<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by benoit:
I thought the first article was pretty bad. It quotes from some self annointed "expert" from "carleton university" (what?)
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A good Canadian university. The leading one in Ottawa (the national capital).
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This fellow dismisses out of hand the notion that stationing our troops in saudi arabia had any strategic purpose. He derides the idea that attacking from Saudi Arabia provided any "military efficiency". Oh yeah, how are we going to invade Iraq and Kuwait -- only from the sea? I guess this fellow does not comprehend the utility of tanks and land based artillery in an invasion. Some expert.
He talks about invading from Saudi being a source of anger amongst the arabs, well what alternative would please them more, coming in from Israel?
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They didn't have to remain there (in Saudi Arabia) after the Gulf War when Iraq's military capabilities were shattered.
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Turkey had refused using them as a base of operations, Syria, well forget it.
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Inclivik (sp?) air base in Turkey. How do you think the northern no-fly zone over Iraq is staged?
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Another blinder of the article is its dismissiveness of the threats against the Saudi regime, which are in fact very real.
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A threat probably from within, because the country is, like Kuwait, an autocracy and the people have no voice. The rulers of those countries aren't exactly there by popular vote (but neither, I will acknowledge, are a good number of regimes in the area).
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Why else do you think they are so eager to have us there, and buy so many of our weapons?
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The Saudis have 2 air forces. A regular one and a secondary one to keep an eye out on the regular one.
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There are plenty of people who want to topple the Saudi regime, and I don't think us being there is the primary reason.
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As I am sure there are many who want to topple the Bush and Blair regime among others. The difference is that those in the U.S. and U.K. have the vote. Saudis don't.
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By the way, what is the alternative to us being there, having some extremists govt take over with massive oil money to trash us? Oh great.
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And where would they get the weaponary and soldiers to do so? They would know better. Is Iran a threat?
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Another bogus implication of the article is that if we weren't in Saudi Aarabia, bin laden and his ilk wouldn't target us -- yeah right!
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Fewer reasons to hate the U.S. Right now, there are many.
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The article doesn't even mention our support of Israel as a complaint against us
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Inferred to in the beginning of paragraph 6.
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The article blames our "oil policy" for everything, but doesn't propose an alternative policy that would turn the world into a terrorist free utopia. I would infer that the proposed solution is for us to not be reliant on Saudi Oil, perhaps by building
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Precisely what Thomas Jefferson would have called for: to be self-reliant and not interfere with the internal affairs of others.
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An interesting oversight of the article is failing to mention that Bin Laden and his family are saudi, his billionaire relatives still in the country and running much of the economy...</font>
Read the second paragraph. I am sure the writer implies that bin Laden's family is Saudi. The Saudi royal family is in charge anyway.