bush put forward, in coordination with the European Union, Russia and the United Nations. The problem was that Mr. Bush then did not follow through when the Israelis balked, letting the king's initiative sink like a stone, to his embarrassment.

The second area of Saudi disappointment lay in the Iraq war. The Saudis didn't like Saddam Hussein much, but under his leadership Iraq always lined up along Saudi Arabia with the Sunni Muslim states in opposition to Shiite Iran. The United States then knocked over Sunni Iraq and replaced it with a Shiite government. The royal victory lap that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad just completed in Baghdad was viewed with substantial pain by the Saudis and their king.

So, when Mr. Bush asked OPEC for help last week, the cartel's president -- from Algeria, another Sunni Muslim state -- said there was no need to increase production and that America's problems were due to "mismanagement" of its economy.

It is worth wondering whether Mr. Bush thought about any of this before putting the Middle East peace process in hibernation and attacking Iraq. If he did, how did he get it so wrong?