WASHINGTON, Jan 15: The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee said on Tuesday the US military might need to end operations at a Saudi Arabian air base given the restrictions on US military personnel there.
Michigan Sen. Carl Levin, the panel’s Democratic chairman, said women service members were uncomfortable in the remote region where the Prince Sultan air base is located and the Saudis had been less than welcoming.
“We may need to move that base,” Levin told reporters, adding he thought there were countries in the region where the United States could have greater use of military facilities “without the restrictions.”
A female US Air Force fighter pilot has filed a lawsuit to end a Pentagon policy requiring female military personnel to wear an “abaya”, a traditional item of dress similar to the burqa, when off base in Saudi Arabia.
Pentagon officials have defended the policy as necessary to maintain sensitivities of their hosts in Saudi Arabia and prevent U.S. military personnel from standing out as targets for attack.
But Levin said the Saudis had forced U.S. personnel to operate at a base in a remote region and seemed to “want us out of sight.”
“I’m left with sort of an uneasy feeling,” Levin said. “They act as though somehow or other they are doing us a favor.”
The presence since the Gulf War of about 5,000 U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, a conservative Muslim country, has angered some Saudis, including the Saudi-born suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, Osama bin Laden.
Tensions heightened after the Sept. 11 attacks, in which many of the suicide hijackers were Saudi citizens. Saudi Arabia condemned the attacks and pledged support to combat terrorism.
Some lawmakers have questioned the commitment of the Saudis to helping the U.S. investigation, while some Saudis have complained they have been targeted in U.S. security sweeps.
REASSESSMENT: A key Democratic senator has urged the administration of President George W. Bush to reassess US policy toward the Muslim world to prevent radicals from building what he termed an “ideological iron curtain”.
In a major foreign policy speech at Georgetown University on Monday, Senator Joseph Lieberman accused “the fanatical forces of jihad” of trying to build “a theological iron curtain to divide the Muslim world from the rest of the globe”.