US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, taking what some analysts are calling a "victory lap" of Gulf countries who supported the US invasion of Iraq, announced in a joint press conference with Saudi Defence Minister Prince Sultan Bin Abdul-Aziz in Riyadh that the United States will end its military operations in Saudi Arabia and remove virtually all of its forces from the kingdom following the Iraq war. US military personnel in Saudi Arabia, which doubled to 10,000 during the attack on Iraq, have already started evacuating a desert airbase used by US planes since the end of the Gulf War.
The decision was made in concert with Washington, the Saudi defence minister said, denying press reports that Saudi Arabia had asked the United States to withdraw. However, the real reasons for the move appear to have much to do with the tense relations that governed Saudi-US relations in the 1990s and which led to a series of terrorist attacks against US military interests in the kingdom. The presence of Western troops in the country has irked many Saudis already angry with the United States over its support of Israel. Ousting US troops from Saudi Arabia became a battle cry of Osama Bin Laden and his Al- Qa'eda militants.
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11:56 PM
Moderate Islamist here
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