"Secret" Air Base for Iraq War started prior 9-11

by Duke1676

This is great investigative work, and further evidence that Bush and the neocons were planning pre-emptive military action long before September 11th, and no matter what WMD intelligence revealed--Chris

With a small ceremony on April 26, 2003, control of Prince Sultan Air Base was handed back to the government of Saudi Arabia. Since the mid-nineties it had been the premier US air base in the region and the nerve center for all air force operations in the Gulf.  As the home of the Combined Air Operations Center (CAOC), the base was the primary command and control facility responsible for orchestrating the air campaigns for both Operation Southern Watch in Iraq and Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. 

The timing of the closing of PSAB seemed odd, coming just weeks after the official start of military actions in Iraq.  It should have, at the very least, caused unwanted logistical problems for the Pentagon and regional commanders, but it didn't. A contingency plan had long been in the works, not only for Prince Sultan Air Base, but also for the entire map of the Middle East, including Iraq.

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Long before the US pullout, a new home for the operations had secretly been built in the deserts of Qatar.  What had been in October 2001 "nothing more than a runway and a field of sand covered by two-dozen tents and a few warehouses", the Al Udeid Air Base was transformed in a few short months into one of the largest air bases in the world. 

Published reports and official DOD statements claimed that the amazing transformation was the result of the heroic response of US servicemen to the tragedy of 9-11.  A determined military had beaten indeterminate odds to transform a barren wasteland into a state of the art military base in order to "take the war to the terrorists".

The true story of the building of Al-Udeid is actually quite different. The planning for the mammoth base had in fact taken place long before Sept. 11, and actual work on the base began as early as the spring of 2001. The building of Al Udeid turns out not to be a "miracle in the desert" in response to a heinous attack, as touted by the military, but rather a required step on the path to regime change in Iraq.

mydd.com

SOB--Then they expect us to support their war. The fiorst reports I saw mentioning Iraq as a target, looking back, were 2002 during the election. There were only a fews mentions of it by the author of resolution. He was trying ot warn us and we ignored it. Most were uninformed because the media did not pick up at the tome what the now senior Senator from South Carolina was saying. He made mention of this in his campaign for the senate seat. We did not know. The major media ignored it. How can we be an informed population if our media doe not do its job?
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As any chess player can attest, the game is most often won or lost in the first few moves. The Bush Administrations plan for regime change in Iraq was much like a chess game, each piece needed to be in place before the gambit. Although the grand schemes were hatched in the plush offices of right wing think tanks and corporate boardrooms, the heavy lifting was done by simple pawns in the hot deserts of the Southwest Asia, long before the first rumbles of shock and awe were ever heard.

Able to use the smoldering embers of the World Trade Center as a canard to sell a "global" war on terror to not only the American people, but to those who would fight it, the Administration was able to cover their tracks with a web of misinformation. Al-Udeid was never intended as a frontline in a war against the terrorists of 9-11. It was planned as the frontline for something far different; the "War on Terror", which was nothing more then a clever repackaging of the plans for Iraqi regime change that began with the first Gulf War.

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