Nervous Arab allies 'secretly backed American war effort'

Some of America's prickliest Arab allies, notably Saudi Arabia, gave much more support for the war in Iraq than was admitted in public, it was disclosed yesterday.

Officially Saudi rulers merely permitted the US air force to use a command and control centre at Prince Sultan air base and allowed American aircraft to enforce the "no-fly" zone over southern Iraq. In reality, official sources told the Washington Post, at least 10,000 US troops passed through Saudi Arabia.

US special forces, ostensibly on standby for search-and-rescue operations, were allowed to cross from northern Saudi Arabia into western Iraq, where they seized airfields and prevented any Iraqi missile attacks on Israel.

Planes officially enforcing the no-fly zones carried out extensive attacks on air defence systems and Riyadh allowed overflights by fighter planes and cruise missiles from warships in the Gulf and Red Sea.

Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, yesterday thanked the rulers of the United Arab Emirates for "wonderful assistance" over the war in Iraq. He was on a low-key tour of the Gulf and beyond to thank Arab leaders for helping and to discuss the post-Saddam "footprint" for US forces in the region. In a sign of Arab leaders' extreme sensitivity over their American ties, Mr Rumsfeld's schedule was kept secret until he landed in each nation.

The unwillingness of the Saudis to commit themselves in the run-up to war frustrated Pentagon planners. America is expected to reduce its air force presence in the kingdom substantially.

General Tommy Franks, the overall US commander in the Gulf, declined to say whether the UAE would be asked to accommodate more forces, but said America was studying a major realignment of its presence in the region. "We need to see exactly what footprint will have the highest payoff for us," he said.

Gen Franks's stock is high in Washington and there were reports that Mr Rumsfeld would be sounding him out for promotion to army chief of staff this summer when Gen Eric Shinseki, who has fallen out with Mr Rumsfeld, retires this summer. The defence secretary's plans for a radical overhaul of the army, which he sees as heavy, slow and wedded to Cold War strategic thinking, gained further ground with the resignation of Thomas White, the civilian chief of the army.

He was fired as army secretary on Friday, but had been a marked man for months because of public rows with Mr Rumsfeld and a lingering whiff of scandal about his previous career as an executive with Enron, the bankrupt energy giant.

Mr Rumsfeld said his tour of the region, expected to include Iraq, Afghanistan and Qatar, was not a "victory tour".

Flying to the Gulf at the weekend, Mr Rumsfeld said America felt a "commitment" to Afghanistan and Iraq and would stay in those countries to help both emerge from repression on to "the path towards a more democratic and representative system".

U.S. moving air-command center to Qatar from Saudi Arabia
Michael R. Gordon and Eric Schmitt, New York Times

Published April 28, 2003

BAGHDAD -- The United States is shifting its major Mideast air operations center from Saudi Arabia to Qatar, the first step in what is likely to be a significant reduction of U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia and a realignment of the U.S. military presence in the region, senior military officials said Sunday.

The day-to-day responsibility for overseeing hundreds of air missions in Iraq and the Mideast will be transferred this week from Prince Sultan Air Base near Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to a backup headquarters the United States built last year at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, the officials said.

A formal decision about whether to make this arrangement permanent has yet to be made by President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

But with the war in Iraq winding down and continued unease in Saudi Arabia about a large U.S. military presence, U.S. commanders said they believed the time was right to see whether the Qatar base could serve as the U.S. Central Command's air operations center of the future.

"Whether we'll stay there or not -- not sure," Gen. Tommy Franks, the chief of Central Command, said in an interview in Abu Dhabi. "But we do know that since we have it, we want to be able to run some operations out of it. So for the foreseeable future, and I don't know how long that is, we're going to move it over there and going to start running some air ops out of it."

Rumsfeld visited the United Arab Emirates and Qatar on Sunday as part of a trip to discuss with regional allies the shape and size of the U.S. military commitment in the Persian Gulf region after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Franks joined in Rumsfeld's talks.

U.S. military commanders, especially Air Force officials, have long favored moving the air command post to Al Udeid. U.S. commanders have chafed at restrictions the Saudis have placed on the U.S.-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Senior Bush administration officials sought to emphasize that shifting the location of the command center should not be interpreted as an indication that the United States is ending its military relationship with Saudi Arabia.

"We are not leaving Saudi Arabia," a senior administration official said Sunday.

Although the discussions were still underway, the shift of the air command center may be the most noteworthy example of the emerging postwar U.S. military structure in the region.

The United States is not planning to abandon the sophisticated air command center it opened at the Prince Sultan base in Saudi Arabia less than two years ago.

Maj. Gen. Victor Renuart, Central Command's director of operations, said the Saudi center would probably go into "warm" status. The military plans to use it to oversee military exercises, and it could be reactivated in a crisis.

For the military, however, Qatar is a more congenial location. A tiny nation of 750,000 people, Qatar has come to view the United States as its main protector in the region.

"Thomas White, the civilian chief of the army. He was fired as army secretary on Friday, but had been a marked man for months because of public rows with Mr Rumsfeld and a lingering whiff of scandal about his previous career as an executive with Enron, the bankrupt energy giant."

That's some of it. The rest is that WHITE was the source of many many negative stories about US forces that appeared in the Washington Post and the NY Times. Every story that had us under-manned, supply lines stretched too thin, gloom and doom yada yada yada, this guy was the ComPost's source. His being allowed to resign is very generous. His diligence in attempting to undermine our operations should have resulted in "something else."

Michael

"Some of America's prickliest Arab allies, notably Saudi Arabia, gave much more support for the war in Iraq than was admitted in public, it was disclosed yesterday."

I wasn't the only one here that pointed out before the war that a LOT of the rabble coming from some of these Arab countries was simply for "local public consumption." Many of us said, in fact, that what actually would happen wouldn't match the public pronouncements from these "leaders." That's always been the case in the Muddle East. They say one thing to their public and do quite another when shove and push are proximate.

Michael

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.