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Location: Nashville, Tennessee, United States

2/26/2003

Our Closest Allies
Our closest allies in the coming war in Iraq will not be the British or the Australians. It will be the people of Iraq, according to this must-read story in the Chicago Tribune:

"Only those who get money from Saddam will fight the Americans - the members of the government, the Baath Party and the intelligence - and that's not a lot of people," said a taxi driver from Kerbala who stopped for tea at a small Iraqi restaurant after dropping off his passengers. "We've had him since 1979 and we're sick of him."

Fear not, taxi driver, the forces of liberation are coming very soon.

How soon? The heretefore reticent Saudis have suddenly agreed to allow the U.S. military expanded use of its bases inside Saudi Arabia - including the use of Prince Sultan Air Base for offensive air operations against Iraq, reports the WaPo:
The agreements clarified a lengthy period of uncertainty about the extent of Saudi cooperation with the United States in event of a war with Iraq. Coupled with the approval by the Turkish government of a plan to allow U.S. ground forces to launch operations into Iraq from Turkey, they provided Pentagon war planners with another important building block in the Persian Gulf region for a possible military campaign against the government in Baghdad.

Soon. Very soon.