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To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (10035)	4/20/2002 8:40:34 AM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21057

Interesting, but I'm not running the panic flag up yet on that one. DEBKA is a highly partisan source, and is essentially a mouthpiece for the Israeli hawks. Sometimes they get stuff right, sometimes it's way distorted. The possibility of a private agreement between the Saudis and the Iraqis is not in itself inconceivable, though I don't think either side has the slightest degree of trust for the other. This rings a little odd to me: Not only did Saudi Arabia force an accelerated U.S. evacuation of the Prince Sultan air base and a halt to U.S. operations there, but it also brought out state-of-the-art American equipment from underground buildings at the key facility and dumped it in large crates in the desert to bake under a scorching sun. Saudi Arabia's aim was to show Iraq or any spy planes in the area that the equipment was now out of U.S. reach and that Saudi forces had no intention of using it themselves. As a result, some of the world's most sophisticated electronic gear, worth $5.6 billion, is now rotting away like tomatoes in a steaming Arab souk. This $5.6 billion worth of gear was at Prince Sultan, but not under American control? Was it just left behind? How did it get "out of the US reach" Why don't the Americans go and get it? What "spy planes in the area" are they talking about? Maybe it's just bad reporting, maybe it did happen and it is just being badly explained. I think I will wait for confirmation on these things. Even without such an agreement, I don't think the Saudis have any desire to let us use their territory as a base for military operations against Iraq.